The Euclid Alternative

The Euclid Alternative is the fifth episode of the second season of the CBS sitcom, The Big Bang Theory. This episode first aired on October 20, 2008.

Summary
Leonard is working nights at the university and can’t drive Sheldon to work. Sheldon then tries all his other possible chauffeurs, which are his other friends. This starts to become a huge burden on everyone.

Extended Plot
Leonard comes through the door and falls to the couch due to exhaustion, then Sheldon comes and demands Leonard to drive him around to run his various errands. Leonard refuses as he is far too exhausted because of working late at the university. Sheldon then tries his luck with Penny, he succeeded by asking it as a favor. The two set off in her car and Sheldon continually annoys Penny about her check engine light which results in him getting booted from the car. He manages to arrive at the University and stumbles into Leonard and Howard. He again asks Leonard to drive him, and Leonard again refuses but Howard took Sheldon's side just for fun, which he came to regret as he was forced to drive Sheldon home. Unsurprisingly, Sheldon got left in the middle of the road again. This time Raj picks Sheldon up and drives him home, but after pestering Raj with a lot of requests he gets kicked out again. He manages to arrive at the apartment and makes one final desperate attempt to ask Penny to drive him, he gets the door slammed in his face. The following morning, Sheldon wakes up to see the gang assembled in the living room waiting for him. The gang wants Sheldon to learn driving and because of a Rock-Paper-Scissors contest, Penny is forced to drive him to the DMV. After annoying the DMV assistant with a number of questions, the assistant gives out Sheldon's Learner Permit without him taking the test in hopes that he leaves. In an effort to help Sheldon learn to drive, Howard sets up a state of the arts driving simulation. Sheldon fails horribly at it and gives up on trying to learn to drive with the excuse "I'm clearly too evolved for driving". Because Sheldon doesn't have a way to get to the University, he decides to build a temporary home there until Leonard finishes his experiment. However, it turns out that Leonard has finished his experiment some time ago but purposely did not tell Sheldon.

Quotes
(Sheldon is tyring to get to go to work, but Leonard can't drive him and he has to find a alternative.)

Sheldon: How am I going to get to work?

Leonard: Take the bus.

Sheldon: Oh, I can't take the bus anymore. They don't have seatbelts, and they won't let you lash yourself to the seat with bungee cords.

Leonard: You tried to lash yourself to the seat with bungee cords?

Sheldon: I didn't try; I succeeded.

Critics
"This episode feels like a pit stop on the way to The Big Bang Theory becoming exactly like Two and a Half Men." - The TV Critic's Review

Chuck Lorre Productions, #220
Friday morning, October 10, 2008

Watching the market fall as precipitously as the hopes and dreams of NPC and ABC executives, I can't help but think that there are two bets I can make right now. One is on the simple inertia of a world economy created by hundreds of millions of people creating and servicing stuff that other people want and need. The other bet is on canned goods and guns. Since I've never actually fired a weapon and I'm not sure where my can opener is, I've decided to go with bet number one. If I'm wrong and the market continues to descended like a drug-addled hooker with vertigo, it's reasonable to assume that any new world order created by the complete collapse of the free market system will have little use for a comedy writer. For that reason I think it only prudent to hedge my bet. This weekend I plan on learning a few new survival skills, beginning with foraging for berries and hiding from people whose skill set includes shooting wildlife from helicopters.

Trivia

 * This episode gives a rare camera view of Leonard and Sheldon's apartment, from the vantage of the hallway that's normally seen to the back right, going to the bedrooms, allowing us to see the "4th wall" in the front of the apartment the camera normally sees through.
 * The Euclid avenue that gives the episode its title we learn is an alternative to Los Robles Avenue, which are two parallel streets in Pasadena, CA.
 * Sheldon complains about the check engine light in Penny's car for the first time in this episode, later mentioning it again in The Financial Permeability, The Adhesive Duck Deficiency and The Plimpton Stimulation. Leonard's mother similarly makes a point of this in The Maternal Congruence as does Amy Farrah Fowler in The Robotic Manipulation. Penny says, "The light has been on since I bought the car," in The Adhesive Duck Deficiency, but there is no statement regarding the light in The Luminous Fish Effect.
 * Leonard and Sheldon's element naming game is by nature a short game, since so many elements end with the letter M, and so few start with it (only Mercury, Molybdenum, Magnesium, Manganese, and Mendelevium, unless you count Meitnerium, which Sheldon doesn't). Vlcsnap-2012-02-21-13h37m24s19.png
 * Sheldon never quits, but in this case he "transcends the situation" and stops trying to learn how to drive.
 * The DMV worker is played by the Oscar-winning actress Octavia Spencer who starred in The Help in 2011.
 * In this episode, it is shown that Penny is aware, before Leonard, of Sheldon having lashed himself to the seat of a bus with bungee cords - this highlights the growing friendship between Penny and Sheldon.