The Bozeman Reaction

"The Bozeman Reaction" is the thirteenth episode of the third season of the American sitcom The Big Bang Theory. This episode first aired on Monday, January 18, 2010.

Summary
When Sheldon and Leonard's apartment is robbed and their TV, video games, and computers are stolen, Sheldon decides to leave Pasadena.

Extended Plot
Sheldon, Leonard, Raj, and Howard arrive at the Chinese restaurant where they remark that it's been a long time since only the four of them have eaten together (with Leonard dating Penny and Howard dating Bernadette). Raj becomes agitated and admits jealousy of the others as he doesn't have a girlfriend.

Sheldon becomes horrified when he realizes that the restaurant has redone the menu and that General Tso's Chicken is no longer in the category of specialties, but in the category of chicken, and he becomes overly distressed when he sees a typo in the meal "Shrimp in Mobster Sauce", which makes him immediately come to the conclusion that the restaurant's a front for organized crime; however, the rest of the guys dismiss it, and decide to leave the restaurant and get pizza at Corleone's (to which Howard remarks "Sure; no mobsters there.")



When Leonard and Sheldon return home they find the lock broken and the apartment ransacked, with their computers, TV, and gaming consoles gone, and everything tossed across; however, Sheldon becomes eased when he finds out that the robbers did not touch his comic books.

The police soon arrive and Sheldon verbally tells the officers everything that is missing, and then gives the officers a can of energy drink that was consumed by one of the robbers, so they have the thief's fingerprints. When the police leave, Sheldon and Leonard sit on the couch, where Sheldon decides to watch TV on his iPhone until the criminals "return to (weapon)bludgeon them to death in [their] sleep".

Sheldon eventually goes to bed and barricades the door, only to have to use the bathroom seconds later. Afterwards he goes to Penny's apartment, where Penny and Leonard are preparing to go to bed. Sheldon has them go back to apartment 4A, where he tries to play charades with them, until Leonard and Penny go to bed. Seconds after they leave Sheldon begins to watch a slasher movie on his iPhone, and runs to Leonard and Penny after one of the characters dies a gory death.



The next day, Sheldon has Raj and Howard install a complex security system in the apartment (with motion detectors, infrared sensors, and facial recognition software). When Penny enters the apartment a second later, a (device) net falls on her. As Sheldon begins to remark about the flaws with the net, Howard tells him that he will get it electrified.

That night, Sheldon is updating his daily log when he hears something bump. Instead of going out his door to investigate, he chooses to crawl around the ledge outside of his window to Leonard's room, where he and Penny are starting to have sex. When Sheldon comes in through the window, they tell him that the bump was them knocking over a lamp by accident. Now calm, Sheldon goes to make some warm milk and check the perimeter, but accidentally sets off the security system, with the now-electrified net falling on him, making him wet his pajamas.

A few days later, Sheldon and Leonard have bought a new TV, laptops, and gaming consoles. Sheldon then reveals that he is moving away from Pasadena forever because of the recent events. He eventually decides to move to Montana Bozeman, Montana. Despite protests from Howard and Penny to get over his problems, Sheldon still decides to leave. He plays one last video, revealing that Leonard, Penny, Raj, and Howard were "three of [his] closest friends and one treasured acquaintance". Raj and Howard begin arguing over who's the friend and acquaintance.

At the bus station, when Sheldon arrives in Bozeman he is horrified over the cold temperature, and is quickly robbed of his bags by a local thief. Sheldon eventually gets his bags back, and decides to return to Pasadena. As he walks in, Howard remarks that Sheldon is back, to which he responds "Interesting; the acquaintance is the first to greet me."

Critics

 * "A strong idea for a plot. Robbery is entirely plausible, it has important consequences for the lives of Sheldon and Leonard and it leaves many comedic avenues open...Of course the show could have gone in a less jokey direction and really drawn out the vulnerability that Sheldon felt. Instead of moving to one of his friends could have helped convince him of the need to adapt to his vulnerability...A good story with good jokes. It tapped into an interesting emotion in Sheldon which was fun to explore. It could of course have gone even further with that." The TV Critic's Review
 * IMDb user reviews

Costume Notes
The BDG line from Urban Outfitters is discontinued.

Trivia

 * Melissa Rauch doesn't make a guest appearance as Bernadette in this episode until the next episode of "The Einstein Approximation" (S3E14) to where she has her final guest appearance in that Big Bang Theory season (Series 3).
 * Bernadette Is mentioned by name but is not seen with any on-screen appearances in this episode.
 * Sheldon begins to keep a journal, in which he continues to make reference to the "crime-ridden streets" of Pasadena. This journal is very similar in style and content to the journal of Rorschach from the Watchmen comic book miniseries and film.
 * Sheldon's old laptop was a red Dell XPS m1710 and his new one is a red Alienware M17x, while Leonard 's old laptop was a black Dell XPS M1710 and his new one is a Dell Adamo XPS.
 * Sheldon states, "They didn't take my comic books... They took our TV, two laptops, four external hard drives, our PS2, our PS3, our Xbox, our Xbox 360, our classic Nintendo, our Super Nintendo, our Nintendo 64, and our Wii. They took our games Halo 1, Halo 2, Halo 3, Call of Duty 1, Call of Duty 2, Call of Duty 3, Rock Band, Rock Band 2, Final Fantasy 1 thru 9, The Legend of Zelda, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Super Mario Brothers, Super Mario Galaxy, Mario and Sonic at the Winter Olympics...and Ms. Pacman." Sheldon does not mention his Nintendo GameCube, even though it is shown he (or Leonard) owns one in "The Staircase Implementation"; this comment means that it either wasn't stolen, or the writers neglected to mention it.
 * It's likely Sheldon cares more about his classic Nintendo then his other game systems because when Sheldon was writing in his daily log he only mentions his classic Nintendo.
 * Second time Sheldon plans to move out; the first was in "The Bad Fish Paradigm" (S2E1).
 * In "The Dead Hooker Juxtaposition", Sheldon says he wants a PS3, and by the episode of this article he has one stolen from the apartment.
 * In "The Indecision Amalgamation" Sheldon is trying to decide which new video game system to buy, Xbox One or PS4.
 * In "The Friendship Algorithm", Sheldon said Raj was out of his group of friends, while Howard was safe, but he considers Howard a "treasured acquaintance" and Raj, Leonard, and Penny his "closest friends."
 * Bozeman, Montana is the place where the first contact between humans and Vulcans (or any extra-terrestrial lifeforms) was established in the Star Trek universe; however, for unknown reasons, Sheldon does not seem to mention this factoid.


 * The USS Bozeman, (NCC 1941, Soyuz class), was the Federation ship caught in the time loop for over eighty years in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Cause and Effect", and Bozeman, Montana is the hometown of the writer of the episode, Brannon Braga.


 * One of the first locations Sheldon contemplates moving to is Enid, Oklahoma. Enid is the name of a song by the Barenaked Ladies who sing The Big Bang Theory's theme song.
 * There are two instances where The Godfather is referenced; one such reference is when Sheldon insists to the guys at the Chinese restaurant that they go buy pizza from a place called Corleone's, and another is when Leonard and Sheldon are discussing the origins of "mobster sauce"; Leonard makes a comical remark that the reason why "mobster sauce" was listed on the menu under "seafood" was because "what if they were mobsters who slept with the fishes" (it is mentioned and described as an old Italian saying by Sonny Corleone in The Godfather Part 1).
 * In his farewell video, Sheldon says "Live long and Prosper!" while doing the Vulcan salute.
 * Strangely, it makes no sense why Leonard and Sheldon's apartment was robbed, given that the thieves would have had to carry all of the items down the stairs. It's also never explained why no one saw the thieves.
 * The identity of the thieves is never revealed, or if they even were ever caught.

Quotes
Sheldon: Oh Lord, they re-did the menu.

Leonard: So what? It's the same food.

Sheldon: Really? Look at this: General Tso's chicken is no longer under specialties. It's now under chicken.

Raj: So?

Sheldon: Yes. General Tso.

Raj: Not Tso the chicken, so the question. So?

Sheldon: So? Did the chef lose confidence in himself or the dish. And just look at this, shrimp with mobster sauce. What is mobster sauce?

Leonard: It's obviously a typo.

Sheldon: Perhaps. Or perhaps this restaurant is now a front for organized crime. For all we know, the mobster sauce actually contains chunks of deceased mobsters.

Raj: No, I just think it means it's the kind of sauce mobsters like.

Howard: It doesn't mean anything, it's just a typo!

Leonard: Here's an idea: why don't we go out for pizza?

Sheldon: Good idea. We’ll go to Corleone’s.

Howard: Sure, no mobsters there.

(Sheldon in bed writing in his journal) 

Sheldon: Sheldon's Journal, security system in place however sleep continues to allude me. But I have seen the under belly of Pasadena. This so called city of roses and it haunts me. Uhh! The injustice, I lie here awake tormented while out there evil lurks. Probably playing Donkey Kong on my classic Nintendo.

Sheldon: They took our TV, two laptops, four external hard-drives, our PS2, our PS3, our X-Box, our X-Box 360, our classic Nintendo, our Super Nintendo, our Nintendo 64 and our Wii.

Leonard: We like games.

Sheldon: Right, games. They took Halo 1, Halo 2, Halo 3, Call of Duty 1, Call of Duty 2, Call of Duty 3, Rock Band, Rock Band 2, Final Fantasy 1 thru 9, The Legend of Zelda, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Super Mario Brothers, Super Mario Galaxy, Mario and Sonic at the Winter Olympics...and Ms. Pac-man.

Policeman: Assorted video games.

Howard: Oh, come on. So you were the victim of a crime. That’s part of life. When my great-grandfather first came to this country, he put all his hopes and dreams into this little butcher shop he ran on the Lower East Side of New York. You know what happened? Every customer who walked into that butcher shop and asked for a pound of liver, got ripped off. But, those people moved on, and so should you.

Sheldon: I am moving on. I’m going to be a Bozite.

Leonard: They call themselves Bozites?

Sheldon: They should. It’s one of the first things I plan to bring up upon arrival.

Penny: Sheldon, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m going to miss you.

Sheldon: Please, Penny, as you know, I’m not comfortable with prolonged good-byes and maudlin displays of emotion, so I prepared a short video.

Sheldon: [on laptop screen] Greetings. As you know, I’m not comfortable with prolonged good-byes and maudlin displays of emotion, so I prepared this short video. The four of you are three of my closest friends and one treasured acquaintance. Though I cannot state categorically that my life will be diminished by not having you in it, I am comfortable if you choose to believe that. Since you intend to remain in this lawless metropolitan area, statistics suggest that you will succumb to tragic and gruesome ends before we meet again. Live long and prosper. [Sheldon has vanished]