Bernadette Rostenkowski-Wolowitz

Bernadette Maryann Rostenkowski-Wolowitz, (née Rostenkowski after marrying Howard Wolowitz in The Countdown Reflection), Ph.D. (after The Roommate Transmogrification, (nicknamed "Bernie" by an ex-boyfriend of hers , but also used by her husband), is a former waitress at the Cheesecake Factory who worked there to pay her way through graduate school, and has earned her Ph.D in Microbiology. She began dating Howard Wolowitz off and on since The Creepy Candy Coating Corollary and as of The Countdown Reflection they are married.

Character History
Bernadette, like Howard, is on bad terms with her mother, whose overprotectiveness caused issues for her growing up. Bernadette was bullied at school by a girl who replaced her clothes with an elf costume, which was humiliatingly too big for her. Bernadette's height is a sensitive topic for her, similar to Howard and Leonard. Her mohters smoked while she was pregnant. Bernadette went into college to study microbiology; here she met a professor named Glenn that she dated for a year. This would later become a sore spot with Howard, due to Glenn's height  (6'7"), doctorate, and physique. Howard and Glenn eventually meet and when Howard and Bernadette go back to the hotel room, Howard gets upset at her. Bernadette got a job at the Cheesecake Factory, where she met Penny. She received her Ph.D. in Microbiology in The Roommate Transmogrification and subsequently accepted a job with a big pharmaceutical company.

Family
Not much is known about Bernadette's family. Howard joked that her parent's names were Adolf and Eva, and her brother's name was Ricky even though he hadn't met them yet. Her surname indicates she has Polish descent, which makes sense as she claims her family is Catholic, Poland's most common religion. Howard's mother refers to her as "that little Catholic girl". Bernadette's mother used to make Bernadette crazy like Howard's mother does to Howard. She used to run an illegal day care in the basement, which was part of the reason Bernadette has a dislike of children. She used to smoke cigarettes when she was pregnant with Bernadette, which is a reason, according to Bernadette, as to why she is short. She wouldn't let Bernadette ride a bike because she was worried she would hit a bump and lose her virginity (which she eventually lost in a Toyota Camry).

Bernadette's father Mike worked as a police officer and she is always worried for his safety. According to Bernadette, he is a rude person and often bullies others. Bernadette often took care of her younger siblings as a child, as Mrs. Rostenkowski worked full time, which was also another reason she doesn't like little kids. She had a grandmother who died during Christmas 2009. She had a parrot, and once she lost her marbles, treated the remote control as if it were her pet parrot.

In The Vacation Solution, Bernadette said that her father was retired but still carried his gun as a fashion statement. She also gave Howard a list of topics to avoid when talking to him, implying that he is far-right wing. This list included:
 * Jimmy Carter
 * Gardeners
 * Foreign people
 * Homosexuals
 * Sean Penn
 * Vatican II
 * Gun Control
 * Organic food
 * The designated hitter rule
 * Recycling
 * Howard being Jewish

She also says that if he yells, it is a good sign, but if he is quiet, quickly back away, but in zig-zags, (presumably in case if her father tries to shoot him). Mike Rostenkowski appeared in the last 2 episodes of Season 5 and in the The Fish Guts Displacement. Her father describes her as four feet tall.

Howard
Main article: Howard and Bernadette Bernadette has been dating Howard since The Creepy Candy Coating Corollary. Bernadette was introduced to Howard by Penny because of a pact Leonard made with Howard. After that, Bernadette dated Howard for a few more episodes until Howard announced that they had broken up "a few weeks ago" in The Plimpton Stimulation. In The Hot Troll Deviation, Howard revealed the reason they broke up and after he apologized they started dating again. In The Herb Garden Germination, Howard proposed to Bernadette and she accepted. However, Bernadette's relationship with Howard, though loving and generally accommodating, is often strained due to Howard still living with his mother and his sensitivity. The tension in their relationship further worsens when Bernadette starts to yell like Howard's mother and gets a Ph. D, further rubbing in the fact he does not have one.

One thing he did to get her back was playing "Bernadette" on The Cheesecake Factory piano, which creeped out Penny. However, Bernadette thought it was very romantic.

During The Stag Convergence, Bernadette was telling Penny about a website set up by Howard with facts about their family histories, she said that at one time in Poland both their families were neighbors and Penny said "Aww, that's cool." In reply, Amy whispered to Penny, "No, it's not. I will explain it to you later." (Amy is referring to the Holocaust). Later in the same episode, Bernadette got mad with Howard after hearing about some of his previous creepy sexual exploits which Raj mentions during his toast at Howard's bachelor party. She tells Penny that she thought he was a sweet little guy that lived with his mother and questioned how could she now marry a man that she doesn't really know. Howard apologizes and tells her that all that was past and that she made him a better man. After this apology, Bernadette forgives him. In The Launch Acceleration, Howard is relieved when his space flight is cancelled. Then NASA reschedules it to before the wedding. Bernadette tells him to go and that the wedding can take place after he returns because she won't stand between him as his dream of travelling to space, the final frontier.

In The Countdown Reflection Howard gives her a necklace with a star pendant. After he puts it on her, he tells her that she must briefly return it to him so that he can take into space with him. In this way, Bernadette will have a Star that was in Space after which he says "Take that every guy who ever bought you anything!"

Just before Howard left for Russia, he got married to Bernadette. They were unable to have a ceremony at the City Hall because there were limited spots available before he was to go to space and, naturally, the office did not believe his reason for being unable to delay the wedding. Their friends, however, all got ordained as ministers and married them instead.

During "The Date Night Variable" Bernie insisted that Howard tell his mother that they were moving out of her house, though Howard told his mother that they were reconsidering the move. Howard returns from space in "The Re-Entry Minimization," and Bernadette meets him at the airport and has him all to herself, but falls asleep due to her allergy medication.

The Habitation Configuration - Bernadette gets Howard to move his stuff out of his old room. Even though he does do it, she doesn't want her husband to break his mother's heart and they go back to spend the night there. In The Bakersfield Expedition she develops an interest in comic books and Thor's hammer.

Penny
Bernadette knew Penny before the rest of the gang, as she worked as a waitress at the Cheesecake Factory with Penny. Penny was the person who introduced Howard to Bernadette due to a pact made by Howard and Leonard. By the fourth season, they have become good friends and they along with Amy form a social group, hanging out together in Penny's apartment and occasionally go on a girls' night out. Like Penny and Amy (and even Sheldon), Bernadette doesn't like Raj's sister Priya because of her arrogant and controlling attitude.

In The Wildebeest Implementation, Priya invites Bernadette and Howard over to dine with her and Leonard. Amy talks her into spying on Priya and Leonard for Penny, but she eventually can't handle the pressure of lying and leaves abruptly.

During her marriage to Howard in The Countdown Reflection, Penny is Bernadette's bridesmaid and is one of the ordained ministers that married her and Howard.

Amy
Amy and Bernadette are good friends, though not to the same extent as their individual friendship with Penny. All the three of them are in the same social group. Although they are ultimately good friends, Bernadette does seem more uncomfortable around Amy when she makes outside of the box social comments, which Penny is more used to having put up with the guys, especially Sheldon, for five years, but does not comment on it if Amy is present. Amy often overshadows Bernadette, and thinks of her as "not as cool as the rest of them" or tells Penny that she is "so needy and "so insecure" in "The Recombination Hypothesis". In the episode The Wildebeest Implementation, Bernadette had been given the nickname 'Wildebeest' by Amy, but doesn't really appreciate Amy calling her that. In "The Isolation Permutation", due to the guilt she felt for leaving Amy out and going bridesmaid dress shopping only with Penny, she decided to make Amy her maid of honor. Even though she has known Penny longer than Amy, and gets along better with Penny because of this, she still has more similarities with Amy in terms of academics. Both of them are doctorate holders with majors under the branch of Biology. In "The Ornitophobia Diffusion", Sheldon called both of them biologists and asked them to get rid of the blue jay that had flown into his apartment and landed on his spot on the couch. In The Parking Spot Escalation, Amy and Bernadette get into the middle of Sheldon and Howard's fight over Sheldon's former parking space. First they start insulting each others' guy's professional life and then get into their own sex lives. Bernadette has Amy's car towed and scratched, while Amy takes a swing at her with her purse breaking Penny's nose. They do make up over dinner at the Chessecake factory.

Leonard
Bernadette became friends with Leonard shortly after Penny introduced her to Howard. She became interested in Leonard's experiments, but they are only friends as Howard and Bernadette are in a relationship (even though Howard felt threatened by this).

Sheldon
Of the group, Bernadette is the most patient with Sheldon's quirks and personality, and often knows how to handle him. This is most likely due to her experience in dealing with stubborn children. For instance, in The Einstein Approximation, she is able to send Sheldon to bed with a few stern words, much to the surprise of the group. On another occasion, she was able to help him overcome his ornithophobia in The Ornithophobia Diffusion, by persuading him to stroke the bird he was scared of. And, finally, in The Hawking Excitation, when Howard was getting his own back on Sheldon by being mean to him, she argued that he was being mean himself and stated "Sheldon doesn't know when he's being mean because the part of his brain that should know is getting a wedgie from the rest of his brain," before ordering him to stop with his actions, with the exception of using Sheldon to get out of having to go dress shopping with Mrs. Wolowitz.

Raj
Bernadette's relationship with Raj is theoretically somewhat strained. Neither she nor Howard appreciates the fact that Raj has feelings for her and fantasizes about her, despite his selective mutism. She also feels awkward over the fact that Raj fell in love with his iPhone 4s. She has a hard time believing that Raj is straight due to his selective mutism and metrosexual tendencies. In The Countdown Reflection, she grabs Raj's hand as they watch Howard being launched into space.

Occupation
Bernadette worked at the  Cheesecake Factory with  Penny to pay off her fees at Graduate School, studying to become a microbiologist. She met  Howard at work as Penny introduced the couple. In the present, Bernadette has received her Ph.D, and was offered a job at a big pharmaceutical company. Although her exact income is never specified, it is stated that she makes very good money (a "butt load") at a pharmaceutical company and that it greatly exceeds Howard's income.

Trivia

 * Bernadette was raised Catholic.
 * Bernadette seems out of character during her first appearances on the show. It seems she was originally supposed to be portrayed as almost a dim-witted blonde by taking things literally and not understanding even the simplest of ideas. She mentions this in season 4's The Alien Parasite Hypothesis, where she says she is much smarter than Howard, but in order to protect his manhood, she acted dumber.
 * Bernadette studies microbiology.
 * Despite being an adult and living on her own, her mother still picks out her clothes for her.
 * Bernadette says the most exciting thing she gets to work with in microbiology is Yeast.
 * Bernadette met Howard while waitressing at the Cheesecake Factory with Penny.
 * In The Hot Troll Deviation, Howard is revealed to have been having cyber-nasty under the Bridge of Souls with a troll on World of Warcraft and Bernadette caught him red-handed, so they broke up. However, they decided to go out again, after talking it out.
 * Her last name is revealed to be Rostenkowski in The Love Car Displacement. Bernadette shares her surname with the late Rep. Dan Rostenkowski (D-IL), who was convicted of mail fraud and sentenced to prison for nearly two years. The name is of Polish origins, although in Czech "rostenka" means "rumpsteak" or (sexy) "girl".
 * Bernadette also knows a lot about Physics (mostly in experimental physics). In The Gorilla Experiment, she expressed her interest in Leonard's area of work involving fundamental tests of quantum mechanics and electron accelerator.
 * Bernadette says that if she hadn't taken up microbiology, she would have either become a physicsist or an ice dancer.
 * Her middle name is revealed to be Maryann in The Herb Garden Germination.
 * Bernadette isn't good at lying as she went to a Catholic school when corporal punishment was still allowed and they whooped to ability to lie out of her.
 * When she gets very angry, her voice changes to one similar to Howard's mother, to which Howard said "she sounds sexy when she's angry".
 * In The Roommate Transmogrification, she announced that her dissertation has been accepted and she will get her Ph.D. soon. She also announced that she has been head-hunted by a big pharmaceutical company.
 * Bernadette doesn't like magic, science-fiction, high school, role playing games, either in the bedroom or as in Dungeons and Dragons. However, in the Weekend Vortex, she is shown to enjoy the Star Wars-themed MMORPG Star Wars: The Old Republic.
 * A puppy once bit Bernadette in the face, causing her to fervently dislike puppies.
 * She is 5' (feet) tall and has to use a step to reach her apartment door peephole. She also complains about having trouble seeing over the dashboard while driving, being unable to play Twister, to go on roller coaster rides, or to reach the floor when she sits on chairs (although this latter difficulty is not normally seen).
 * Bernadette once dated a former teacher of hers who stood 6'7", which made Howard jealous.
 * In The Psychic Vortex, Bernadette revealed that she gets hungry by watching flesh-eating bacteria skeletonize small rodents.
 * Bernadette claimed in The Gorilla Experiment that she does not get a lot of Howard's jokes but laughs anyway since he lights up every time she laughs.
 * Bernadette compares Howard's sense of humor to those of stand-up comedians.
 * In The Vengeance Formulation, when Howard sang a song and played the piano at the Cheesecake Factory as a way to apologize to Bernadette, she said that it was the most romantic thing anyone has ever done for her.
 * She blames her small size on her mother smoking during pregnancy.
 * Bernadette was bullied in school by a girl called Tammy Bodnick, who once hid her clothes from her locker after gym and left an elf costume in there. The problem was, the costume was too big.
 * Bernadette has a younger brother named Joey.
 * Bernadette has some of the qualities of Howard's mother like when she yells and how she dotes over Howard without Howard really noticing the similarities. He is marrying a woman not unlike his mother.
 * Howard's mother seems happy with Howard dating Bernadette, but never gave an answer to marriage. She did call her "my daughter-in-law, the doctor", though.
 * Bernadette is Polish and some of family lived near Howard's family in Poland in the 20th century.

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