The Rhinitis Revelation

The Rhinitis Revelation is the sixth episode in the fifth season of CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory. It first aired on October 20th 2011.

Summary
Sheldon's mother Mary visits Sheldon for the weekend and when Sheldon acts like a little kid she decides to go out with the gang and leave Sheldon behind.

Extended Plot
Sheldon's mother, Mary (Laurie Metcalf), comes to visit for the weekend while waiting to board a Christian cruise called the "Born Again Boat Ride", but Sheldon is annoyed that she spends time with the rest of the gang, instead of catering to his every demand. For example, when he wants her to make fried chicken, Leonard suggests they go out and have sushi instead. When Raj comes over and bursts into tears from being lonely, Mary comforts him instead of making a pecan pie for Sheldon. And when Mary and Sheldon are doing laundry, Penny comes in and soon they start talking about cute shirts, leaving Sheldon to do the laundry himself.

But the last straw is at dinner, when Mary decides to go sightseeing instead of going with Sheldon to see Saul Perlmutter give a lecture about his Nobel Prize-winning work in cosmology. He gets upset and runs off to his room. The next morning, Sheldon hopes his mother will change her mind by apologizing for his actions. But alas, no avail, so he takes Amy instead, despite coming down with something. She notices Sheldon's "bitchiness" and asks if he is jealous. Sheldon denies this, but Amy warns him that regardless of his intelligence, he has emotions like everyone else.

Meanwhile, Mary and the rest of the gang are going sightseeing, which includes seeing all of Hollywood's churches. They are visiting a Roman Catholic church, when Mary decides to get them to pray. Penny and Leonard pray, however, Howard abstains and tries "not to burst into flames", referencing his Jewish faith. Raj, however, despite being a Hindu, prays (via Howard, of course) for help losing "that last five pounds". That evening, Sheldon is at the bus stop when it starts to rain, making him feel worse. When he comes home, he is dripping wet and has rhinitis. Mary takes him to bed, promising to take care of him only.

Sheldon feels upset that they didn't get to spend enough time together, but refuses to blame himself. Mary tells him that they need to have a different relationship now that he is a grown man, but still sings him "Soft Kitty".

Trivia

 * When Sheldon once again states he wants his mother with him to see Saul Perlmutter give a lecture about his Nobel Prize-winning work in cosmology (i.e., the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae), the Einstein Field Equations, $$R_{\mu \nu} -\frac{1}{2}R\,g_{\mu \nu} + \Lambda\,g_{\mu \nu} = {8 \pi G \over c^4} T_{\mu \nu}$$, are visible on the kitchen whiteboard in tensor notation, along with the cosmological constant expressed in terms of the vacuum energy density (Λ = 8$$\pi$$ρvac), the value for the equation of state parameter corresponding to the vacuum as a cosmological energy source (w = -1), and a crude estimate for the density parameter in baryons (ΩB = 0.05, 5% atoms).
 * In reference to Perlmutter, Sheldon says he is allergic to people who get Nobel Prizes for no good reason and that he made more accurate diagrams of the expansion of the early universe on the nursery wall with the contents of his diaper. Saul Perlmutter is mentioned again in The Speckerman Recurrence as Sheldon watches the Nobel Prize acceptance ceremony streaming live from Stockholm. Therein, he asserts Perlmutter stole Einstein's cosmological constant.
 * On the other hand, Sheldon considers Nobel Prize winner-experimental astrophysicist George Smoot one of the great minds of our time and cites his work in black body form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation cemented our understanding of the origin of the universe.
 * In the first episode containing Soft Kitty (S01E11 The Pancake Batter Anomaly), Sheldon tells Penny to rub the Vicks Vaporub in counter-clockwise direction, otherwise his chest hair mats. However, in this episode (S05E06 The Rhinitis Revelation), Sheldon's mother (Mary Cooper) does not rub the Vicks Vaporub on Sheldon's chest in a counter-clockwise direction, but Sheldon does not correct his mother on the direction that the Vicks Vaporub should be rubbed.
 * Mary Cooper is very politically incorrect, calling Japanese scripts (Kanji and Kana), "Kung Fu" letters, Native Americans, "Indians", and, as a Protestant Christian, refers to Catholics as "rosary rattlers".
 * Mary confirms that Sheldon was tested for insanity as a child and the doctor said he was fine. She does regret, however, about not taking him to a follow-up specialist in Houston.
 * Mary and Sheldon imply that due to her cooking, Sheldon's father died at 50 from complications related to obesity.
 * Mary cooks everything with bacon grease.
 * Amy has an experiment where she is close to getting a starfish hooked on cocaine.
 * When Penny hinted to Leonard that her brother was "kind of a chemist" in season 3, he was actually a meth cooker and she asks God for him to stop her brother making it, but with no cops.
 * Sheldon wants to convert the elevator shaft into a missile silo, so he can launch a strike on Burbank.
 * For the first time in The Big Bang Theory television series, Mary Cooper is seen to be visiting Pasadena, California, for a reason other than being called by one of Sheldon's friends to come to Pasadena to help them handle a Sheldon situation/problem. The reason for her visit to California in this episode is that she is visiting for the weekend before boarding a boat cruise ( "Born Again Boat Ride") . She wants to see the churches of Hollywood while the gang was going to take her to see the tourist sites.

Quotes
(Sheldon sneezes)

Amy: You getting sick?

Sheldon: No, just allergic to people who get Nobel Prizes for no good reason

Amy: ''Sheldon, is it possible your foul mood, or, to use the clinical term, bitchiness... is because your mother isn't making you a priority?''

Sheldon: No, or, to use the clinical term, na-ah.

Sheldon: ''I’ve got a treat for us tomorrow, Mom. I’m taking you to see Saul Perlmutter give a lecture about his Nobel Prize-winning work in cosmology. And the best part is, at the Q & A afterward, I’ve worked up a couple of Q’s that will stump his sorry A.''

Mrs Cooper: ''I don’t know, Shelly. I thought we could do a little sightseeing.''

Sheldon: What sight is better than your little boy embarrassing a Nobel laureate?

Mrs Cooper: I am still going out with your friends.

Sheldon: ''But I apologized. And that was hard for me since I didn't do anything wrong.''

Mrs Cooper: ''Shelly, I hung out with you in enough dusty lecture halls while you were growing up. I wanna go sightseeing. So why don't you have some pancakes, get dressed, and come with us.''

(Sheldon enters, soaking wet while holding a tissue)

Sheldon: I need a tissue, this one got wet.

Mrs Cooper: So Shelly what's up with you and your friend Amy, if you don't mind a mother prying a bit.

Sheldon: ''Well, there's actually big news on the Amy front. She's been studying, the neurobiology of addiction in lower animals, she is "this" close to getting a starfish hooked on cocaine.''

Mrs Cooper: (to Leonard) You have any idea what's going on with those two?

Leonard: ''Mm, it's kind of like the Loch Ness monster, and maybe there's something there, maybe there isn't, we'll probably never know. But, sometimes it's fun creeping yourself out thinking about it.''

(The group (minus Sheldon) are visiting a church with Mrs. Cooper )

Raj: Hey, look (shows Howard a cross with Jesus on it).

Raj: None of our gods look like that.

Howard: Yeah, that was the last Jews to ever do sit ups. And look where it got him.

Video
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