The Euclid Alternative

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

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

Extended Plot
Leonard comes through the and falls to the couch due to exhaustion, and then Sheldon comes and demands Leonard to  him around to run his various  including returning the Star Wars  that are too distracting to  on. Leonard refuses as he is far too exhausted because of working late in his at the university. Sheldon refuses to take the bus because they won't let him himself to the seat since they have no.



Sheldon then tries his luck with Penny who was sleeping in because it was her day off. He then asks her to do him a favor. The two set off in her and Sheldon continually annoys Penny about her  and the  starts quoting, which only annoys her. also gives her pointless factoids and tries to play game with her. Penny then ejects him from her car and he has to walk to work.

At he university and he 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. Sheldon screams at Howard while riding on the back of his and driving over the speed bumps on Euclid Avenue. Unsurprisingly, Sheldon gets left in the middle of the again. This time Raj picks Sheldon up and drives him, but after pestering Raj with a lot of requests he just drops him off at the stairs. Sheldon arrives at the apartment, makes one final desperate attempt to ask Penny to drive him and gets the slammed in his.



The following morning, Sheldon wakes up to see the gang assembled in the living room waiting for him. The gang has an, wants Sheldon to learn driving and because of a contest, Penny is forced to drive him to the  along with Howard. Sheldon was too busy at sixteen with his work to learn how to drive. After getting his written, he annoys the disinterested DMV with a number of  about the  and  of the driving. Finally, the clerk gives gives Sheldon a just to get him to leave. Sheldon feels superior, quipping "aced it".

In an effort to help Sheldon learn to drive, Howard sets up a "state of the art". Sheldon doesn't want a red car because he believes that red cars are stopped more often by police. Sheldon attempts to drive, but fails horribly. When he his vehicle, Penny hits him in the face with a  because Sheldon objected to the simulator not being able to replicate an  going off. He gives up on trying to learn to drive with the excuse "I'm clearly too for driving". It seemed that his could be a "homo novus"; however, future  will have to decide what his classification is.

Because Sheldon doesn't have a way to get to the university, he decides to set up a temporary home there until Leonard finishes his ; however, it turns out that Leonard has finished his experiment a ago, but purposely did not tell Sheldon. In the, the staff sees crumbs on a .First they think rats caused the problem, but when the  struck twelve, they are terrified when they see Sheldon lurking in the shadows of the dark cafeteria like a  in a , then Sheldon slowly turns around and says to them in a ghost-like voice "You saw nothing!" and then vanishes out the door.

Critics

 * "This episode was AMAZING - The TV Critic's Review
 * IMDb user reviews

Set Notes



 * A rare camera view of Leonard and Sheldon's apartment is shown from the vantage of the hallway that's normally seen to the back right, going to the bedrooms, allowing us to see the "" in the front of the apartment normally is missing.


 * Sheldon spends a huge part of this episode trying to get someone to take him to return his Star Wars sheets. He feels they are too stimulating to be compatible with a good night's sleep. He doesn't like the way Darth Vader stares at him. After annoying his friends so much that they won't take him to Pottery Barn to return the sheets, Sheldon ponders if turning off his nightlight will allow him to tolerate the sheets.

Trivia

 * Penny stated in "The Bad Fish Paradigm" (S02E01) that she and Sheldon are friends.
 * The Euclid Avenue that gives the episode its title we learn is an alternative to Los Robles Avenue, which are two parallel in Pasadena, CA. Also the real Euclid Avenue actually does have speed bumps just like it is depicted in the show.
 * Raj's name was not mentioned at all in this episode.
 * Sheldon complains about the 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 observation in "The Maternal Congruence" as does Amy Farrah Fowler in "The Robotic Manipulation". Penny says, "The  has been on since I bought the ," in "The Adhesive Duck Deficiency", but there is no statement regarding the light in "The Luminous Fish Effect". The car eventually dies and Leonard buys her a new one.
 * Leonard and Sheldon's naming game is by nature a short game, since so many elements end with the letter M (most have names ending with the "-ium" suffix, with the exceptions usually being elements known since pre-enlightenment times, such as iron, sulfur, or lead), and so few start with it (only, , , , and , unless you count , which Sheldon doesn't). By comparison, there are nearly 120 elements in total currently listed in , over a hundred of which have "proper" names (with the remaining elements all being unstable super-heavy elements which, due to only recently having been synthesized, so far only have their systematic designator names until a proper name can be agreed upon for them).
 * Sheldon never quits, but in this case he "transcends the situation" and stops trying to learn how to drive.
 * The worker is played by the -winning actress Octavia Spencer who starred in movie  in 2011.
 * The work that Sheldon mentioned at the DMV, "Examining perturbative amplitudes in N=4 supersymmetric theories leading to a re-examination of the  properties of multi-loop N=8 supergravity using modern twistor theory" was a reference to the 2011 paper "Amplitudes and Ultraviolet Behavior of N=8 Supergravity", by, a professor of theoretical physics at UCLA (available at ). David Saltzberg (the science consultant for the show), mentioned this in his 2013 NPR interview "The Man Who Gets The Science Right On [[The Big Bang Theory]"].
 * Studies indicate that Sheldon is correct about red vehicles being pulled over more often, but, contrary to popular belief, they aren't more accident prone or subject to higher insurance rates.
 * Penny is aware, before Leonard, of Sheldon having lashed himself to the seat of a with - this highlights the growing friendship between Penny and Sheldon.
 * This was the second episode with a brief scene in the style of a cinematic . The first was "The Nerdvana Annihilation". Sheldon screams in both episodes.
 * Assuming the apartment building is located at 2311 N Los Robles Ave., the length of the drive to the Caltech campus (some 4 miles according to )roughly corresponds to the length of the car scene assuming a languid driving pace (also corresponding to the apparent of the car in the scene). However, there are no  buildings at or around the real-world 2311 N Los Robles Ave. (verifiable through Google Street View).
 * If the apartment's location were instead taken to be the one from the photo zoom-out from Howard and Bernadette's rooftop  scene, 215 S Madison Ave. (which is an apartment building, but only a three-story one), then the distance to the Caltech  is only about 1 mile (some 10 blocks), much too short for a car ride of the length seen (and, in fact, short enough to walk comfortably, preempting Sheldon's need to be driven to work).
 * Even though Sheldon points in the direction of the front left corner in the Pilot, stating that there is a cold breeze between the window in the back and the window in the front left corner, there is no window, when the front left corner is shown.

Quotes

 * (Sheldon is trying 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 seat belts, 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.


 * DMV clerk: See that sign?
 * Sheldon: Yes.
 * DMV clerk: Does it say "I give a damn"?
 * Sheldon: No.
 * DMV clerk: That's 'cause I don't. Next!


 * Sheldon: Oh, good. I’m not keeping you from anything. Your check engine light is on.
 * Penny: Mm-hmm.
 * Sheldon: Typically that’s an indicator. To, you know, check your engine.
 * Penny: It’s fine, it’s been on for, like, a month.
 * Sheldon: Well, actually, that would be all the more reason to, you know, check your engine.
 * Penny: Sheldon, its fine.
 * Sheldon: If it were fine, the light wouldn't be on. That’s why the manufacturer installed that light, to let you know it’s not fine.
 * Penny: Uh, maybe the light’s broken.
 * Sheldon: Is there a “check the 'check engine light' light”? (Penny takes a drink of coffee) O-o-o-oh!


 * Sheldon: Well, no, no, I’m not going to go so far as to say that I represent a distinct new stage in humankind, you know, a Homo Novus, if you will, no, that’s for anthropologists to decide. But I am convinced that the reason I cannot master the plebeian task of driving is because I’m not meant to.


 * Sheldon: (After being spotted in the cafeteria at night.) You saw nothing.