The Prestidigitation Approximation (10 Mar. 2011)

Priya forces Leonard to choose between a relationship with her or a friendship with Penny. A magic trick by Howard has Sheldon fooled.

Director:

Mark Cendrowski

Writers:

Chuck Lorre (creator), Bill Prady (creator),

Stars:

Johnny Galecki, Jim Parsons, Kaley Cuoco

Cast

Episode complete credited cast:
Johnny Galecki	...	Leonard Hofstadter
Jim Parsons	...	Sheldon Cooper
Kaley Cuoco	...	Penny
Simon Helberg	...	Howard Wolowitz
Kunal Nayyar	...	Raj Koothrappali
Aarti Mann	...	Priya Koothrappali

Storyline

Priya and Leonard's relationship has gotten to a serious stage where Leonard is wearing the clothes that she picks out for him and is trying to wear contact lenses on her suggestion, even though he can't see with them on. As his serious girlfriend, Priya asks him for a big favor: to stop being friends with Penny. She feels uncomfortable having one of his ex-girlfriends be such a big part of his life. So later, when Priya asks him if he's "talked" to Penny, he doesn't tell the complete truth. How long can Leonard get away with this little white lie before he really has to make a decision between Priya and Penny, especially as Priya is thinking about relocating to southern California for good? Meanwhile, Howard performs a card trick which confounds his friends. Sheldon states that he doesn't care about the trick, but it's obvious that not knowing how the trick is done is killing him.

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Plot Keywords:

card trick | beefaroni | contact lens | rubber pencil illusion

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Genres:

Comedy

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Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

10 March 2011 (USA)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Chuck Lorre Productions, Warner Bros. Television

Technical Specs

Runtime:

21 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

16:9 HD

Did You Know?

Trivia

The technique Raj uses to shuffle the cards is called a Hindu Shuffle.

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Goofs

In the final scene of this episode, Sheldon picks the two of hearts from the deck. Raj signals the identity of the card to Howard, who then reveals it. However, you can clearly see that when Howard takes the deck out of the box (without shuffling it), the two of hearts is on the bottom of the deck and Sheldon's selected card was nowhere near the deck's bottom. Because the two of hearts is an easy card to come up with a signal for in a script, it appears that the deck is actually a specialty deck with nothing but 52 twos of hearts, which would ensure that Sheldon would pick the two of hearts from anywhere in the deck and allow Raj to send the signal, which the script called for. Such decks are readily available in magic shops or by mail order.

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Quotes

Leonard Hofstadter: How about we still hang out, but on the down low?
Penny: Are you really that kind of guy?
Leonard Hofstadter: No. I actually felt kind of silly just saying "on the down low."

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Connections

References Cinderella (1950)

User Reviews

"The Prestidigitation Approximation" is another pretty funny ep of "The Big Bang Theory"

In this last season ep of "The Big Bang Theory": Priya seems to be enough of an influence on Leonard to get him to wear contacts even though they make him bump into things. Meanwhile, Howard plays a magic card trick in front of Sheldon who doesn't believe him and tries to figure out how he does it. Anyway, about Priya, she has noticed that Penny still hangs with the gang especially ex-boyfriend Leonard and wants him to stop seeing her. Will Leonard be able to do it? I'll stop there and just say this was another funny ep of "The Big Bang Theory" especially whenever Sheldon uses his smarts in trying to figure out Howard's trick. Of course, if he really knew Howard and Raj, it probably would have been obvious to him...