S11.E08: The Tesla Recoil

[shapeshifter]

4 hours ago, Intuition said:

That's a good question.  Did I miss something?  Does anyone know how he's been getting there?

Bus pants?

 

4 hours ago, BckpckFullaNinjas said:

In both cases, misogynistic dreams!

And I’m glad you pointed them out, not only for readership at large, but because it gives me a chance to say something I forgot to say in my original post:  This episode was just so *dark* to me.

Negativity ruled; the only positive was Raj’s loyalty to Bernie.  Started to say that Penny’s observation about the guys being Tesla-like was clever but the poor guy died broke and broken. Nope, just too danged dark.…

Now y'all have me speculating that this week's lead writer got dumped by his girlfriend.

[CleoCaesar]

10 hours ago, BckpckFullaNinjas said:

In both cases, misogynistic dreams!

I'm not really seeing where the misogyny (that word gets applied to pretty much everything these days) comes in in the second case. Raj wants a relationship, Ruchi doesn't. She's not stringing him along or mistreating him. She wants sex only, which is apparently considered selfish and shallow, and was quite upfront about that. Is that misogynistic?

[Bort]

22 minutes ago, CleoCaesar said:

I'm not really seeing where the misogyny (that word gets applied to pretty much everything these days) comes in in the second case. Raj wants a relationship, Ruchi doesn't. She's not stringing him along or mistreating him. She wants sex only, which is apparently considered selfish and shallow, and was quite upfront about that. Is that misogynistic?

Misogyny gets overused, a lot because it’s misused. It’s a hatred of women, specifically. The above case is made about the possible hatred of men, which isn’t misogyny, it’s misandry. 

Still isnt misandry, though. Ruchi doesn’t want a relationship. Why? Well, she didn’t say, but it didn’t seem to be about man-hating.

[Driad]

In case any non-physicists have wandered in here, the episode title is a play on Tesla Coil.

[Sile]

14 hours ago, Intuition said:

That's a good question.  Did I miss something?  Does anyone know how he's been getting there?

Sheldon uses Uber now, was it the comic book store where he used Uber rather than wait for Leonard to take him?

Or Amy could be taking him.  She might have not known that he screwed over Leonard and Howard with his proposal specifically, but that doesn't mean she didn't know that he was working on something for the military. 

Or he could have been using his office at the school.  As a theoretical physicist he wouldn't be working with actual models, right?

[BckpckFullaNinjas]

@CleoCaesar and @kariyaki, points well made. I guess I saw Ruchi’s presentation as cold and utilitarian, which became criticism in my mind which became misogyny. I can feel the ninjas’ eyes rolling collectively in the backpack — I may have been known to overuse the term.  

Stsnding by my assessment of the ep as dark. Edisonian!  Almost everyone was out for themselves. Thanks for the comments, seriously. I’ll check back now and again to see if other fans are finding the show back to its nerdist roots. 

[rmontro]

On 11/18/2017 at 10:42 AM, theatremouse said:

His whole "doing this just to stick it to Sheldon makes it better" moment was pretty jerk-like.

If wanting to "stick it to Sheldon" makes you a jerk, that would probably apply to most of the characters on the show.  Sheldon definitely acts like a jerk - I don't think there will be any argument about that, but he gets kind of a pass for it because he's so smart and out of touch.  Maybe that's what drives some of Kripke's jerk-like behavior as well, although I still haven't seen an example of something really terrible that he's done.

[CleoCaesar]

11 hours ago, BckpckFullaNinjas said:

@CleoCaesar and @kariyaki, points well made. I guess I saw Ruchi’s presentation as cold and utilitarian, which became criticism in my mind which became misogyny. I can feel the ninjas’ eyes rolling collectively in the backpack — I may have been known to overuse the term.  

Stsnding by my assessment of the ep as dark. Edisonian!  Almost everyone was out for themselves. Thanks for the comments, seriously. I’ll check back now and again to see if other fans are finding the show back to its nerdist roots. 

Thanks for being open-minded! And I very much agree with you that this episode had a very bitter tone that other episodes generally lack. Sheldon's an oblivious ass, but he's not the type to openly backstab his friends.

[AnnaRose]

2 hours ago, CleoCaesar said:

...Sheldon's an oblivious ass, but he's not the type to openly backstab his friends.

I doubt he saw it as backstabbing his friends.  It seemed like he just had an idea for an entirely different thing - a communication system rather than a guidance system - contacted the military to let them know and they asked him to work out the details, which of course required secrecy.   

It's not like the military wanted him to include his old team.   They seem to prefer to use their own people as much as possible, considering that they fired Leonard, Sheldon, and Howard as soon as the guidance system project had progressed to a certain point.  

I can see why Leonard and Howard would be angry that Sheldon didn't consult them first before contacting the military, but it doesn't mean that if he had, they would have been hired by the military again. 

What Kripke did, on the other hand, was much, much worse.  He actually did take their work,  pitched it as his own, and actually got hired to develop their specific improvements on the communication system, screwing over Leonard and Howard.

[BlossomCulp]

13 minutes ago, AnnaRose said:

It seemed like he just had an idea for an entirely different thing - a communication system rather than a guidance system - contacted the military to let them know and they asked him to work out the details, which of course required secrecy. 

One of my favourite moments in the history of this show is when Sheldon is explaining to Penny that he can't keep a secret.  As he tells Penny:

 I’m constitutionally incapable. That’s why I was refused clearance for a very prestigious government research fellowship at a secret military supercollider, located beneath a fake agricultural station 12.5 miles south east of Travers City, Michigan. Which you did not hear about from me.

I guess along with Sheldon's growth in other areas he can now keep secrets.

[ProfCrash]

On ‎11‎/‎17‎/‎2017 at 8:09 PM, LoneHaranguer said:

Not published, but available to anyone with sufficient security clearance, including Kripke apparently, since the guys had no problem bringing him in, and he had a contact at the DOD to do an end-run. If the guys hadn't put in a special effort to one-up Sheldon on his idea for an offshoot of the prior work, someone at the DOD or another university might have.

And they could never have been working on it where they were or in a place where anyone could walk in on it because that room was not cleared to discuss such material. They essentially just committed a felony by showing the math to Kripkie, who may or may not have a security clearance but sure as hell does not have the necessary need to know, in an uncleared room. There is a reason they had a ton of security they had to go through to get to the lab they were working out of last season. So yeah, over all this was an awful plot point. Poorly researched by production.

[iMonrey]

Is Kripke's speech impediment a real thing? I don't mean to be insensitive in case it is, but I'm not aware of any real malady that causes people to talk like Elmer Fudd, unless there's some sort of physical deformity involved, and that doesn't appear to be the case with Kripke. 

[ginger90]

13 minutes ago, iMonrey said:

Is Kripke's speech impediment a real thing? I don't mean to be insensitive in case it is, but I'm not aware of any real malady that causes people to talk like Elmer Fudd, unless there's some sort of physical deformity involved, and that doesn't appear to be the case with Kripke. 

It’s a real thing. I can’t recall the term at the moment, it begins with an “r”,ironically.

[CinAZ]

This was kind of a dark episode. Lots of meanness.  It was enormously STUPID for the guys to trust Kripke. He has a history of screwing them over. Remember when he wouldn’t give them the helium for a project unless they added his name to the paper? Why did Leonard and Howard think for one second that Kripke wouldn’t present it himself? They almost deserved it. They are old enough not to act like naive, trusting, sheltered little innocent nerds.

i am also starting to see how much the actors have aged since the series began. Not to say they look bad, just a lot more grown up. Adults. Especially Penny. I was watching an episode on demand from season one, and was surprised how so very young Penny looked, and acted. Now she is a grown, beautiful woman. Raj and Howard look almost the same, Sheldon has aged, but I think Leonard has aged the most. 

[LoneHaranguer]

5 hours ago, BlossomCulp said:

I guess along with Sheldon's growth in other areas he can now keep secrets.

He has before, but not without going to extreme effort; remember Toby Loobenfeld aka "Cousin Leopold" in the first season? Sheldon probably would have blabbed as soon as he felt he had something to brag about.

[rmontro]

8 hours ago, ginger90 said:

It’s a real thing. I can’t recall the term at the moment, it begins with an “r”,ironically.

Rhotacism.

6 hours ago, CinAZ said:

i am also starting to see how much the actors have aged since the series began. Not to say they look bad, just a lot more grown up. Adults. Especially Penny. I was watching an episode on demand from season one, and was surprised how so very young Penny looked, and acted. Now she is a grown, beautiful woman. Raj and Howard look almost the same, Sheldon has aged, but I think Leonard has aged the most. 

Penny was very young when the series started and she still looked very girlish, now she looks like an adult woman.  Leonard seems to be falling prey to some middle age spread, he's getting wider, his face fuller, etc.

Sheldon has looked more muscular and bulky since Parsons started working out.  And I agree, Raj and Howard look almost the same.  It's amazing that Simon Helberg stays so thin.

[Snarklepuss]

8 hours ago, CinAZ said:

This was kind of a dark episode. Lots of meanness.  It was enormously STUPID for the guys to trust Kripke. He has a history of screwing them over. Remember when he wouldn’t give them the helium for a project unless they added his name to the paper? Why did Leonard and Howard think for one second that Kripke wouldn’t present it himself? They almost deserved it. They are old enough not to act like naive, trusting, sheltered little innocent nerds.

ITA that the guys should know better by now and Kripke is mean, but I think the script was actually regressing the guys into "sheltered little innocent nerds" for the purposes of a plot line.  Similar with Sheldon.  I don't think he was knowingly being mean, just regressing into his socially clueless behavior where he doesn't realize what constitutes a betrayal and sees his actions as purely logical or whatever.  That is actually getting harder to swallow now as the character has made progress beyond that in other episodes.
 

8 hours ago, CinAZ said:

i am also starting to see how much the actors have aged since the series began. Not to say they look bad, just a lot more grown up. Adults. Especially Penny. I was watching an episode on demand from season one, and was surprised how so very young Penny looked, and acted. Now she is a grown, beautiful woman. Raj and Howard look almost the same, Sheldon has aged, but I think Leonard has aged the most. 

I have said this before this season myself.  I think it's really getting noticeable this season.  I was actually surprised that through 9 or so seasons they hadn't changed more.  With Penny it seemed to happen more gradually while with the guys it seemed to become more noticeable over the past 2 seasons.

What I find interesting is how they have subtly changed Leonard's wardrobe to suit a more mature man, but they kept the Chuck's sneakers, only changed them to a more subtle, subdued version. 

[msrachelj]

On 11/17/2017 at 10:49 AM, MoreCoffeePlease said:

Absolutely. And she gets to wear really cute clothes.  I covet that blue sweater ... it sells for $250, which is out of my league.  I hope she is managing her money well. The entire cast should be able to live off just the interest income alone.

i never even notice what she is wearing on the show., guess it's not my style.

and she's such a great actress, worth the pay! sarcasm

i'm so happy for these filthy rich people who have no money problems whilst i sit here wondering how i'm going to be able to retire!

at least katy loves animals and i hope she is giving a lot$$$$$ to help them.

i knew about the tesla/edison story. it's very interesting . and edison really was a dick. it's true about the elephant. haunts me still .sick and disgusting.

[Snow Fairy]

Kripke also aged alot. I caught one of the older episodes on our local TV, the one where Sheldon tells Kripke he and Amy are having sex. Kripke looks so much younger, and without grey hair.

I also liked Penny's sweater from this episode

[Tamariskie]

On 11/18/2017 at 8:49 PM, chocolatine said:

The Bernadette/Ruchi storyline is completely unrealistic, because of course Bernadette's projects are getting reassigned if she's on leave for several months. Projects have deadlines; the show must go on. It makes sense for Ruchi as the new hire to take over some of the projects, and if she legitimately does a better job than Bernadette, that's fair game. The trope of women being catty and cut-throat in the workplace is so tired.

This was confusing me, too. Obviously, someone has to work on Bernadette's projects while she's out. I wish they'd made the situation a little clearer by having Ruchi say something like she planned to fight to keep the projects even after Bernadette came back, but I guess we were supposed to infer that. I did enjoy Raj calling Bernadette out on that she would have done the same thing if the situation was reversed. And softening the blow with brownies. 

[Mystery]

I'm starting to loathe Sheldon. 

[rmontro]

Regarding the Bernadette/Ruchi thing:  Aren't there legal protections against someone losing their job to someone while they are out on pregnancy leave?  Wouldn't that be considered discriminatory?

[Sarah 103]

9 hours ago, rmontro said:

Aren't there legal protections against someone losing their job to someone while they are out on pregnancy leave?  Wouldn't that be considered discriminatory?

I think there are legal protections, but they are not firing her. Someone has to do her job while she is out on leave. The big issue will be what happens when she goes back to work. 

[BlossomCulp]

7 hours ago, Sarah 103 said:

The big issue will be what happens when she goes back to work. 

Yep.  Of course someone has to do Bernadette's work while she's away from the office but considering she was only fairly recently on maternity leave, will soon be on maternity leave again and in the meantime is off work because she is on bedrest it's completely believable to me that she is thinking that foul deeds are afoot!  And given the way Ruchi is behaving her thoughts aren't wrong.

[shapeshifter]

Having worked in a place with a small, mostly female staff for over 15 years, where coworkers have gone on maternity leave eight times, and I have gone on medical leave, I found Bernadette's paranoia to be realistic, even if unfounded. For the coworkers left behind to "pick up the slack," it's a big relief when the coworker returns. But for the person out on leave, there is an unavoidable sense that they are doing just fine without you.

[Mystery]

There ARE protections, but only if your job is still required. For instance, if a whole department is removed, the person in that department would not have job protection. 

But in practice, people *might* return to find that their job responsibilities have changed. I found that part believable. 

[anna0852]

Legally they have to protect Bernadette's job. However that doesn't mean that her projects can't be farmed out to keep their momentum going and depending on the prestige of the projects and where they are in their development when she comes back, she may be starting from scratch in new areas. I get how that would be irritating to her but at the same time she sounds like a nightmare of a co-worker and if I was one of the people covering for her I would absolutely be scrambling on those projects to get them as far ahead as possible so that she would be reassigned.

[OtterMommy]

13 hours ago, anna0852 said:

Legally they have to protect Bernadette's job. However that doesn't mean that her projects can't be farmed out to keep their momentum going and depending on the prestige of the projects and where they are in their development when she comes back, she may be starting from scratch in new areas. I get how that would be irritating to her but at the same time she sounds like a nightmare of a co-worker and if I was one of the people covering for her I would absolutely be scrambling on those projects to get them as far ahead as possible so that she would be reassigned.

I don't think it is so much that they have to protect her job as much as it is that she has to have a job to come back to at the end of her leave.  My husband's company has the same policy for both medical leave and sabbaticals: You will have a job to come back to, it just might not be the job you left.  (You might also get laid off 15 minutes after you get back, but that's a whole other thing....)

[Snarklepuss]

11 hours ago, OtterMommy said:

I don't think it is so much that they have to protect her job as much as it is that she has to have a job to come back to at the end of her leave.  My husband's company has the same policy for both medical leave and sabbaticals: You will have a job to come back to, it just might not be the job you left.  (You might also get laid off 15 minutes after you get back, but that's a whole other thing....)

Yes, the FMLA law protects your job if you otherwise wouldn't have any issues preventing you from returning, such as the company claiming they were terminating you for a cause that has nothing to do with your absence but with your performance.  In such a case they would have to prove a performance related cause or they would be setting themselves up for a wrongful termination lawsuit.  It would have to be something documented and dated, like an incident warranting dismissal or a poor performance review after being warned of poor performance and given a chance to improve.  In "at will" states, they can terminate you for any reason or no reason but during or right after a FMLA leave they would still have to prove a performance reason.

Edited November 25, 2017 by Snarklepuss

[rmontro]

I'm not really wondering about Bernadette being terminated.  But it sounds like she has a rather prestigious position in the company, and I would think that it would be illegal to bring her back and put her in a lower spot when she returns and give that job to Ruchi.  Like I'm sure they couldn't move her from say, "lead researcher", and tell her when she comes back that she's the janitor.  But I have no firsthand knowledge of this, so I very well could be wrong.

[BlossomCulp]

I don't know how I feel about Bernadette.  Kudos to the writers I guess for making this somewhat complex.  On the one hand I don't want them writing this so that she decides she wants to stay home and give up her career - frankly financially they'd be fine (especially since writers can make anything easier :) ) - but that's not the issue.  Bernadette has a high profile career that she's worked hard for so the last thing I'd like to see them do is have her quit.  On the other other hand they've made it clear she's a nightmare to work with so not exactly a stellar role model going on here.  It might be interesting to see her have to learn that she doesn't get to call all the shots and not everything will go her way - which is definitely what happens when you are home full time with kids! And if Howard is the sole breadwinner maybe they'd both learn something from that experience.  On the other other other hand why does it always have to be one or the other?  Couldn't Bernadette become a decent person to work with and take on lesser projects at work for awhile until the kids are older?  Does she still have to be Bernadette the bully?  Couldn't she be Bernadette the normal person who has kids but needs a life outside the house?

[rmontro]

On 11/25/2017 at 5:19 PM, BlossomCulp said:

I don't know how I feel about Bernadette.  Kudos to the writers I guess for making this somewhat complex.  On the one hand I don't want them writing this so that she decides she wants to stay home and give up her career - frankly financially they'd be fine (especially since writers can make anything easier :) ) - but that's not the issue.  Bernadette has a high profile career that she's worked hard for so the last thing I'd like to see them do is have her quit. 

I agree, and I don't expect her to quit.  But I admit it would be quite a poignant twist.  That she would go from not wanting or liking children to deciding to devote herself entirely to her motherhood.  Seems more likely that Howard would be a house husband though.

As for Bernadette being a bully, that doesn't bother me.  All the characters have flaws, why should she be any different?

[MissLucas]

On 11/27/2017 at 2:11 AM, rmontro said:

As for Bernadette being a bully, that doesn't bother me.  All the characters have flaws, why should she be any different?

Character growth? She's a nightmare in her workplace - even more so than Sheldon and that's saying something. She can still be bossy, but the bullying is more than a flaw and I'd like to see it gone by yesterday.

[rmontro]

15 hours ago, MissLucas said:

Character growth? She's a nightmare in her workplace - even more so than Sheldon and that's saying something. She can still be bossy, but the bullying is more than a flaw and I'd like to see it gone by yesterday.

Howard is a mama's boy, Sheldon is self centered and obnoxious, Leonard is needy, Penny drinks too much, Raj seems to have identity issues, Stuart is depressed.  Amy may be the most stable of all of them, oddly enough.  Character growth in Bernadette's case would probably be becoming less of a bully, it wouldn't be necessary to eradicate it completely.  That said, I don't think they started her out as a bully, they kind of grafted that trait onto her later to flesh her out as a character.  It wouldn't bother me at all if they got rid of it.

[joanne3482]

On 11/20/2017 at 10:54 PM, rmontro said:

On 11/20/2017 at 2:09 PM, ginger90 said:

It’s a real thing. I can’t recall the term at the moment, it begins with an “r”,ironically.

Rhotacism.

Thirty some years later I still remember going to speech class for S with Timothy who couldn't say R and talked just like Kripke.  It is weird to see him on Speechless where he just speaks in a normal voice. 

Bernadette may not have any more FMLA leave. I can't remember how old Halley is but I feel like she's about 9 months old, no? If that's the case she's used up her 12 weeks for the rolling year with Halley.  

Edited November 30, 2017 by joanne3482

[wendyg]

ginger90: It's a real thing but the actor doesn't have it. I've seen him on other shows and he speaks normally.

[BlossomCulp]

5 hours ago, joanne3482 said:

Bernadette may not have any more FMLA leave. I can't remember how old Halley is but I feel like she's about 9 months old, no? If that's the case she's used up her 12 weeks for the rolling year with Halley.  

She was born in December on Amy's birthday.  So that means she's almost a year old now.  Assuming the continuity fairies haven't messed around with the timeline.

[PBSLover]

Well, that’s it for me.  I’ve watched every episode of the show from the start and loved it (more so in the early years). I went to a taping. I have a few of the dvds.  But this episode?  The show is just stupid and I’m mad that the writers have just ruined the show.

Drop mike.

Edited December 2, 2017 by PBSLover

[Sile]

On 11/18/2017 at 1:04 AM, Sile said:

I think the one I saw maybe a few years ago was The Men Who Built America.  It was a series on the History Channel or American Heroes Channel, or one of those type channels.  It was a series that featured famous feuds among titans of Industry.  Some I remember are Vanderbilt v. Fisk/Gould/Rockefeller, Carnegie v. Frick, Edison v. Tesla, and a few others that I can't recall at the moment.  Great series!  I learned so much watching those.  I'd never realized how much of a role JP Morgan played in the Edison/Tesla deal.

Now that I think about it, it was probably on H2, because I used to watch that constantly.  I loved that channel, more off the beaten path stuff than H1 aka The Nazi Channel.  

Haven't thought about that series for some time I might have to check and see it's available if only to remember the name of the guy that sold coke (not that kind!) to make kerosene.  Anybody remember who I'm talking about?

Quoting my own post to say that, although I saw The Men Who Built America, the series I was thinking of was American Titans.  I just came across a mini-marathon on AHC and all of the titles are *** v. ***, which is how I remembered it.  Right now, they're showing Vanderbilt v. Drew, which is the one I remembered with Fisk and Gould.   Sadly, they've either already shown Edison v. Tesla or that's not on the current slate but it might be available online somewhere.

I'm not sure the gang would consider it a documentary, since there are re-enactments, but it's a great series.  I see that it's called Season 1, so I'm hopeful for a Season 2.  Great stuff!

[Driad]

Tesla coils can sing.