# The Cushion Saturation

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The Cushion Saturation
Big Bang Theory episode
Chronology
Season 2, Episode 16
Airdate
March 2, 2009
Guest star(s)
Teleplay
Story
Director
Episode guide

"The Maternal Capacitance"

"The Terminator Decoupling"
Season guide

Season 1

Season 3

"The Cushion Saturation" is the sixteenth episode of the second season of the American sitcom The Big Bang Theory. This episode first aired on March 2, 2009.

## SummaryEdit

Penny accidentally shoots Sheldon's sofa cushion with a paintball gun. He is deeply disturbed by this turn of events and is not happy with the cushion even once it has been dry cleaned. Meanwhile, Howard starts sleeping with Leslie Winkle. She uses her control over CalTech grant money to make him do things that she wants.

## Extended plotEdit

Leonard, Sheldon, Howard, and Raj are playing paintball and are losing badly, which Sheldon believes is due to Howard missing his physics department paintball strategy meeting. After everyone leaves Howard to die, Leslie Winkle shows up and, after discussing how they might die very soon, they kiss. Penny goes to Leonard for help on her computer, and after being shown his paintball gun shoots Sheldon's cushion, leaving it with a big green spot. Leonard tries, and fails, to clean it, and immediately blames Penny when Sheldon finds out. They get the cushion dry-cleaned, but Sheldon is still not happy with it, and refuses to sit in it. Leonard tries to take his mind off of it by confessing that Szechuan Palace has been closed for two years, and his cashew chicken comes from Golden Dragon in Szechuan Palace containers. In the end, Sheldon is still dissatisfied with the dry-cleaned cushion, and he team-kills Penny in the next paintball game, prompting the others to "surrender, then (go to) Denny's".

Meanwhile, Leslie and Howard start sleeping together, and she is able to secure funds for his work, and even invites him to a trip to the CERN Super Collider project in Geneva, Switzerland. However, this turns out to be just Leslie's way to control Howard. Although initially reluctant to be in this sort of relationship, Howard later happily accepts his role as a "sex toy/arm candy".

## QuotesEdit

Penny: What difference does it make?
Sheldon: What difference does it make?
Leonard: Here we go.
Sheldon: That is my spot. In an ever-changing world, it is a single point of consistency. If my life were expressed as a function in a four-dimensional Cartesian coordinate system, that spot, at the moment I first sat on it, would be [0,0,0,0].

Leonard: Why don't you just eat in your desk chair?
Sheldon: Why don't I just eat in my desk chair?
Penny: Here we go.
Sheldon: That is my desk chair. That is where I work. I don't eat in my desk chair, and I don't work in my spot -- I work in my desk chair and eat in my spot.

## NotesEdit

• Title Reference: The title refers to Penny accidentally shooting Sheldon's cushion with a paintball gun.
• Chuck Lorre's vanity card[1]
• This episode was watched by 10.94 million people.

## TriviaEdit

• Sheldon says, "If my life were expressed as a function on a four-dimensional Cartesian coordinate system, that spot at the moment I first sat on it would be $(0,0,0,0).$" The Minkowski spacetime combines space and time in a single, four-dimensional manifold $(\textrm {dim} \ \mathcal {M} = 4),$ which is covered by coordinate charts $x^{\alpha}({\alpha} = 0,1,2,3).$ Coordinate charts are used in the spacetime manifold $\mathcal {M}$ to represent the events. Usually, Cartesian coordinates $x^{\alpha} = (ct,x,y,z)$ are used, though curvilinear coordinates are also allowed. In the most general case, a number of overlapping coordinate charts is needed to cover the entire manifold. A reference frame is identified with a Cartesian coordinate chart with a physical observer placed at its origin.

## CriticsEdit

"If Leslie and Howard stay together to form a relationship then this episode will have served a purpose."[2] The TV Critic's Review

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