After a couple weeks off and Sheldon’s coitus with Amy in the previous episode, this episode opens with Amy on a trip to neurobiology conference so the writers didn’t have to fully deal with any repercussions just yet. The episode opens with Amy and Sheldon Skyping and discussing the quality of the Best Western where Amy is staying, specifying that it isn’t the best Best Western, just as the Best Buy near Sheldon only ranks as third best.
As he finishes the Skype, Howard, Leonard, and Raj come in. Knowing that he is free, he offers to spend the weekend with one of them. Howard offers to let him come over and help prepare the house for renovations, which doesn’t seem to interest Sheldon. Raj mentions that he’s going to be working in the observatory all weekend, and Leonard tags out, since he always has to deal with Sheldon anyway. Sheldon decides the observatory would be the best use of his time, especially since it means crunching numbers in a lab for hours.
After the opening, Penny comes in complaining that she hasn’t been able to get in to see a doctor. Germophobe Sheldon is concerned until it is explained to him that she’s trying to see the doctor in her role as a pharmaceutical sales rep. Leonard asks if Penny took his advice and she explains that a) the doctor is a woman and b) she did wear something revealing, just in case and to no discernable success. Howard suggests that Penny could make an appointment, but Penny is concerned that they already know she’s a pharma rep. Raj points out that Leonard could make the appointment instead. Initially reluctant, his friends point out all the issues he could discuss with the psychiatrist. Eventually, he agrees.
Lying in bed post-coitus, Bernadette and Howard discuss the fact that they are constantly aware that Stuart is living with them, even when they are having sex. Their conversation is interrupted by Stuart knocking on the door, asking if he can come in or if they are still cuddling. In whispered tones, the two discuss whether they should let Stuart in, revealing the walls at Casa Wolowitz are extremely thin or Stuart has great hearing. His entrance further plays to the creepy-Stuart narrative the writers seem intent on building as he looks around and comments that the room looks different when Howard and Bernadette are awake. The big bombshell that he drops is that he’s found an apartment and will be moving out in a few days.
In the lab, Raj is working on the computers, making sure the telescopes camera is white field balanced, although it seems more likely that he should be working with data and images that the telescope has already collected. Every time Raj starts to do something, he is interrupted by Sheldon asking what he’s doing. Finally, Raj decides to give Sheldon some busy work, looking for anomalies in some of the data. As he sits down, Sheldon comments on the irony of an Indian guy outsourcing his job to a white fella, followed almost immediately by the discovery of an anomaly. Raj asks Sheldon how he found it and Sheldon explains that prime numbers appear red, but twin primes appear, they are pink and smell of gasoline, indicating that not only does Sheldon have an eidetic memory, but he also suffers from synesthesia.
As Leonard enters the psychiatrist’s office, she asks if he’s related to Beverly Hofstadter, revealing that she has read all of Beverly’s books. As Leonard is again preparing to take a back seat to his mother’s brilliance, the psychiatrist reveals that she disagrees with Beverly’s theories of child-rearing, thereby making Leonard feel much more approving of her. The topic does open Leonard up for almost immediate catharsis.
Bernadette and Howard are helping Stuart load up his car, with Howard realizing that getting rid of Stuart means they could be romantic in any room of the house. Bernadette tells him that she’ll be happy to introduce Howard to the laundry room. Stuart says goodbye after two years of living in the house. In a contrast to creepy Stuart, he very genuinely thanks Bernadette and Howard for helping him as much as they have. As he pulls away, Howard is waiting for Bernadette in the garage, wearing only his underwear.
Raj is working on imaging the discover and finds that it is a medium sized asteroid, or the chicken-fingers of the menu of space, although both Raj and Sheldon admit to loving chicken fingers. To cheer himself up after the letdown of not discovering a planet (or a dwarf planet), Sheldon hopes that the asteroid might wind up on a collision course with Earth to destroy life as we know it. Raj points out that they get to name the asteroid. Sheldon wants to make sure nobody can make fun of the name, pointing out that Herschel chose poorly when naming Uranus (although in point of fact, Herschel wanted to call the planet Georgium Sidus and the name Uranus was first suggested a year after the discovery by Johann Bode, and wasn’t universally adopted until seventy years later).
Returning to the apartment from his appointment with Dr. Gallo, Leonard is feeling very good about himself. As he’s sharing his breakthrough with Penny, she interrupts him to find out if her ploy worked. It worked, but Penny’s gratitude doesn’t extend to attending a Doctor Who convention.
Bernadette and Howard are busy cleaning Stuart’s room in his absence and discovering that Stuart was not the cleanest house guest. When Bernadette asks what they should do with the room, Howard wants to turn it into a man cave with a home theatre although Bernadette suggests a woman cave instead. She suggests turning it into a home office and breaks off as they find a teddy bear they won for Stuart at a fair. The two begin to suffer from empty nest syndrome (and leave the viewer wondering if the room will wind up a nursery for a new baby given Howard’s discussion with Bernadette’s father in this season’s seventh episode (“The Spock Resonance”)). They also realized that they haven’t heard from Stuart since he left.
Raj and Sheldon decide they should combine their names to name it. Sheldon likes “Cooper”, with the “Coo” from “Koothrapalli” and the “per” from “Cooper,” although he decides against it when Raj suggests it be spelled Kooper. Leonard suggests that they name the asteroid after their girlfriends. Combining their names with the “Am” from Amy and the “Y” from Emily to create Amy, which Raj isn’t particularly thrilled with.
Penny is going through her sales pitch for Placinex, an anti-anxiety medication, with Dr. Gallo. When she finishes her spiel, Gallo asks her what she was thinking when she had Leonard pretend to be a patient. Gallo suggests that Penny might be enabling Leonard’s maternal issues by being too much like Beverly with regard to control of Leonard (which doesn’t seem to be the case to those who watch the show).
Sheldon, meanwhile is telling Amy that an asteroid has been named after her. He also admits that although the asteroid is named for Amy, any hypothetical children Amy and Sheldon might have must be named Rajesh, including the girls.
Back at Doctor Gallo’s office, Penny is on the couch defending her relationship with Leonard. When she mentioned the man-child who lives with them (Sheldon), Dr. Gallo admits that she had thought that Sheldon was a figment of Leonard’s imagination when he told her about him. Dr. Gallo offers to give Penny an anxiety medication prescription, but Penny asks her not to prescribe Placinex.
Ina quick montage, Sheldon and Amy admit to missing each other, Howard and Bernadette admit to missing Stuart, Penny admits to missing life when she was a party girl, and an ecstatic Leonard is jumping rope with some neighborhood girls.
The episode ends with a return of creepy Stuart, making his return visit to the Wolowitzes and standing over them in the dark, watching them sleep.
