Sheldon has a hard time being Alpha-Nerd this week...

"The Bus Pants Utilization"

I do wonder if the almost ubiquitous contract that Apple has with practically every geek show on TV is quite as applicable to the high-end nerds in The Big Bang Theory. As the picture above demonstrates, the guys are fans of the Mac, yet presumably work in a world where Linux dominates and Apple output is surely fighting for attention with Windows-based platforms for second place. Of course our favourite mad scientists could be running anything on that thing via virtualisation, Boot Camp and other possibilities, but I can't help but sense a marketing deal gone wrong.

The more so as this entire episode revolved around what is indisputably the creation of an iPhone app, yet without ever either mentioning the word 'iPhone' or showing us an iPhone (I'm not sure what the device is that Raj is making his 'Fart-app' joke with on the left, but I wouldn't pay placement money for that shot).

Well, real brand awareness means never having to say the name, and we all know what they're talking about anyway; but what's getting in the way of Leonard's great iPhone app idea to digitize hand-written equations is Sheldon's determination to completely take over the project with all of his usual tact (i.e. nominating mere 'engineer' Howard as tea-boy and Raj as an Indian call-center-style outworker for tech support on the idea), which gets him kicked out of the group for the duration of development. Our lanky loon turns naturally to his theremin for comfort, and finally to Penny's apartment, where his mounting lack of social graces force her to try and effect a reconciliation with a little social engineering.

Of course, you can't reason with OCD, so the unlikely couple end up back at Penny's place trying not to bore each other stupid with their very different styles of input into Penny's App idea (a program that recognizes and identifies women's shoes from photos, which, frankly, sounds a lot more lucrative than Leonard's niche project).

This was a real sliver of an episode compared to the rest of the series. With no location shooting or guest players of any kind, it read as a 'bottle episode' rather than one where the limited scope developed from a funny core idea. But in a season this strong, the writers had at least one pot-boiler coming. Let's see if next week's The Love Car Displacement gets our heroes out and about again.

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