Episode 19 – The Dead Hooker Juxtaposition (219)
The former tenants of unit 5A, the apartment above Leonard & Sheldon’s, move out, replaced with an attractive woman named Alicia (Valerie Azlynn). Alicia, like Penny, is an actress, but a more successful one; by flirting with the guys, she manages to wrap Leonard, Wolowitz, and Raj around her finger; she even gains Sheldon’s approval after an intense and bizarre interrogation in the building lobby. Penny attempts to re-assert primacy over her friends, bribing them with Chinese food, offering to watch Battlestar Galactica, and even memorizing a quantum physics joke, but Alicia still manages to snatch everyone away (but Sheldon) when she needs a quick ride to Universal Studios to audition for a role in CSI (specifically that of the episode’s titular “Dead Hooker”). Alicia points out that Penny uses the same routine on the guys that Alicia does, and after that, the two have a catfight in the lobby, resulting in a black eye for Penny and ecstasy for Howard. At the end of the episode, Penny has reclaimed her men, while Alicia is with one of the producers of CSI and is heard “jumping up and down on the bed”.
This episode contains a number of callbacks to earlier moments in the series. Leonard and Sheldon’s repeated – “hello” introductions to Alicia parallel their first meeting with Penny in the pilot episode. Sheldon, despite being oblivious to sarcasm in the earlier episodes of the series, attempts to employ it at Penny when she enters his apartment without asking his permission; likewise, Penny uses a Star Trek analogy when explaining the average physics nerd to Alicia. Finally, Penny and Sheldon reproduce an interrogation about Sheldon’s peculiar chicken-with-broccoli tastes from The Griffin Equivalency, with Penny getting it (mostly) right where Leonard had failed.
Directed by Mark Cendrowski.
Written by Steven Molaro.
Originally aired on March 30, 2009.
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