The Cooper-Crane Juxtaposition

We open on a typical psychiatrists office. SHELDON COOPER, dressed in an extremely bright orange T-shirt and jeans, sits (and squirms) on a comfortable couch as, across the room, DR. NILES CRANE settles himself into an ornate psychiatrists chair – taking great pains to wipe it clean first – and produces a notepad and pen.

He looks at Sheldon and smiles engagingly. Sheldon does not smile back.

NILES: So. Let's get straight into this. What is this source of this sudden outburst of irrationality?

SHELDON: Irrationality? (sighs) oh dear. Look, I have a clearly defined work space. I work on a mental plane that, well, frankly if you encountered it would be reminiscent of the classic 2001: A Space Odyssey scene where primitive man encounters the monolith. I need solace in which to work. Ergo, I have what I call a dodecahedron of silence around my office.

NILES: Right. Because a cone of silence would be silly.

SHELDON: Exactly.

NILES: And someone impinged upon this dodecahedron of silence?

SHELDON: "Impinged" is too gentle a word. What occurred was more of a violation. An assault. My fragile concentration was shattered . I was compelled to take action.

NILES: (consulting his notes) It says here someone was playing "Angry Birds" outside your door.

SHELDON: That is correct. And for the record, that game is ridiculous on several levels. While avian intelligence is generally reckoned to be at the higher end of the spectrum, they are not capable of premeditated acts of revenge. Revenge is a human concept. And a Klingon one of course.

NILES: Klingon?

SHELDON: Revenge is a dish best served cold. Old Klingon proverb.

NILES: Actually the term "la vengeance se mange très-bien froide" first appeared in the 1846 French novel Mathilde.

SHELDON: Chronologically speaking, perhaps. But the inherent principles of revenge seem much more in keeping with the Klingon pscyhe than the French, don't you think?

NILES: What interests me, Sheldon, is that you accept without question the supremacy of a fictional Klingon attributation over a real-world fact, and yet you criticise the premise of Angry Birds on the basis that it is unrealistic...?

SHELDON: Hmm. I hadn't considered that. There does seem to be a contradiction there, doesn't there? You know for someone marooned at the shallow end of the PhD pool, that was remarkably insightful. Well done you.

NILES: I see. So if I am at the shallow end of the intelligence pool, Sheldon, where does that put you?

SHELDON: That's a fun question! Well, assuming the pool begins in this room and gets deeper at a consistent rate of say 1 foot per 5 feet, that would put me…

He considers for a moment, then looks over his shoulder, calculating.

SHELDON:…in Hawaii. (pauses) Aloha.

NILES: Hawaii is two and a half thousand miles away.

SHELDON: (waves) I'm waving at you.

NILES: Not waving but drowning.

SHELDON: (with the patience of someone speaking to a child)No. Waving.

NILES: (with a forced smile) Give it time.

Sheldon slowly puts down his hand.

NILES: By your scale, that makes the water at your end 500 miles deep. How deep is the water at my end?

SHELDON: You wouldn't need shorts.

NILES: Moving on, if I may, do you know how you ended up in my office...and even as I see your mouth open with what will doubtlessly be an amusing take-me-literally retort about your mode of transportation for getting here, I gently add that I am asking for your interpretation of the sequence of events that began that fateful afternoon and ended up with the Dean insisting you come here for therapy as a precondition to being reinstated on campus. And may I remind you, that my diagnosis of your progress is pivotal to that decision.

Beat.

SHELDON: Can I speak now?

NILES: I suspect not only can you speak now, you could quite possibly continue speaking until all that's left of me is a white-bleached skeleton wearing an immaculate Armani suit and stylish-yet-playful Italian tassled loafers.

SHELDON: Kudos on the tassles by the way. Not many can pull off the tassled look, much less have the courage to try to pull it off, no matter how unfortunate the outcome may look.

NILES: I'm sorry, I'm trying to hear you, but the volume of your "I shot the guy who shot Captain America" T-shirt makes it difficult.

SHELDON: Is it usual practice to insult your clients, Dr. Crane?

NILES: No. But neither in my experience is it usual practice to be pulled almost one thousand miles south from my very comfortable Seattle home, away from my darling wife and beautiful son, to provide therapy to a man who for reasons unknown to me at the time had been blacklisted by every local shrink. Thankfully, I have crossed "solve that particular mystery" off of my To-Do List.

SHELDON: The Dean said you two went to Yale together. In fact his exact words to me when he said he was going to pull in an old favour and have you come down were "you and he might find you have a lot in common". Quite frankly I find that hard to believe.

An assistant comes into the office.

ASSISTANT: Coffee, anyone?

SHELDON: No thank you. Diet Coke for me.

NILES: Coffee for me, please, Susan.

ASSISTANT: How do you take it, Dr. Crane?

NILES: (considering this deeply)Jamiacan blend. Frothy, but not too frothy - stirred counterclockwise at a consistent rate, otherwise the delicate balance of flavours is annihilated. Two entirely flat tea-spoons of sugar - no domestic brands. A faint whisper of cinnamon resting subtly upon the froth like dew on the dawn grass.

Slightly stunned by this list, the Assistant leaves the office.

NILES: I'm sorry, Sheldon. Where were we? You were saying you found something hard to-

SHELDON: Never mind. Let's just proceed, shall we...?