"The Focus Attenuation" is an episode of The Big Bang Theory that first aired on October 13, 2014. Directed by Mark Cendrowski. Teleplay by Steven Molaro, Eric Kaplan and Steve Holland, based on a story by Jim Reynolds, Maria Ferrari and Adam Faberman.
Leonard gets the guys to take a weekend to come up with new ideas in science. Penny takes the girls to Vegas.
Tropes:
- Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Sheldon, Raj, and Howard find themselves wondering about random things that they go look up online.
- Distracted by the Sexy:
- Sheldon finds Amy's sexting of "Hi! How are you?" to be the reason he can't get any work done.
- Drunk Amy and Bernadette try to distract Penny from her homework with Australian strippers.
- Gigantic Gulp: Amy and Bernadette drink margaritas from huge glasses while in Vegas.
- Hypocritical Humor: Drunk Amy and Bernadette accuse Penny of being a nerd.
- Painful Adhesive Removal: Trying to increase their productivity and remove distractions, the guys put strips of duct tape on their arms, with painfully ripping them off being a penalty for distraction or going off topic. It quickly devolves into vindictive tape pulling by all parties involved.
- Personality Swap: When the girls go to Vegas, party girl Penny has to stay and study, while the usually more responsible Amy and Bernadette go get drunk.
- Time-Travel Tense Trouble: When the guys are discussing the timeline in Back to the Future Part II.Sheldon: Wait, whoa, whoa. Is "placed" right? Is "placed" the right tense for something that would have happened in the future of a past that was affected by something in the future?
Leonard: Had will have placed?
Sheldon: That's my boy. - Viva Las Vegas!: While the boys are trying to come up with new inventions, the girls go on a fun weekend at Vegas.
- Wiki Walk: The boys try to come up with new inventions, but keep getting sidetracked watching movies and looking up random stuff on the internet.
