Numerically Ordered According to Fibre Content

[Idle Miscreant]

A thread for discussing pointless but interesting minutiae and niminy-piminy details. If, for example, someone could add a list of Wolowitz’s pick-up lines and general entry announcements, this would be considered a great civil service.

I’ll start with one that was bothering me last week. Contemplating Penny’s assertion to Sheldon in 5.10 that she calls everyone sweetie, I was intrigued enough to see if she does in fact do so. Amazed to discover she is a Liar and Harlot!

(not really)

As befitting my title, I have some idle information for all you fact fans.
I ran the episode transcripts S1-7 though an editing tool (not me, incidentally) that does a word search and count, and discovered the following statistics concerning bestowals of the endearments "Sweetie" and "Honey" (neither of which I have ever used in my life).

I then ran my vaguely human eye over the results to remove the extraneous endearments, such as the DMV woman referring to Sheldon as "Honey" before threatening to climb over the counter and presumably wallop him. Ditto Leonard’s "Honey"s to Priya and Stephanie, and Howard's two ill-advised "Honey"s to Penny in the 1st Season.

I can't be arsed counting endearments such as Sheldon referring to Penny as "Kitten" and so forth. These are frankly too difficult to quantify and lead to questions over what is a compliment VS an endearment ("Vixen" as compliment VS "Cute little lump of wool" as endearment, for example, in AFF's case), particularly with the numerous examples of Sheldon THINKING he's complimenting Penny when actually he's being an oblivious but good-hearted gobshite.

Behold the results;

P to S – 24 sweeties, 27 honeys

P to L – 22 sweeties, 10 honeys

P to R – 3 sweeties, 3 honeys

P to A – 2 sweeties

P to B – 1 sweetie

L to P – 3 honeys

H to B – 4 sweeties, 10 honeys

B to H – 2 sweeties, 4 honeys

There are interesting variations, such as a peak in "Honey"s for Sheldon from Penny around Season 2 and 4, and a resurgence in "Sweeties" for Leonard in Season 7. Howard is trouncing Bernadette in the endearment department, and Leonard has managed 3 endearments to Penny thus far. I imagine these will increase in Season 8.

Of interest to S/P fanfiction writers in the habit of using “Sweetie” almost exclusively, would be the fact that Penny refers to Sheldon more as “Honey”. Update forthcoming fics accordingly.

This dubiously helpful list was created from the wondrous TBBT Transcripts site; http://bigbangtrans.wordpress.com/

Despite the compilation of this list taking less than 30 minutes, I still feel that perhaps I am occupying my time in a manner not unlike Harry “The Sponge” Solomon. He knows many things, but they are; 1) How many bags of trash their neighbours produce per week, 2) What Barney’s friends’ names are. His REAL friends, and 3) How many licks it takes to get to the centre of a marble.

You don’t know. Do you.