Though roommates Leonard and Sheldon are brilliant physicists, none of that genius helps them interact with people, especially women. All this begins to change when a free-spirited beauty, a Cheesecake Factory waitress and aspiring actress named Penny, moves in across the hall. While the eccentric Sheldon may be content spending his nights hanging with their equally socially dysfunctional friends and fellow CalTech scientists, clueless, would-be Lothario Wolowitz and shy Koothrappali, Leonard sees in Penny a whole new universe of possibilities...including love.