| Howard Wolowitz | |
|---|---|
Simon Helberg as Howard Wolowitz |
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| First appearance | "Pilot" |
| Portrayed by | Simon Helberg |
| Information | |
| Gender | Male |
| Occupation | Aerospace Engineer |
| Title | M.Eng |
| Relatives | Mrs. Wolowitz (mother) Lewie (uncle) Murray (uncle, deceased) Barbera (aunt) Jeanie (second cousin) |
| Religion | Judaism |
| Nationality | American |
Howard Joel Wolowitz,[1] M.Eng is a fictional character on the CBS television series The Big Bang Theory, portrayed by actor Simon Helberg.
Among the main male characters in the show, Howard is distinguished for lacking a doctoral degree, for still living with his mother, and for believing himself to be a "ladies' man".
Simon Helberg's character is named after a computer programmer known by the show's co-creator Bill Prady.[2]
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Howard is a Jewish aerospace engineer at Caltech's Department of Applied Physics who often hangs out at Leonard Hofstadter (Johnny Galecki) and Sheldon Cooper's (Jim Parsons) apartment where he is best friends with Rajesh Koothrappali (Kunal Nayyar). He was born in 1981 as specified in season one's episode "The Pancake Batter Anomaly".
Howard sports a bowl-style haircut and tends to wear loud, vintage, 1960-era outfits, a V-neck or t-shirt over a turtleneck or dickey which sport a variety of pins, and always has skinny jeans. He is also fond of unusual belt buckles, which have included a Nintendo controller, a silver Batman logo, a 45 RPM record insert, a Klingon communicator, and a buckle containing the superhero the Flash.
Like his friends, Howard is a big fan of comic books and superheroes. It is also quite clear that his current and preferred personal transportation is via his Vespa motor scooter.
Besides English, Howard is fluent in French, Mandarin, Russian, Arabic, Persian, and the constructed language Klingon from the Star Trek franchise. Although in the show, Howard has been mentioned to speak these languages, the writers have not explored his proficiency much. In the season three episode "The Precious Fragmentation", he also has shown he knows some words in Sindarin, one of the two dialects of the fictional Elvish language that J.R.R. Tolkien invented for the Lord of the Rings novels. The episode "The Wiggly Finger Catalyst" also reveals he knows American Sign Language.
Howard fancies himself a "ladies' man" and he provides outrageous pick-up lines whenever there is a female present. Howard describes himself as a romantic,[3] although he usually comes across as overtly sexual and, in the words of Penny, disgusting.[4] However, Penny's animosity toward Howard has mellowed somewhat since Howard began dating Penny's work colleague Bernadette, to whom he is now engaged.
Howard, much like Penny, dislikes many of Sheldon's antics, but he has grown accustomed to them. One time, Penny asked how Sheldon had gotten friends and Howard simply replied "We liked Leonard".[5]
Howard is allergic to peanuts, and they pose a life-threatening risk to him. He also mentioned having transient idiopathic arrhythmia. Howard is proud of the fact that he has only 3% body fat, which Raj notes makes him look like a human chicken wing.
Although Jewish, Howard is not very serious about his faith and does not keep kosher. For instance, he eats pork, and when the price of pork went up at the group's favorite Chinese restaurant, he remarked "it's getting tougher and tougher to be a bad Jew".[6] In another occasion, when Howard tried to date Sheldon's sister, Missy, he said he would kill his rabbi with a pork chop if his religion was an impediment, and one of the reasons he was happy to continue dating Bernadette (who is Catholic) was the chance to really annoy his mom. Despite this, Howard has shown some belief in his faith. When he and Raj posed as goths to pick up women, he wore fake-tattoo sleeves and refused to get real ones (although he attempted to get one but was to scared of the needles). It is noted in "The Bath Item Gift Hypothesis" that he observes Hanukkah. He also apparently attends High Holiday services, as Sheldon once critically noted that he was not available to compete in Halo during those times.
As of the episode "The Herb Garden Germination", he is engaged to Bernadette when she said yes to his marriage proposal.
Unlike Leonard, Sheldon, and Raj, Howard does not have a Ph.D. and is sometimes mocked about it, especially by Sheldon. He defends himself by pointing out that he has a master's degree from MIT.[7] Because he does not carry a Ph.D., Dr. Gablehauser pointedly refers to him as "mister" while referring to his friends as doctors. Because Howard does not have a Ph.D., Sheldon often says that he is the least smart of the four "nerd" characters, as shown in "The Bus Pants Utilization", where the guys develop an iPhone app and Sheldon refers to them as "three geniuses and their friend Howard".
Howard is usually seen working on equipment to be used in NASA missions and the International Space Station, though many times he is careless about it.
In the first episode, Howard mentioned working on the design of a satellite that orbits a moon of Jupiter taking high-resolution photos.[8]
Having worked on the Mars rover project, he invited his date, Dr. Stephanie Barnett, to drive it at a secret facility. Instead, the rover became stuck in a Martian ditch and he spent the rest of the night with Sheldon and Raj trying to undo the damage. When this proved unsuccessful, he decided to erase the hard drives of the facility to cover up his meddling, only to later find out that the rover had discovered the first clear signs of life on mars.[9] When he made it onto a new team for the Defense Department laser-equipped surveillance satellite, Howard was not granted security clearance after Sheldon revealed the rover incident to an investigating FBI agent.[10]
On another occasion, Howard worked on a zero-gravity human-waste disposal system, essentially a "space toilet", that was deployed in the International Space Station. He later realized the equipment had a structural weakness and again sought the help of his friends to correct it. The solution proved unsuccessful and an incident on the Space Station ensued (Raj referred to this as the "zero-gravity human-waste distribution system").[7]
Being the engineer among his physicist friends, he assumes the role of leader for small hands-on projects. He was the primary force behind "M.O.N.T.E.", a killer robot designed to enter a robot fighting competition. The robot was destroyed by Barry Kripke's own robot, the "Kripke Krippler", in an unofficial match before the start of competition.[11]
In the season 4 premiere, Howard developed a robotic arm for the International Space Station. Realizing how much it felt like an actual arm, he used the arm to masturbate, only to get the arm stuck on his penis. He called Leonard and Raj, but neither were willing to get too "hands on" and help free him from the arm's grip. He was afraid to use the computer controlling the arm as it thought it was holding a screwdriver and would start twisting. Eventually, Leonard and Raj took Howard to the hospital, where the attending nurse went against Howard's fears and turned off the computer, freeing Howard. The episode's tag scene implied that Howard tried to use the arm to masturbate again and ended up in the same predicament.
Howard likely has the most hands-on and mechanical aptitude of the four as well. It appears he has soldering and electrical/wiring abilities as shown when he built the robot fighter M.O.N.T.E.
Howard is noted for still living with his overbearing mother, who is oblivious to his accomplishments as a grown-up and usually treats him like he is still a child, filling the cliché of a Jewish mother.
Mrs. Wolowitz (voiced by Carol Ann Susi) is never seen on-screen, but her voice is heard when he is at their house or when he talks to her on the phone. She only communicates with Howard by yelling to him in an obnoxious manner, which results in awkward long-distance conversations, with Howard frustratedly yelling back at her. Her nosy nature and her barrage of questions make Howard's life tense at home, which prompts him to call her a "crazy old lady". It is revealed in "The Cohabitation Formulation", however, when Howard briefly moves in with Bernadette, that he likes being "mothered" to some extent. In "The Apology Insufficiency", Sheldon observes that Howard seems to have "an unresolved Oedipal complex".[12]
In "The Precious Fragmentation", Howard reveals that his father left his family when Howard was 11. His mother bought him an ALF doll to help Howard try to get over it. When Howard finds a similar doll at a garage sale, he starts talking to it as if he were 11 again, asking him to find his dad and bring him home. This causes Penny (who usually avoids Howard and is disgusted by him) to be sympathetic. The trauma of his father's desertion and the lack of a father figure throughout adolescence may be the root of much of Howard's behavior.
Howard is consistently depicted as the most sex-crazed of the guys.
One time, he developed a mathematical formula for the likelihood of him having sex by applying and modifying the Drake equation to include the "Wolowitz coefficient", which he defined as "neediness times dress size squared". He stated, "I'm a horny engineer,... I never joke about math or sex".[13]
Howard's techniques to approach women are varied, including magic and card tricks, ventriloquism, and techniques from the Mystery Method, such as peacocking and negging.[9][14]
Along with Leonard and Raj, Howard also attempted to date Missy, Sheldon's fraternal twin sister. His offer wasn't accepted.[15]
Katee Sackhoff appeared as herself in "The Vengeance Formulation" where she is fantasized as Howard's dream girl. She appeared again in season 4, in the same role.
Since the beginning of the series, Howard shows interest in Penny, but the interest was primarily sexual and she always turned him down. After yet another approach by Howard, Penny finally confronted him about how he treats women. This greatly affected Howard and he fell into depression, missing work and staying home. When Penny went to apologize, Howard told her about his past relationships and Penny showed some sympathy for him; after her comforting words, Howard tried to kiss her, but she reacted and punched him in the face. With the situation resolved, Penny believed they had come to an "understanding", but Howard thought he was merely "half-way to pity sex" with her.[11]
Howard engaged in a "friends with benefits" relationship with Leslie Winkle, which brought him a few benefits beside sex.[16] However, he still became depressed when Leslie dumped him some time later. In order to cheer him up, Leonard and Raj took Howard to Las Vegas and managed to hire a prostitute for him.[17]
When the guys travelled by train to a symposium in San Francisco, Howard had a chance to talk to Summer Glau (portraying herself). His clumsy attempts at impressing the actress failed, despite him being in a confined environment with her for multiple hours.[18]
During a camping trip with Leonard and Raj, in which they all got stoned by eating cookies laced with drugs (likely marijuana), Howard revealed he lost his virginity to his second cousin Jeanie after his uncle's funeral, something that prompted them to make fun of him incessantly.[19]
Despite the fact that Howard is undeniably obsessed with women, he is accused of being in a homosexual relationship with Raj. In the show, this has been pointed out by Dr. Beverly Hofstadter, Leonard's mother. In her words, they are in an "ersatz homosexual marriage".[20] Raj and Howard have several arguments during the series, in which Raj repeatedly accuses Howard of leaving him for everybody who's only slightly better looking and otherwise assuming the cliché female role in partnership arguments. However, Raj and Howard's relationship is mostly close. Raj will often whisper comments to Howard when Penny is in the room, which allows him an avenue of communication, given his chronic inability to speak to women.
In recent seasons, he has had a romantic relationship with Bernadette Rostenkowski (Melissa Rauch). A waitress paying her way through graduate school microbiology studies, Bernadette was introduced to Howard by Penny. At first she and Howard did not get along, as they appeared to have nothing in common. However, when they found out they both had overbearing mothers they immediately felt a connection. They were particularly pleased that it would enrage both Howard's Jewish mom and Bernadette's Catholic mom to find out their kids were dating. They also each noted that they lost their virginity in Toyota vehicles. Subsequently, Howard realized Bernadette represented a real opportunity to develop a lasting relationship and, in an impulsive manner, he proposed to her. Although Bernadette rejected his offer, they remained a couple for a time, but they did later break up.[21] There is often a running gag between Leonard and Howard mocking Raj for being single. In The Plimpton Stimulation, Howard briefly mentioned that he and Bernadette broke up a couple weeks earlier, but did not mention it since he "was waiting for the right time". It was later revealed that the relationship ended because Bernadette caught Howard having cyber sex with "Glacinda the Troll" on World of Warcraft (Glacinda was also revealed later on to have been played by a male member of the university). By the end of the episode, the two discussed their problems and restarted their relationship from the beginning.[22] In the episode, "The Herb Garden Germination", Howard proposed to Bernadette in front of his friends and she accepted, much to Raj's dismay (he had developed feelings for Bernadette). However, during their engagement, Bernadette was awarded her Doctorate degree and revealed that she got a job at a pharmaceutical company that promised a "buttload of money." Although he claimed to have supported her new career, Howard's friends mocked him for not having a Doctorate and made him jealous of Bernadette's job. The situation reached its breaking point when Bernadette and he had an argument after she bought him a Rolex, as he interpreted it as a sign that she would be the main breadwinner.[23] The souring of relations only grew worse when he learned from Raj that, in addition to having slept with Penny, Raj also was writing love poems and fantasizing about Bernadette, which led to Howard not trusting Bernadette and thinking she may cheat on him with Raj.[24]
Season 4 introduced Howard's "latent homosexual tendencies" when George Takei appeared as himself in an imaginary conversation with Bernadette and Katee Sackhoff over his relationship status with Bernadette. It has also been hinted in prior episodes that such feeling may have stretched towards Raj as well by Leonard's mother.
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