The main plot follows an 11-year-old Sheldon Cooper as he aggressively campaigns to become Dr. Linkletter's lab assistant at East Texas Tech. Sheldon believes his 16-day tenure at the university makes him the ideal candidate, though Linkletter initially rejects him to avoid "special treatment".
On the surface, this episode is a classic sitcom A/B structure:
The episode forces us to remember that for Mary, pregnancy is not a miracle; it is a gamble. She has carried a child who came out silent. The episode’s title—borrowed from the biblical story of Solomon (the "living child" vs. the "dead" one)—is brutally clever. It asks the audience: Which child is which?