On the plane, Bernard while speaking to Rose makes a reference to a laundry cycle: BERNARD: "Remind me to hold it next time, will ya? I almost died in that bathroom." BERNARD: "Now I know how the laundry feels when it's in the dryer." [1] The dryer is an allusion to "Man of Science, Man of Faith" where the spinning drum of a clothes dryer symbolizes the cycle of Recurrence. Bernard uses "died" as a slang term, meaning he "almost" suffered a great agony. He then employs the cycling laundry to metaphorically describe the source of the agony.