I haven't seen the episode, but this still sounds within the realm of suspension of disbelief. As a student, I managed to find myself (on more than one occasion) in the dumpster outside the university warehouse, amid very interesting stuff, including a working centrifuge, for example. Apparently, dumpster diving around MIT is even better. For a long time, I upgraded my computers by taking the cast-offs people were leaving at the side of the road on garbage night -- I was happily running linux in text mode at the time, so I didn't need the latest fancy hardware. I've also known of people who got drunk, stole stuff from a construction sites (such as a generator), got tired of (or thought better of) carrying the stuff home, and left it at the side of the road. Things also do legitimately fall off the back of trucks -- my first two digital cameras were found (one in a gutter, one on a highway). Having zero cash isn't necessarily the show stopper you make it out to be.