True, but she was also self centered. I never liked her.

That's what people who can't math say.

Normally intelligent characters who are supposed to live or work with another highly intelligent or brilliant character are often portrayed as appearing stupid so that the genius appears highly intelligent in comparison. This error was also made in the 1939-1946 Sherlock series with Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson made. In contrast to the book, in which Watson is very intelligent, but his talents lie in other areas, Nigel Bruce had to behave and speak in a very naive and stupid way and that really bothered me. I quote from Wikipedia: "The former film villain Basil Rathbone in the title role can be described as an inspired cast and is still considered by many to be the perfect film Holmes. The choice of Nigel Bruce is more controversial, not least because his film Watson has little to do with that of the books However, with his clumsy, slow-witted, almost motherly manner, the actor only followed the scripts in which his role was conceived from the outset as a comic relief to the sinister Holmes. In fact, it was the great contrast between the two protagonists that contributed a lot to the charm and success the series." In order not to have to resort to this clumsy trick, the script would have to very credibly describe averagely intelligent and brilliant behavior and the actors would have to portray this plausibly. I suspect that this requires script writers and actors who are themselves really highly intelligent and even brilliant.

​@@wilhelmvonn9619self centred? She literally put up with the nerds, especially Sheldon. Always helped them in trouble. Accpeted them for who they are. How the fk is she self centred?

I was about to leave that exact same comment, and saw yours. I'm lucky - I have tech skills AND am street smart - which gives me a window into both worlds. We need the "Penny's" of this world. When you start a new job, make sure you pay attention to the receptionist, the IT juniors (not the seniors), and anyone in the post room. And of course the lunch people - thats a natch. Its the "little" people who will get you the information / make things happen without anyone noticing.... THEY are your friends. The Penny's of this world.

penny grew but i feel like they regressed her as a character too. in the later seasons they left her stuck in a job she hated, made her and leonards relationship the butt of the jokes and gave her such an unsatisfying final season.

What is emotional intelligence? I hear women say that, but they cannot define it.

@@Saiman9000 google is free but since youre too lazy to do that it’s literally just understanding and managing emotions.

@@abbyrose6660 Well that was a bit rude. I was simply being social on a social media platform. The point of my question was that there is no such thing as emotional intelligence. Especially with women. I simply asked a question and that caused someone to lash out and insult me.

@@Saiman9000 well it felt rude for you to point out that ‘i hear women say that, but they cannot define it’ when google is at your disposal. your response makes it clear that you only asked it to have a go at women so dont have a go at me for being rude. asking someone to tell to you what it means instead of looking it up yourself is being lazy. emotional intelligence isnt a term exclusively used by women, and it does exist. being socially and self aware and having empathy makes you emotionally intelligent. and dont you tell me there is no such thing as emotional intelligence with women when men kill women simply for rejecting them.

I agree! Both made me care so much about the show

Jim and kaley were the best in terms of acting and simon in with humor.

amen! without this duo the heart and the excitement would have been zero

Couldn't agree more.

Kaley has practiced 'not just a blonde girl' since her show 8 simple rules. If anyone wants to see what Penny would be if she was in high school, you should watch it.

Well, to my mind she was really playing herself and I don't see anything wrong with it.

@@stanleyconnor6898you should watch The Flight Attendant. This woman has some fantastic acting range, I was pleasantly surprised

@@vaishalijain1995 John Ritter is what kept me from watching that show. He just had one shtick. Always had the same shtick in any role he played. I never understood why people liked him so much. But trying to watch that is what introduced me to Kaley. I had never watched TBBT until maybe three years ago. Now I'm on my second way through it. I've been around a long time, and it is the best sit-come of all time.

Some of my favorite episodes center around Penny and Sheldon: their contest, and the solstice miracle especially stand out for me. And there's a wonderful bit when he offers her rent money.

@@melenatorr and tells her to pay it back whenever she can afford it. True friendship.

Yeah, while it's perfectly possible and okay for some people to change their mind on having children - especially if they already get pregnant - they already covered that ground with Bernadette so shoehorning that for Penny in the very last episode, after she was so adamant about not wanting to be a mother and without spending any time on how she came to change her mind, looked like an unnecessary afterthought.

There is NO choice but to parent. Do you wanna be some loser in their 60s who didn't have kids and the result is your entire life was work and mindless consumerism? Like, get real. Strong men and strong women procreate and that is the only option. It's the only reason human beings exist on this planet. You aren't here to cure cancer or buy lattes dude.

@@AW-uv3cb And at least with Bernedette, she and Howard did talk about kids and coming to a decision that when they do Howard would stay home with the kids(even if it later changed), with Penny, her changing her mind about kids just came out of no where.

You might be surprised that people change their minds and at different times as people change, so are the choices

Not having children is a legitimate choice, and pushing that change at the last second felt like they were saying that women can't really have a fulfilling, happy life without having children

The early seasons were the best, the show was ruined with the addition of amy, and howard getting married to bernie.

You act as if misogyny by it's very nature made the show bad. The first few season were leaps and bounds better than the following seasons for that simple reason. You learn and grow more from a message showing you why something is imperfect than the result of what is believed to be perfect.

@@NM-qd3tm *its. Misogyny is a very striking point against the quality of this series.

@@NM-qd3tm They did not say that the show was bad. They said it was unwatchable. Something can be unwatchable because it's bad or because it's content is off-putting to the watcher. Very blatant sexism in a show can make it unwatchable for people, especially for people who experience it. Although, misogyny can be a legitimate reason to consider a show bad. This is a sitcom wherein misogyny is baked into and is the basis of many of it's jokes, which arguably makes these jokes uninspired and unfunny, misogyny thus making the show bad because it impacts it's humor. Of course, some people think sexist jokes are funny, but that requires for them to either agree with the joke's sentiments or to think situations referred to in the joke as ridiculous, which many do not because they are aware that these things happen in reality. I'm not exactly sure what you mean by learning and growing from imperfection vs perfection. But I don't see how Big Bang Theory fits the bill. BBT doesn't ask you to question it's misogyny. It wants you to laugh, sometimes to disagree with the character's more blatant sexism but at the same time find them all harmess because they're still supposed to be loveable main characters. It doesn't show you why it's imperfect. It simply is imperfect, which things are allowed to be. Also, not wanting to see blantant misogyny in media they consume is not the same as asking for perfection. It's not so grand of a request.

@@isailwind3471 howard was such an unlikeable character in the earlier seasons because he was such a creep. bernadette really made him more tolerable but they ruined their relationship by making bernadette such a bully and howard such a pushover, same with leonard and penny. and amy and sheldon too when you think about it. amy was a good character and key for sheldons development but sheldon should have stayed single.

but then they kinda made penny a little mean towards the end of the series, especially when they joked about her relationship with leonard

"While never being mean on purpose"? Penny is narcissistic and abusive throughout the series. She constantly bullies Leonard by remarking how she is much more valuable than him due to her looks ("I would have whistled and you would have come running"), money (when she gets a job she's not qualified for, and despite having been financially supported by Leonard all the time) and general lack of commitment (getting jealous after she dumps him, going for sex and then acting like nothing happened, etc.)

Leonard?

​@@bengilhooly3616 he's like the definition of a 'nice guy' that really isn't likable

​@@bengilhooly3616 He's the one that makes the show unwatchable for me.

Thanks for this comment. I remember one episode where Penny and Leonard discussed not having children. It's not like it was a theme throughout the series.

@@marymitch316 yeah it came out of nowhere in the last season and contradicted what has been written before (not that continuity ever bothered TBBT writers). When the show ended, the writers said they did that because they wanted the pregnancy to be surprising. Which is perhaps even more disrespectful to actual child-free and the real struggles they face. Honestly, they should have kept Bernadette child-free. With her they did establish that, but then, I guess, they wanted to mix things up and added children for Bernadette and Howard (so that they do get some pregnancy and parenting plots, but not with the more central characters and main set so that it's not such a major change).

they used penny being against having kids to drive a wedge between her and leonard. in the past i think she was more non-commital about the idea of children so i dont think she was pro or anti kids until they needed something to cause trouble with leonard.

@@if3359the one good thing they did with making bernadette a mother despite her previous aversion to motherhood was explore the struggles women face with their children and their career.

Well said! It is not abnormal for a woman who does not want a child to become pregnant and suddenly want a child, either, and vice versa. Also, HOW the pregnancy happened - she went out and got drunk with Sheldon, her friend, then came back and had sex with Leonard, her husband. The stereotype "sex-leading-to-pregnancy" for the "Dumb Blonde" is usually a) she goes out drinking alone and has a one night stand, whether it be consensual or non-consensual, or b) she is in a relationship with a guy she believes is "The One", who runs out on her when she tells him that she's pregnant.

@@India.H not well said, it was way out of character and obviously badly delivered.

who is robin and what does himym staand for???

@@ellenfleming9685How I Met Your Mother, she was a character that Ted kept persuing even though she turned him down

Bernadette and Amy ruined the whole dynamic of the show.

i wished that they had taken penny’s career down the entrepreneur route too after the penny blossom episode. it feels like every character got what they wanted in the end (despite raj) but they ruined penny’s character in the process.

you spilled about her relationship with leonard and the final episode but i disagree regarding zack. penny knew that she screwed up with zack and the vegas marriage but it’s understandable why she got so annoyed at leonard, whos always trying to ‘save’ her and holds her mistakes against her. it wasnt so much about penny being held to a standard as it was about leonard only wanting the marriage annulled because she married zack as a joke but hadnt married him. leonard claiming hes the ‘real victim’ in the situation despite penny only finding out about the validty of the marriage that day annoys me so much. and penny acknowledged that she mostly used zack in the costume episode because she didnt want to spend new years alone.

Do you get this mad when women you know in your life choose to get pregnant?

Clearly forgetting about Samantha Jones. She was already the progressive woman you wanted; for she said no to BOTH babies AND marriage. And Cristina Yang. She was a widely supported character for refusing to have children. So these women you want to see badly on TV already exist. Bernadette was not a later reversal; she stated she didn’t want children but that very same episode at the end, she decided she will have them as long as Howard is the one to stay home and take care of them. What changed was her attitude to actually love to take care of them. And Pennys decision to be fine with being pregnant is not out of nowhere. Penny did want kids at first (she even drunkenly said so at one point) but it just wasn’t the right time, it was something she wanted put off until both she and Leonard were stable. Then it evolved to where she didn’t want them. That was more out of nowhere, but at least Leonard supported it. So being that the outcome was a surprise then accepted is pretty fair. And I’m sorry but I’ve known and encountered PLENTY of women who expressed the same vehemence of not wanting children only to change their minds later. I was one of them. I was adamant from the age of 18, then 16 years later that choice changed. So this display of that sort of decision making on this show was not a terrible thing for me. Sorry it was such a calamity for you.

How would that have normalized childfree women though? there are plenty of childless women in famous tv shows that are seen as idols and icons, nothing wrong with that

at least with bernadette there was some build up to her coming around to the idea of motherhood as opposed to penny’s acceptance of her pregnancy that felt like a 180 from where she was a few episodes ago. but the worst thing they did was have bernie belittle penny for not wanting kids after bernie didnt want them herself. the way the writers punished penny, whether it be through mocking her looks or turning her into a bully with leonard was so nasty.

@@abbyrose6660 and that shouldn’t have happened either. DID YOU NOT READ MY COMMENTS ABOUT BERNADETTE? SHE WAS CHILDFREE TOO! Chuck did both of them dirty, no doubts about that. If you don’t know the whole story, you need to STFU, don’t comment and listen to those that actually paid attention for the ENTIRE series.

@@Trix897 you dont have to be so aggressive with your response. and i have rewatched the show multiple times so i absolutely paid attention to the entire series and understand how misogynistic the shows writers were. since you brought up paying attention, penny was never against the idea of having kids until the final season. she always seemed open minded or at the very least, non commital until they solidified the fact that penny didnt want kids in the final season to have some drama with her and leonard. if anything, the writers making penny and bernadette have children isnt a slap in the face to women who choose not to have kids because women can and do change their mind about that. the real slap in the face is using their aversion to motherhood as a plot device and villainising them for not wanting kids. especially when bernadette, who was ‘childfree’ as you put it, belittles penny for not wanting kids and says howard is the one who doesn’t want kids to her dad when she didnt want them.

What is wrong with you? You are actually mad that two fictional characters got pregnant? How does that invalidate child free women everywhere? You are the definition of the "what about me" syndrome.

No, nice try. Bernadette was actually pregnant in real life both times, so the writers had to write it in. Life happens.

Are you talking about Penny quitting acting

@@alexwallar8608 Not just that, but mainly that.

i loved her on charmed too!!!

If not for Penny, all we would have is three gay guys!

@@james-pierre7634 *four

Yeah, he really was so awful to her (as well as being so misogynistic to all the female characters). I couldn't believe that she let him get away with being so incredibly insulting.

Couldn't have said it any better!

Agreed.