The Big Bang Theory’s Greatest Blunder Remains Its Handling of Penny’s Ending
There is one narrative decision from The Big Bang Theory that has not lost its sting with the show’s devoted following, or even some of the cast, years after CBS wrapped its run.
Take the culmination of Leonard and Penny’s arc. In Season 12 they were given the sort of Hollywood happy ending one would expect: a marriage in good standing and a first child on the way. You could contrast that with the rest of the season’s resolutions, be it Sheldon and Amy’s Nobel win or Raj remaining his usual unattached self. But for Leonard and Penny, the problem was that their story arc ran counter to a great deal of character work put in over the course of the series. For years Penny had been resolutely child-free by her own design, then made an about face in the finale with little to justify it.
The show had been at pains to present this as a settled matter in its later episodes. As late as the third episode of the twelfth season, Penny was quite clear with Bernadette: “I know I’d be a great mom, but I just don’t want to be one. Not everyone needs to have kids to feel fulfilled.” It was meant to be a mature position, not a passing phase. And yet the writers saw fit to undo all of that in a few minutes flat. There was no real dialogue with Leonard, no introspection, nothing to make the change feel earned. To a lot of people it read as a lazy retreat to an old trope where a woman puts aside what she stands for in order to please her husband and have the domestic bliss that comes with it. What was supposed to be a romantic coup for Leonard, the show’s emotional centre, came off as a misstep.
You didn’t have to look to the internet to find the disapproval. Kaley Cuoco was forthright in her opposition to the creative direction of the finale. She saw Penny as a stand-in for women who opt for a different course. “I liked that we were showing that you don’t have to have kids to be happy,” Cuoco said of the twist. “Penny represented the fact that everyone has different goals in life… I loved that she felt that way.”
Steve Holland, who ran the show for its last two seasons, has since come around to the criticism. “Some people said, ‘Why does that have to happen? Why can’t she be happy without kids?’” he observed. “And honestly, maybe they had a point.” It is hard not to wonder, after more than a decade of top ratings, whether The Big Bang Theory afforded Leonard and Penny a fitting modern ending or if it was simply willing to let convention and character integrity go at the eleventh hour.
