Although The Big Bang Theory’s worst mistake came relatively late in the popular sitcom’s 12-season run, the series still never recovered from this easily avoidable blunder. By The Big Bang Theory’s finale, the show’s heroes had mostly received their happy endings. Sheldon and Amy had won the Nobel Prize, and Leonard and Penny were happily married.
Bernadette and Howard were successful professionally and parents twice over, and, although Raj’s single status caused some controversy among the fandom, he was undeniably faring fine. In the time since The Big Bang Theory’s pilot, he had gone from suffering from selective mutism whenever women spoke to him to bringing Sarah Michelle Gellar as his date to the Nobel ceremony.
However, just because the Pasadena gang got their respective happy endings doesn’t mean that there were no missteps along the way. These were mostly minor mistakes, but one truly threw the story of the show’s most important couple. The Big Bang Theory’s Penny and Leonard never recovered from a season 9 plot that derailed their love story for good.
The Big Bang Theory’s Leonard Should Never Have Cheated On Penny
Leonard’s Infidelity Undermined The Pair’s Love Story
In season 8, episode 24, “The Commitment Determination,” Leonard tells Penny that he kissed another woman, his colleague Mandy Chow. Although Melissa Tang’s character was never seen onscreen before this episode, the entire affair puts a pretty major dampener on the pair’s impulsive elopement to Las Vegas. Penny initially forgives Leonard without a second thought, but soon is haunted by this admission.
Leonard’s cheating in The Big Bang Theory doesn’t make sense, as his infidelity undermines the love story that was the bedrock of the entire series. Unlike Ross and Rachel’s infamous “break” in Friends, he didn’t even have an excuse, as he and Penny were definitely dating when the disappointing makeup session with Mandy occurred during a work expedition years earlier.
Not only did the successful CBS sitcom suffer thanks to this twist, but this issue was reflected in its ratings. Season 9, episode 1, “The Matrimonial Momentum,” is the episode where Penny first becomes upset about the infidelity, and it was season 9 that represented the peak of the show’s ratings popularity. With a staggering average of 20.36 million weekly viewers, The Big Bang Theory season 9 was among the most popular sitcoms of the 21st century.
However, although the show retained great ratings until its finale and the finale almost reached that high again, The Big Bang Theory’s per-season average never got higher than 19 million after season 10. Although it was still a lot better than the show’s early years, The Big Bang Theory’s ratings performance verifiably never recovered from Leonard’s cheating revelation.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise to longtime fans, as the plot never added up in terms of the show’s larger story. What made Leonard and Penny’s love story sweet was the idea of an affable but socially maladroit nerd winning over his glamorous, sweet neighbor, so the revelation that Leonard cheated on Penny, and she accepted this, felt deeply discordant.
The Big Bang Theory Made Leonard’s Cheating Worse
Later Storylines Focused On Leonard’s Lack of Trust In Penny
Unfortunately, The Big Bang Theory always had to make Leonard cheat on Penny. His infidelity plot line was caused by the show’s biggest recurring problem, namely, the question of how to keep the main duo apart even though viewers knew they would eventually end up together.
The long-running sitcom ran out of reasons to keep Leonard and Penny apart thanks to its sheer duration. For a frame of reference, Howard and Bernadette met over an entire season after Leonard and Penny, but the couple somehow got married a whole four seasons earlier. That was ridiculous, so it was no wonder the cheating had to happen.
The fact that Leonard’s infidelity was only discovered much, much later, and that Mandy’s presence at his work was swiftly fixed within an episode or two, made this revelation smack of desperation. This is ironic, since, as outlined above, The Big Bang Theory’s ratings were at their highest during this period. Objectively, the show never had less need for a ratings boost.
Despite this, the series undermined The Big Bang Theory’s Penny and Leonard with this cliffhanger revelation at the end of season 8. The point was to ensure that viewers had to tune in for season 9 and see how the fight was resolved, but the very next episode proved this entire storyline was pointless.
After Leonard and Penny cut their honeymoon short, Amy dramatically broke up with Sheldon, thus starting one of the show’s saddest and most emotionally resonant storylines ever. If this twist had been pulled up one episode to the season 8 finale, then Leonard’s revelation of infidelity could have been cut entirely.
Leonard’s Cheating Story Was Caused By The Big Bang Theory’s Biggest Problem
The Long Running Sitcom Ran Out of Reasons To Keep The Couple Apart
The Big Bang Theory’s season 8 finale could have contrasted Leonard and Penny’s impulsive elopement with Sheldon and Amy’s breakup, thus creating a legitimate cliffhanger ending that season 9 would then pay off with a season-long arc about Sheldon winning Amy back. Instead, the show inserted the Mandy subplot for the sake of some cheap added drama, thus pushing off the breakup.
The worst result of Leonard’s big reveal didn’t come until a little later, in one of The Big Bang Theory’s most problematic episodes. The show had a consistent issue with treating its male and female characters fairly, but the most galling instance of this came in season 10, episode 22, “The Cognition Regeneration.”
In this outing, Penny considers a job her ex has offered her, and this worries Leonard. Leonard discourages Penny from taking this promising career opportunity as he fears she’ll be tempted to cheat on him, even though he’s the one who was already unfaithful. This The Big Bang Theory episode proves just how misjudged season 8’s big twist was.
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- Release Date
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2007 – 2019-00-00
- Showrunner
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Mark Cendrowski
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