At the end of “The Big Bang Theory” season 4 (the massively popular CBS sitcom created by Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady), the series finds itself in a weird situation. Specifically, in an attempt to mix things up and keep the show fresh, the show’s obvious main couple, Penny (Kaley Cuoco) and Leonard Hofstadter (Johnny Galecki), isn’t together; instead, Leonard is dating Priya Koothrappali (Aarti Mann), the sister of another lead character, Raj (Kunal Nayyar), and Penny is both jealous and single. There’s no question that, throughout “The Big Bang Theory,” Penny and Leonard are supposed to be endgame. So, what did the show’s writers do with Penny in the season 4 finale? They threw her in bed with Raj, and as it turns out, a lot of people behind the scenes hated it.
In Jessica Radloff’s 2022 book “The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive, Inside Story of the Epic Hit Series,” a few of the show’s creatives weighed in on the whole thing, including editor Peter Chakos. As he put it, “As the editor, I am protective of the cast and the characters, and didn’t like that Penny even came close to sleeping with Koothrappali. It was such a creepy moment.”
Prady didn’t really express specific feelings about this situation one way or the other … but he did say that executive producer and writer Steve Molaro despised this plotline. “Chuck proposed that Raj and Penny sleep together accidentally at the end of the season, and Steve Molaro just hated that,” Prady recalled. “Their drunken night together — where they technically hadn’t slept together — I’m sure that Steve spent weeks just driven by fury, to find a solution!”
Hilariously, Molaro said that Prady’s guess is exactly what happened. “I really did not like that season finale ending, and Bill is right,” he said. He continued:
“I spent the entire hiatus being upset about it and grinding on it to come up with a path that I knew, even if I did, I still had to convince Chuck that it was a good idea that would be worth doing. I went upstairs to his office right when we got back to work to start that next season and said something like, ‘This is really bothering me. I think I have a way that we can come close and get out of it and preserve the characters as they are.’ He didn’t love it, but he knew it was important to me to the point that he conceded.”
Together, Steve Molaro and Chuck Lorre managed to fix the Penny-Raj mess
In the season 5 premiere, which is titled “The Skank Reflex Analysis” and happens to be one of the worst episodes of the entire series, it’s revealed that Penny and Raj didn’t do the deed, even though, in the final moments of the season 4 finale, “The Roommate Transmogrification,” they stumble out of a bedroom half-dressed in front of Leonard, Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons), and Howard Wolowitz (Simon Helberg), humiliating themselves completely. Penny had been drinking heavily, so she asks Raj in “The Skank Reflex Analysis” what happened; supposedly, he got a little “too excited” when Penny tried to help him put on a condom, and nothing was consummated. This was, apparently, Steve Molaro’s idea, and even though Chuck Lorre wanted to pair up Raj and Penny to try something new, he admitted to Jessica Radloff that he had to learn when to back down on “The Big Bang Theory.”
“Over time I learned to loosen my grip and allow other people to exert their vision and their talents. And the more I did that, the better the show got,” Lorre admitted. “There are elements of this show that simply wouldn’t have happened had I kept a stranglehold grip on things. If someone is really excited and passionate about something, my job is to get out of the way. Or help them execute that passion.”
Molaro understood Lorre’s intentions, but he stood his ground. “He was just looking to shake up the dynamic,” Molaro explained. “But that was one of the moments I was probably the most passionate about not doing.” Ultimately, the two of them figured out that a condom malfunction would be the funniest possible way to undo this mess.
“Once Chuck gave in to me having them not sleep together, he came up with the specific detail that she was trying to help him with the condom,” Molaro told Radloff. “He was like, ‘If you really want to find a way for them to not have been together, I think you should do it like this,’ and that’s what we did. It was brilliant.”
Penny and Raj’s friendship ended up blossoming beautifully on The Big Bang Theory
After Chuck Lorre and Steve Molaro figured out exactly how to undo Penny and Raj’s ill-advised, incomplete hookup, the show did something really smart with this character pairing: It made Penny and Raj good friends. Raj is frequently ridiculed by other characters for having a more feminine side, and in his friendship with Penny, he’s able to simply express that without worrying that he’ll be mocked.
Whether Penny is introducing Raj to concepts like romantic astrology compatibility — which she does in season 7 — or Penny is comforting Raj, who feels he’s “unlovable” after a bad breakup in season 6, watching these two unexpectedly like-minded people bond is a joy. In season 10, Raj even temporarily moves in with Penny, and the two of them do yoga, gossip about her work drama, and even sport matching outfits just for fun. Leonard, who feels left out, hates this turn of events, but for the audience, it’s a total delight. It’s honestly really lucky that Molaro managed to convince Lorre that the idea of Raj and Penny actually sleeping together was terrible, because it would have screwed up a lot of the show’s future plotlines; one can imagine a world where a jealous Leonard insists the two never be alone together once he and Penny reunite romantically, which would have stopped the friendship dead in its tracks. In any case, “The Big Bang Theory,” including the best and worst moments shared by Raj and Penny, is currently streaming on HBO Max.
