Chapter 16
PENNY, SHELDON, AND PERSONAL GROWTH THROUGH DIFFERENCE
The most interesting friendship in The Big Bang Theory is also the most surprising: Penny and Sheldon. Penny is carefree and lax, whereas Sheldon is neurotic and rigid. Strained and turbulent, the friendship struggles amid their differences, often to comic effect. Consider “The Panty Piñata Polarization,” in which Penny earns her second “Sheldon-strike” by purposely handling some of Sheldon’s takeout food. Not to be deterred, Penny immediately plops herself down in Sheldon’s “0–0–0–0” spot on the couch, earning her third strike, at which point Sheldon banishes her from the apartment. Penny retaliates by simultaneously using all of the washing machines on Sheldon’s laundry night, and Sheldon counters by displaying her “female undergarments” on a nearby phone line, chortling, “Mua-ha-ha.” The conflict spirals out of control, as an unstoppable force—Penny’s stubbornness—meets an immovable object: Sheldon’s idiosyncrasies. To “shorten the war by five years and save millions of lives,” Leonard covertly provides Penny with Sheldon’s kryptonite: his mother’s phone number. Penny calls Mrs. Cooper, who, in turn, calls her son. Sheldon is powerless to resist (and he still is unsure of what Jesus thinks). He slowly walks across the hall and warily congratulates Penny, saying, “Well played.” She slowly nods in acknowledgment, whispering, “Thank you.” Mutual respect and friendship thus take shape.
Difference is an important but sometimes underappreciated feature of friendship. Difference pushes us to discover more about ourselves by exposing us to alternate ways of valuing life. Throughout the series, the friendship between Penny and Sheldon has been rocky, but it has always maintained an authenticity that has caused the characters to grow. Moreover, the other friendships don’t provide the same types of opportunities for discovering more about the characters and, more important, ourselves.
Are Penny and Sheldon Really Friends?
Even though Sheldon sometimes acts for the sake of, or due to the conventions he believes exist around, friendship, it’s not clear that Sheldon has any friends. In the “Middle Earth Paradigm,” Sheldon surmises that friendship entails having “one’s back” during confrontation and providing tea to the upset, and platitudes to the upset, such as “There, there,” although he admits that beyond this point, his abilities to conform to convention lapse. In “The Jerusalem Duality,” he goes so far as to declare, “While Mr. Kim . . . has fallen prey to the inexplicable need for human contact . . . social relationships will continue to baffle and repulse me.” This calls into question whether Sheldon possesses the capacity for friendship. Even if a glimmer of the relevant capacities subsists, Sheldon also has well-established interpersonal problems. Recall Sheldon’s claim in “The Desperation Emanation” about his roommate: “Leonard, you are my best friend. I’ve known you for seven years, and I can barely tolerate sitting on the couch with you.” If Sheldon’s friendship with Leonard—undoubtedly the most enduring in the show—is still fraught with problems such as a strong aversion to physical proximity (much less physical contact!), we might think that genuine friendship with Penny is almost impossible.
Friendship has interested philosophers ever since that “warm summer evening” in ancient Greece—that is, at least as far back as Aristotle (384–322 BCE).1 Philosophical approaches deal with friendship as a relationship that involves intimacy and particular attitudes toward people. In ancient times, this was commonly characterized by the Greek concept of philia, the affection between two individuals (contrasted with eros, which is typically sexual in nature, or agape, which is a different type of love, such as the type of love Christians might think God has for humanity).2 Much debate about friendship, then and now, is about what makes friendship different from, say, our relationships with acquaintances or romantic partners.
Three aspects of friendship seem universal. The first is mutual care; what defines friendship is the shared affection between two friends. Romantic affection might be one-sided, with bedfellows Howard Wolowitz and Leslie Winkle coming to mind, but you can’t be friends with someone if you do not both care about each other in some respect.
The second aspect is intimacy. Friendships are intimate, in the sense that they are a deeper kind of relationship than mere acquaintances. Precisely what constitutes this intimacy is debatable. It may be that friends are intimate in the sense that they function as “mirrors” for each other, providing a perspective on their character and self-concept. Alternately, it could be through the sharing of secrets or sensitive personal information. For example in “The Bad Fish Paradigm,” Penny rather abruptly asks Sheldon “as a friend” to conceal from Leonard the fact that she did not complete community college. Sheldon quizzically replies, “So, you’re saying that friendship contains within it an inherent obligation to maintain confidences?” When Penny quickly responds, “Well, yeah,” Sheldon redirects, “When did we become friends?” (He seemingly wishes to verify that he has incurred an obligation.) Or, and perhaps most intuitively, it seems that friends are intimate in the sense that they direct and interpret each other’s conduct. One participates in activities with friends that one might not otherwise because this is part of what it is to be friends with someone.
On a related note, the third aspect constitutive of friendship is shared activity. Two people are considered friends, in part, when they are mutually involved with projects or parts of each other’s lives. Even in remote or nonparadigm cases of friendship, such as “pen-pals,” the action of becoming friends involves setting aside time for mutual or coordinated activity (for example, writing letters or even sharing Facebook time).
This isn’t the place to engage in questions of (a) which of these properties of friendship are central or most important to an account of friendship, or (b) how much of each property (say, what strength of intimacy) serves to mark the line between friends and “more than friends”.3 Rather, we need to consider in which of the three ways Sheldon and Penny are friends.
It seems clear that as far as Sheldon displays affection to people at all, he does so with Penny. His affections toward her are obviously disproportionate with his other relationships (including Amy). He even expresses sincere gratitude: Sheldon hugs Penny, not once but twice! The rarity of this is confirmed by Leonard’s affirmation: “It’s a Saturnalia miracle!”4 Moreover, Sheldon’s interactions with Penny often display a sense of care we don’t see with others. In “The Adhesive Duck Deficiency,” he helps Penny when she slips in the bathtub, which includes driving her to the hospital, despite his insistence that “I don’t drive” and his horror at Penny’s check engine light ablaze. In “The Gorilla Experiment,” he agrees to teach her “a little physics” (as if there were such a thing)—even though his time is “both limited and valuable”—simply because she wishes to impress Leonard.
Perhaps the strongest indication of Penny and Sheldon’s friendship is the directive and interpretive aspects of their relationship—what makes their friendship intimate. Penny and Sheldon do not act as static characters—rather, episodes often center on the changes that each undergoes in the course of their relationship. Penny, for example, becomes more sensitive to Sheldon’s supposed idiosyncrasies. When Bernadette, Howard’s girlfriend, is introduced to the central group of friends in “The Gorilla Experiment,” Penny—independently of Sheldon’s guidance or intervention—perfunctorily explains the significance of Sheldon’s “0–0–0–0” spot to her. And of course, we cannot forget her haunting rendition of “Soft Kitty,” complete with applying menthol vapor rub (counterclockwise, lest Sheldon’s chest hairs mat), when Sheldon becomes ill in “The Pancake Batter Anomaly.”
Sheldon, for his part, is drawn into situations in which Penny’s actions test him. For example, in “The Adhesive Duck Deficiency,” Sheldon only briefly points out that her dislocated shoulder was caused (in part) by the lack of friction on her shower floor. Rather than belabor that point, he moves to navigate (and not reorganize) Penny’s room, handle her wardrobe (even though her panties are not organized per days of the week), and, of course, somehow manage her nudity (even though he seems to have difficulty discerning arms from other nearby body parts). Sheldon’s trials and tribulations continue, as he must next (somehow) quash his mysophobia (fear of germs) while waiting with Penny in the hospital, and (albeit awkwardly) comfort her as they wait for the doctor to examine her shoulder. Yet there’s more. When they return to Penny’s apartment, he sings “Soft Kitty” to her (even though she’s not technically sick). If that weren’t enough, they sing it together, in the round! Their relationship is now cemented; insofar as Sheldon has any friends, Penny is certainly among them.
Penny’s and Sheldon’s Friendship and the Importance of Difference
The friendship Penny and Sheldon enjoy, though genuine, is marked by deep personal differences. Sheldon is meticulous, hyperintellectual, clean, and obsessive. Penny is messy, emotive, at times willfully ignorant, and tends to wing things more than she plans them. Nevertheless, Penny and Sheldon grow, not despite their differences and conflicting characters, but because of these differences.5 Consider Sheldon from season 1 (or, to Leonard’s recollection, seven years previous when Leonard first met Sheldon), and the difficulties he had with Penny and his other friends. These difficulties persist, of that there is no question. Yet how far he has come! His jokes are more numerous and more self-aware. His claim to “having more tics than a Lyme disease facility” in “The Bad Fish Paradigm” is actually quite clever (and a Sheldon Cooper original). He is far less prone to tantrums and even has a modicum of social awareness. In “The Agreement Dissection,” he agrees to go dancing with Penny, Bernadette, and Amy. Sheldon’s conduct with female characters develops—he copes with being kissed by Beverly Hofstader and later by Amy Farrah Fowler.6 If there lay a continuum of character, Penny and Sheldon’s progression on this continuum would be toward each other. This is not to say they become the same; rather, they develop parts of their character through their interaction that they would not otherwise develop.
There are things Sheldon simply could not learn from, say, his friendship with Amy that he can through Penny, precisely because of the conflict it produces. Sheldon, for example, is unlikely to learn about valuing people for their own sake from Amy, who is just as willing to instrumentalize others for her own curiosity as Sheldon is. Just think of “The Herb Garden Germination,” when they spread lies in order to track the memetic origins of gossip. With Penny, Sheldon is forced to accept that sometimes we do things out of or for the sake of friendship, not simply in the process of going through the motions of being friends. This produces a change in Sheldon during the course of the series that simply wouldn’t happen if Penny wasn’t in Sheldon’s life.
Someone might object, though, that this isn’t distinctive about friends. All sorts of people offer us reflections or differences. If it is only our reflection in others that causes change, presumably everyone, at least in theory, would change us. What makes friends special in this regard?
Here the idea of direction and interpretation comes into play. It is not enough that I am enlightened as to my own character through my friends by virtue of our differences. Conflict between friends is transformative because the reasons we come into conflict with our friends are reasons that matter to those friends. If I upset my friend and do not care that I have upset my friend, then most of us would say I’m not much of a friend at all! (Sheldon at least suffered from digestive distress—“he couldn’t poop”—when he and Leonard were feuding in the season 1 episode “The Cooper-Hofstadter Polarization.”) Part of being friends is being directed and interpreted by them—valuing what happens to them because it happens to them. This direction and interpretation is not the goal of friendship or what we do out of friendship, but rather what we do because we are friends.
Our families change us, but often we are not given the same opportunities for growth through our families—we and our family members are more alike than we might like to admit. Our romantic partners also give us opportunity for growth, but serious differences can jeopardize romantic relationships. We are just that much more vulnerable to our partners or spouses than to our friends, and, as such, differences that might aggravate us about friends can end romantic relationships. Sheldon’s obvious intellectual prowess is a challenge for his and Penny’s friendship, but Leonard’s intellectual prowess plays off Penny’s insecurities to the point that she ends their romantic relationship.
Modern and Classical Friendship
By stressing the differences between friends, this view departs significantly from more classical views. Aristotle, in particular, believed that each of his three forms of friendship is grounded in similarity. Perhaps you are friends with someone because each of you finds the other witty or pleasant in some way. Perhaps you are friends with someone because each of you shares a common goal, for example, splitting the cost of rent or gas by carpooling—much as Sheldon and Leonard do. Aristotle provided a similar analysis for his highest form of friendship. True or complete friends, he claimed, are similar, in that they share a project of approaching eudaimonia, which today we generally understand as flourishing or the best way to live.
Yet my view is not a complete departure from more classical views such as Aristotle’s. The coming together of viewpoints and values is still part of my account of what friends accomplish together and value in each other. With Penny and Sheldon, both begin (and remain) flawed people—people just like you and me, which may indeed be what makes them such compelling characters! Sheldon, insofar as he could pursue Aristotle’s eudaimonia at all, would be much more comfortable doing so with Leonard Nimoy (or at least Spock!) than with Penny. Penny couldn’t be further from his ideal. Moreover, there are too many differences between Penny and Sheldon for them to enjoy true friendship—at least according to Aristotle.
During the course of the show, however, Sheldon’s and Penny’s commitment to shared values grows through disagreement and resolution. More important, though, is the dynamic tension they continue to exhibit—Sheldon still wants to win his Nobel Prize and can’t understand someone wanting to be an actor; Penny has no desire to become a string theorist and pursues her dream of acting. Yet in attempting to reach their various pinnacles of existence, they come to value each other’s motivations as plausible (if not personally attractive) ways of flourishing as the distinct individuals they are.
Sheldon and Penny understandably have distinct interests, but without the growth they display—growth achieved through their friendship—we (the veiwers) would probably disparage their initial attempts at leading the good life. With the benefit of hindsight, Sheldon and Penny would probably agree that their initial ways of living were (respectively) deficient. Moreover, it is not obvious that Sheldon’s initial unemotional, near-sociopathic rationality is any better than Penny’s antiscientific, emotional, and impulsive nature. Without their friendship, they are unable to grow out of what they come to recognize—begrudgingly!—as unacceptable ways of living.
So, understanding friendship primarily in terms of our differences is distinct from more classic views in three ways. First, it allows for a wider appreciation of the various ways people can suitably live. Second, it places value on ways to flourish that aren’t—and never will be—our own. Third, it allows for more vivid insights into and self-reflection about the rightness or wrongness of our own ways of living. This departure, then, is primarily a consequence of a more modern and pluralistic interpretation of what it is to live a morally good life. A central tenet of classical thought remains—that friends are so valuable because their and our own flourishing are valued by us, and they can help us flourish. What has changed is how varied that flourishing might be, and how our friends help us realize what corrections we might make in our own beliefs about the good life.
Good Friendship and Good Friends
Close or strong friendships are conducive to moral development. This is, in part, what makes the relationship between Penny and Sheldon so important. They aren’t merely good at being friends—they are friends who make each other (morally) better people. In our modern world, especially with the ascendance of online culture, friendships can—literally—begin and end with the click of a button. Though they could move away from each other when things get rough, as Sheldon attempts to do in “The Bozeman Reaction,” or forcibly ignore or avoid each other, as when Sheldon banishes Penny from the apartment in “The Panty Piñata Polarization,” they don’t end their friendship. Despite their differences, Penny and Sheldon’s friendship doesn’t merely survive, it thrives.
Our capacity for growth leaves us vulnerable to our friends; the opportunity to change invites the opportunity to be hurt along the way. Yet this is surely something important about friendships. Unless we are so narcissistic as to presume our own perfection or so averse to risk that we couldn’t stand even the chance of being hurt, the way we grow with and through our friends is to our benefit. And without diversity and difference between friends, as Penny and Sheldon have shown us, our growth will be limited.
This is not to say that any old difference will do. Much as there are conditions under which friendships are formed, there are deal breakers as well. A person might not be able to be friends with those who discriminate against her. Likewise, a person might not be able to be friends with someone whose sense of justice is absent or radically different. There are differences that preclude friendship, but these differences are surely extreme cases.
In contrast, personal interests, natural abilities, political affiliations (except the most extreme kinds), religious orientations, and other differences surely serve as the basis for growth. Of course, this requires an attitude of acceptance, of the kind we see developing in the friendship between Penny and Sheldon. If we can learn to emulate them, our lives will certainly grow in the richness that the contrast of beliefs within a genuinely caring friendship can produce.
NOTES
1. For more on Aristotle’s classic views of friendship, cast largely as they are in similarities between those who are friends, please see chapter 2 in this volume, “You’re a Sucky, Sucky Friend,” by Dean A. Kowalski.
2. A quality summary of these and other philosophical approaches to friendship (and, indeed, much of philosophy) can be found in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. See Bennett Helm, “Friendship,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2009 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2009/entries/friendship/.
3. For a discussion of this, see Bennett Helm, Love, Friendship, and the Self (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); Sandra Lynch, Philosophy and Love (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005); and Dean Cocking and Jeanette Kennett, “Friendship and the Self,” Journal of Philosophy 108 (1998): 502–527.
4. The first hug and Leonard’s acknowledgment of it appear in “The Bath Item Gift Hypothesis.” The second hug appears in “The Large Hadron Collision.”
5. Todd VanDerWerff of the A.V. Club has noted that Jim Parsons and Kayley Cuoco form one of the standout relationships in the show, that “[Parsons and Cuoco have] a chemistry here that has some of the rattle and rhythm of the great comedic duos, and while I think the people on the Internet who want Sheldon and Penny to get together are pretty much insane, I can see what they’re feeding off of.” See Todd VanDerWerff, “The Adhesive Duck Deficiency,” the A.V. Club, November 17, 2009, www.avclub.com/articles/the-adhesive-duck-deficiency,35454/.
6. See, respectively, “The Maternal Congruence” and “The Agreement Dissection.”