I’ve already mentioned a couple of times (I’m not searching for when) that I think when Penny’s last name is revealed to be Smith. someone will discover her relationship to one. . . of. . .these. . .guys.
But why stop there. We know the following about Penny.
a) She reads comic books very slowly, compared to Amy and Bernadette
b) Leonard taught her to play chess, and she beat him the first time she played
c) She spent long hours reading her sales rep materials, and she seems to understand them.
So will the final episode feature Penny taking some sort of IQ test designed specifically for illiterates, and it’s revealed that her IQ is actually higher than Sheldon’s, but she never applied herself because an undiagnosed learning disability made her give up on school?
b) Being better than Leonard (who can be distracted by Penny) is not necessary a sign of high intelligence.
c) We don’t know how complicated the sales rep material really is.
On the other hand, Penny is clearly reasonably intelligent - just not interested in the kind of things that the other characters are interested in. But a sudden revelation of high intelligence is too big a bombshell for the final episode.
Penny is as intelligent or dumb as the plot or joke needs her to be; it can be a little annoying. I understand the showrunning reasons for it, but a little more consistency would have been nice.
The original idea for the show was the bright ugly nerd falling for the dumb blonde. Indeed, the early reviews did not give it much hope with such a hack worn out premise.
And the idea that Penny got smarter from her friendship with the nerds and her love for Leonard is entirely plausible.
She’s always been portrayed as above-average in intelligence. She only appears unintelligent by comparison with the other cast members. And she’s much higher than them in Wis and Cha.
I like the OP’s idea. Penny having a high IQ would be hilarious, but it shouldn’t be a learning disability that kept it hidden…it should turn out she never applied herself because it was easier to get by on her looks.
Think of it this way, high IQ is not a way to manipulate her hayseed hometown boys…but tits work very nicely.:eek:
Yeah, in D&D, there are three statistics to describe how “mentally strong” you are: Intelligence (abbreviated “Int”) measures bookishness, logical ability, and the like, roughly the same stuff that’s on an IQ test. Wisdom (Wis) measures common sense, perceptiveness, intuition, and the like. Charisma (Cha) is “how much the Universe likes you”: Your ability to influence and manipulate people, be perceived the way you want to, and some kinds of magical ability. It’s quite common to have a character who’s very high on one of those stats, but very low on another.
So Leonard, Sheldon, Howard, and Raj all have very high Int scores, but only middling Wis, and Cha ranging from low to abysmal. Penny, on the other hand, has decent Int and Wis, and high Cha.
I recall an article in Dragon magazine about how to treat abnormally high or low CHA ( normal range is 3D6 - or 3 to 18). The Doctor would have CHA > 18 allowing him to convince people of all sorts of things, while Cthulu would have negative charisma (weaponized ugliness).
