# Is Penny an alcoholic? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 13, 2016, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-penny-an-alcoholic/743011 "2016-01-13T03:30:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![actualliberalnotoneofthose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e79b87/32.png) [@actualliberalnotoneofthose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/actualliberalnotoneofthose)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2016, 12:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-penny-an-alcoholic/743011/22 "2016-01-14T12:07:06Z")
> [@terentii](#): > > I always wondered how she could afford so much alcohol while working at the Cheesecake Factory. I’d like to be an alkie too, but I just don’t have the money for it! ☹ When I was younger and working in kitchens, waitresses made a lot of money and subsidized my lifestyle. They also spent a lot going out and drinking. I don’t know how they do there and understand it’s far from fine dining, but as a customer Cheesecake Factory is near the high end of my dining budget. Haven’t been there much, but I would say 1 dinner is 1/2 my weekly grocery budget and I would never tip less than a twenty. Bottles of wine can be had for a few bucks, as well as hard alcohol. ---
**Author:** ![Biggirl](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/biggirl/32/3294_2.png) [@Biggirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biggirl)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2016, 12:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-penny-an-alcoholic/743011/23 "2016-01-14T12:33:37Z")
> [@terentii](#): > > I always wondered how she could afford so much alcohol while working at the Cheesecake Factory. I’d like to be an alkie too, but I just don’t have the money for it! ☹ You never heard of Two Buck Chuck? ---
**Author:** ![ivylass](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/9de053/32.png) [@ivylass](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivylass)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2016, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-penny-an-alcoholic/743011/24 "2016-01-14T13:04:34Z")
I would consider Cheesecake Factory a step above your normal chain dine ins like Red Lobster or Olive Garden, but not quite as fancy as Ruth’s Chris. It’s certainly nice enough for a business dinner. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2016, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-penny-an-alcoholic/743011/25 "2016-01-14T14:43:51Z")
> [@Biggirl](#): > > You never heard of Two Buck Chuck? I’m not interested in chugging cheap wine or bourbon. I want single-malt scotch that goes down so smoothly it’s like drinking candy! And Drambuie, of course. Gotta have my Drambuie! :o ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2016, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-penny-an-alcoholic/743011/26 "2016-01-14T15:05:15Z")
I’ve only seen a few episodes but unless Penny ending up in the hospital, ruining weddings, getting into car accidents and breaks down crying in a “very special episode” of Big Bang Theory, then no. By Hollywood sitcom standards she is not an alcoholic. That she always seems to be drinking, getting ready to go out drinking, suffering a hangover from drinking and I assume at some point involved in a string of bad relationships is Hollywood short-hand for Penny being a fun, pretty, popular, party girl who doesn’t quite have her shit together. Especially as a contrast to the other more nerdy characters in the show. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2016, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-penny-an-alcoholic/743011/27 "2016-01-14T16:35:32Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > That she always seems to be drinking, getting ready to go out drinking, suffering a hangover from drinking and I assume at some point involved in a string of bad relationships is Hollywood short-hand for Penny being a fun, pretty, popular, party girl who doesn’t quite have her shit together. > > Especially as a contrast to the other more nerdy characters in the show. Yeah, that’s pretty much exactly how I read it as well. Penny’s not _all_ that far different from a lot of people I knew (and still know) from my mid-20s through my mid-30s when I was single. Every event had booze involved, with the volume going down as we all aged. Some people drank moderately at home- probably a few people qualified as possibly having alcohol abuse issues. But everyone held down professional jobs successfully, most of us had various not-terrible relationships, and most of us grew out of it. I can think of one friend who still goes out to bars regularly, and he’s looked at as a bit of a weirdo/Peter Pan type character. They just play Penny up a bit for yuks, in much the same way they amplify Leonard’s neuroses, Sheldon’s anti-social behavior, or Wolowitz’s former perversion. And… as a waitress at a reasonably popular Cheesecake Factory, she probably brought in well over minimum wage, especially considering she was hot and sociable. Certainly enough to afford Two-Buck Chuck or even $7 wine. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2016, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-penny-an-alcoholic/743011/28 "2016-01-14T16:36:04Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > A writer does not write a character being the only person drinking in a group and then drinking to the point of passing out, show the character drinking alone and using whatever container they have to drink out of, not remembering what happened while drunk, virtually never have the character not drinking when not at work and frequently talking about how she needs a drink, does not have her significant other telling her that she may have drinking problem, in order to establish her as a party girl. That is well beyond that trope. > > They changed direction and that was good. Let’s toast to it! I definitely agree. There was a thread here a few years back where this was mentioned a little bit, and it clearly seemed to me, as you, that they were heading in this direction and then backed off. I can’t remember how many seasons ago that was. Maybe 3 or 4? But I was totally expecting a “very special episode” or something of that nature. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2016, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-penny-an-alcoholic/743011/29 "2016-01-14T17:19:10Z")
I figured it out. It’s her hair. As soon as she cut it, she stopped being an alcoholic. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2016, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-penny-an-alcoholic/743011/30 "2016-01-14T18:02:54Z")
> [@Orwell](#): > > …It never occurred to me that Penny might have a drinking problem before reading this thread. And it certainly didn’t seem to me that she was being written as an alcoholic. Sure, there are jokes about her drinking wine, but that’s a very common joke about women… on TV and in real life. And she drinks wine a lot, but doesn’t appear inebriated all the time, holds down jobs, isn’t shown hiding her booze, etc. This is about what I thought. Every sitcom character is a collection of quirks (some, like Sheldon, a shipload of them). Penny likes her wine, and is open to jokes about it, but calling her an alcoholic would be going way too far. ---
**Author:** ![Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slow_moving_vehicle/32/291_2.png) [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slow_Moving_Vehicle)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2016, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-penny-an-alcoholic/743011/31 "2016-01-14T19:00:51Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > She mostly drinks wine, I haven’t noticed it being the expensive type. When she goes out she may not be paying for many drinks. …at least, not with money… ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2016, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-penny-an-alcoholic/743011/32 "2016-01-15T01:43:10Z")
No, she’s not. But Vanessa from **Last Man Standing** and Mel from \*\*Melissa and Joey \*\*are. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2016, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-penny-an-alcoholic/743011/33 "2016-01-15T03:33:59Z")
Sitcom drinking rarely leads to any problem that can’t be resolved in 22 minutes. _How I Met Your Mother_ – Marshall gets drunk and ruins a wedding. Not to mention the entire group spends half their life in a bar. _Modern Family_ – Haley gets drunk in Hawaii and throws up. Haley gets drunk at college and gets expelled. Haley gets Alex drunk! Of course, given that Claire got drunk and agreed to have a baby with her brother-in-law, Haley never had a decent role model. _Friends_ – Ross and Rachel get drunk and get married. _Mary Tyler Moore_ – Lou Grant has a bottle in his office, and frequently drinks on the job. Eventually he has a drunken one-night stand with Sue Ann. ---
**Author:** ![Ranger\_Jeff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranger_jeff/32/2065_2.png) [@Ranger\_Jeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranger_Jeff)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2016, 6:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-penny-an-alcoholic/743011/34 "2016-01-15T06:17:04Z")
In The Bradys (the series where the girls were married women), Marcia became an alcoholic and then went on to fully recovered in one episode. I’m not a drinker myself, so I can’t judge what’s normal drinking. I can spot very heavy drinking. I suspect Penny’s behavior at first was mostly to show her as being as opposite from the boys as a person could be. I believe as the series went on, Kaley talked to the producers about dressing Penny a little more modestly. Not modestly as Mayim might define it, but Penny stopped almost falling out of her tank tops several seasons ago. ---
**Author:** ![CairoCarol](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cairocarol/32/3825_2.png) [@CairoCarol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CairoCarol)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2016, 6:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-penny-an-alcoholic/743011/35 "2016-01-15T06:28:51Z")
> [@bump](#): > > They just play Penny up a bit for yuks, in much the same way they amplify Leonard’s neuroses, Sheldon’s anti-social behavior, or Wolowitz’s former perversion. Agreed. My friends and I do the same kind of joking - lately, we write lots of texts about how the stresses of our kids college applications will make us drink very heavily in order to quell our nerves. But then we get together and everybody manages to down at most 2 glasses of wine in the course of an entire evening. ---
**Author:** ![movingfinger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@movingfinger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/movingfinger)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2016, 7:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-penny-an-alcoholic/743011/36 "2016-01-15T07:17:26Z")
I can see Penny doing a commercial for Trader Joe’s: “Hi; I’m Penny and a totally fictitious character, but if I wasn’t I would get politely sloshed on Two Buck Chuck every day! For only $2.49; slightly higher out of the LA area. Party on!” ---
**Author:** ![don\_t\_ask](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@don\_t\_ask](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/don_t_ask)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2016, 8:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-penny-an-alcoholic/743011/37 "2016-01-15T08:14:18Z")
> [@kunilou](#): > > Sitcom drinking rarely leads to any problem that can’t be resolved in 22 minutes. > > _How I Met Your Mother_ – Marshall gets drunk and ruins a wedding. Not to mention the entire group spends half their life in a bar. > > _Modern Family_ – Haley gets drunk in Hawaii and throws up. Haley gets drunk at college and gets expelled. Haley gets Alex drunk! Of course, given that Claire got drunk and agreed to have a baby with her brother-in-law, Haley never had a decent role model. > > _Friends_ – Ross and Rachel get drunk and get married. > > _Mary Tyler Moore_ – Lou Grant has a bottle in his office, and frequently drinks on the job. Eventually he has a drunken one-night stand with Sue Ann. Yeah it’s very hard to tell what the writer’s attitude is to drinking on US TV shows because although it is commonly on display generally anyone drinking is shown in a bad light. The norm seems to be to portray drinkers as losers rather than just allow them to drink without consequences. ---
**Author:** ![Plumpudding](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/edb3f5/32.png) [@Plumpudding](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Plumpudding)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2016, 9:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-penny-an-alcoholic/743011/38 "2016-01-15T09:44:44Z")
She sounds like she should get interested in something. I don’t think acting is the best “place” for her to be “put”. She could get interested in talk-shows or american politics? ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2016, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-penny-an-alcoholic/743011/39 "2016-01-15T13:36:59Z")
> [@Orwell](#): > > Sure, there are jokes about her drinking wine, but that’s a very common joke about women… on TV and in real life. I think this is the key comment in the thread. The “Women love to drink wine” joke became an Internet meme and common Facebook gag 8-10 years ago and hit peak use maybe 2-3 years ago. It got to the point that people on Facebook were posting “wine wine wine wine” so much _I_ was starting to think some of them were alcoholics. “someecoards” gags about women drinking wine were more common than air. “The Big Bang Theory,” which is, if I may be a little frank, not the most courageously innovative sitcom ever made, is just re-using that common meme as a recurring Penny joke, nothing more. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2016, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-penny-an-alcoholic/743011/40 "2016-01-15T15:12:26Z")
> [@kunilou](#): > > _How I Met Your Mother_ – Marshall gets drunk and ruins a wedding. Not to mention the entire group spends half their life in a bar. Good call… look at it this way… the HIMYM cast isn’t generally thought of as being a bunch of raging alcoholics. Would Penny’s drinking seem out of place among them? I don’t think so. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2016, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-penny-an-alcoholic/743011/41 "2016-01-16T02:02:53Z")
Actually I think she would stand out from the HIMYM group. That group drinks mostly when they are meeting to socialize in a bar. None of them are shown at home drinking regularly, especially when none of their other friends are drinking, let alone drinking to passing out while socializing with friends none of whom are drinking. Yes, they fall to the standard sitcom tool of not coping with a problem so get drunk and make things worse - ha-ha. But even then not to the point of not remembering what they did. Socializing in a bar - not trope for a problem. A single out of control episode? A standard ha-ha. How it had been with Penny before they backed down? Outside that range by far. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-penny-an-alcoholic/743011.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-penny-an-alcoholic/743011.md?page=3)