Before Giving Jessica Knight Big Promotion, NCIS Failed This TBBT Character’s Career
She was never recognised even by a CBS fellow show.
Throughout its more-than-a-decade-long TV run, The Big Bang Theory has seen its main characters pave their way to what they’ve always dreamed of, but the show completely ruined this way for one of them.
Since its launch back in 2007, The Big Bang Theory has been capturing Penny’s numerous attempts to achieve her biggest goal of becoming a prominent actress in Hollywood, yet everything she ended up with boiled down to a couple of cheap commercials.
For years that they saw the show’s creators snubbing the character, fans have been vocal about the way she was treated all along, but it seems like not only The Big Bang Theory, but another CBS popular series didn’t want to recognise Penny’s acting skills anyway.
For several seasons in a row Penny may have never come close to a breakout role in her career, but once she had a real chance which eventually she was deprived of, and once again unfairly.
Season 7 episode 12, titled The Hesitation Ramification, features Penny telling her friends that she got a cameo role in NCIS, CBS’ long-standing darling that has never had any trouble with its high ratings ever since it kicked off its first season back in 2003.
According to Penny, she was supposed to play a customer in a diner who would start flirting with NCIS’ biggest figure Leroy Jethro Gibbs portrayed by Mark Harmon. The episode then sees all the characters sitting around the TV watching an NCIS episode and waiting for Penny to appear on the screen, but she actually never does, which leads the character to think that it’s been decided to cut her out of the show.
This episode comes as yet another proof that Penny has been humiliated regarding her acting career in every way possible. The character has been constantly mocked by her own friends for her failures to get some decent role on TV or in a movie, and, on top of that, her talent was also disregarded by NCIS, even though she was clearly supposed to show up for a couple of minutes at most.
The Big Bang Theory eventually makes Penny completely give up on her dream after years of looking for a breakout role and trying to secure her position in the industry as by the end of the show the character finds a well-paid job in a pharmaceutical company.
Though Young Sheldon ’s finale indeed had a great opportunity to make it up to Penny after all those years of her miserable position in The Big Bang Theory, it still proved that she eventually never gave her acting career a second chance and completely turned away from it, while still having passion for the movie industry.