Joel’s idiot secretary. The other woman.

S5E8 - (flashback) Joel asks Penny out for drinks one evening while leaving work.

S1E1 - Penny escorts Mitchell Funt out of the building after a successful meeting with Joel. Midge arrives and leaves with Joel, and notices Penny failing to sharpen a pencil on the way out.

S1E2 - Moved to the billing department when Abe suspects that she’s the one Joel is cheating with.

S1E3 - Joel avoids a call from Penny with the help of Moskowitz.

S1E4 - Midge brings the kids to Joel’s new apartment and mocks Penny to her face.

S1E5 - Calls Joel while he’s at the Old Town bar with Archie.

S1E5 - Penny and Joel go out for dinner with Moishe and Shirley. Moishe tells Joel that she is not the one.

S1E5 - Archie calls Joel and Penny to let them know that he won’t be accompanying them to The Music Man (visually implied to be at Imogene’s behest).

S1E6 - Midge, Abe, Rose, Noah and Astrid accidentally run into Joel and Penny at Ruby Foo’s restaurant, prompting them to leave. Afterwards, the two share an awkward taxi ride home. When they get there, Joel tells Penny to go on up without him, that he needs to go back to the office and she shouldn’t wait up.

S1E8 - Penny barges into B. Altman’s and loudly confronts Midge for sleeping with Joel.

S5E9 - Midge makes Penny one of the central topics of her debut set on The Gordon Ford Show.

PENNY: I wonder if there really was a General Tso.
– S1E6

PENNY: Hey!
MIDGE: Penny. What are you…
PENNY: I have been all over town looking for you.
MIDGE: Penny, I'm working right now.
PENNY: Oh, I know. I know you're working because Joel said you worked in a department store. He just didn't say which one. So I went to all of them. I went to Saks. I went to Bergdorf's. I went to Macy's. I went to Gimbels. They're across the street from each other, so that was easy. I went to Lord & Taylor's. I went to Bendel's, even though I thought, “She wouldn't shop at Bendel's,” but it's not really about where you would shop, is it?
MIDGE: Not really. Look, can we…
PENNY: I almost gave up. But I decided, “No, I'll give it one more try.” And I came here, and here you are.
MIDGE: Yes. Look…
PENNY: I know all about you and Joel. I know that you spent the night together. And I think that's rotten. It's mean and it's spiteful and vindictive and I don't understand why you'd do it.
MIDGE: Wow. Where's a fainting couch when you need one?
PENNY: Joel and I were happy.
MIDGE: Oh, boy.
PENNY: I made him happy.
MIDGE: He moved out, Penny.
PENNY: Not really.
MIDGE: Are his things there?
PENNY: There's socks.
MIDGE: Socks? Or just a sock? He moved out. You broke up.
PENNY: No. We did not break up. Joel never said the words, “We broke up.”
MIDGE: What words did he say?
PENNY: Other words.
MIDGE: Other words that basically amount to “we broke up”?
PENNY: I was good for him. Better for him than you were. He relaxed around me. He'd come home at night and fall right to sleep.
MIDGE: Boy, you are making it way too easy.
PENNY: If you had just let go, if you had just…
MIDGE: He never took off his wedding ring. You didn't think that was strange?
PENNY: The stress of everything made his fingers swell.
MIDGE: Penny, you don't really believe that, do you?
PENNY: He would've forgotten you. You just did something.
MIDGE: You need to go.
PENNY: You did sleep together, didn't you?
MIDGE: Yes.
PENNY: Tramp! That's what I went to seven different department stores to say! You are a tramp!
– S1E8

JOEL: Penny. I didn't know you were still here.
PENNY: Just trying to figure out this new-fangled thing. So, you have a ten-o'clock with the production team tomorrow morning, and lunch with Nadler at one.
JOEL: That you'll cancel first thing tomorrow.
PENNY: I always do.
JOEL: What would I do without you?
PENNY: I would hate to think.
JOEL: Good night.
PENNY: Good night.
JOEL: Hey. You feel like getting a drink?
PENNY: Sure.
– S5E8

MIDGE: Actually, I should be grateful that my husband cheated with the person that he did. Because she was, as they say in the American Journal of Medicine, an idiot. And I'm not just saying that because she slept with my husband. I'm saying that because I saw her ask a plastic plant in the office if it wanted some water. And then waited for an answer. For ten full minutes. And then went to the coffeepot and asked why the plant was mad at her. So when your husband leaves you for that, it softens the blow. It feels good that after their first cocktail party appearance, people call you saying, “What was he thinking? She apologized to the ashtray every time she put out a cigarette.”
– S5E9

1. Pilot
2. Ya Shivu v Bolshom Dome Na Kholme
4. The Disappointment of the Dionne Quintuplets
5. Doink
6. Mrs. X at the Gaslight
8. Thank You and Good Night

8. The Princess and the Plea

• List of Characters