We haven't heard many good stories about Penny's so-far-unseen brother and mother on The Big Bang Theory, but now we're going to get a grand introduction to them when they show up at the beginning of Season 10. As with a lot of family visits, things won't necessarily go smoothly when they come around, either.
Penny's close with her dad. As we know, her brother Randall has been a bit of trouble over the years, selling drugs and being in and out of jail, and that's put a lot of stress on her mom. You will pick up on the tensions between her mother and her brother very quickly, and you get a glimpse of Penny and her dad being caught in the middle of that.
The Big Bang Theory's executive producer Steve Molaro talked to Entertainment Weekly and spilled the beans about what the visit from Penny's mom and brother will be like for the still (relatively) newly married lady. While we've seen some of Penny's dad, Wyatt (Keith Carradine), in the past on the show, all we really know about the rest of her immediate family is that her brother is pretty committed to selling drugs and it hasn't gotten him anywhere good in life.
Wyatt is probably just laid back enough, like Penny, to dislike what Randall (Jack McBrayer) has become, while not letting those feelings overtake his life. It sounds, though, like Penny's mom, who will be played by Married with Children and Sons of Anarchy vet Katey Sagal, has likely had a lot of her life taken up by worry and anger over Randall's crappy life choices. And, this may be why Penny doesn't really talk about her; Randall has taken up most of her time and energy, while Penny was left to deal mostly with Wyatt.
Wyatt and Penny are both the type of people who see right through bullshit, and they have probably accepted that Randall won't get his life together by now and let go of any negative feelings about it to the extent that they can deal with him. Penny's mom, though, sounds like she still has hope for his future, and that keeps the tension between the two of them alive. And when you have a family of four people, but two of them are constantly at odds, it makes a lot of sense that the other two in that familial unit would always feel like they were in the middle of that battle.
Well, Penny is going to have a lot to deal with when Season 10 rolls around and her family hits town in full force. Let's hope that Leonard isn't too busy dealing with the fallout from his dad and Sheldon's mom getting it on that he can't help Penny handle her family issues. We can see how everything shakes out when The Big Bang Theory returns September 22 on CBS.
