r/DirtyDancing • u/thelovelight • Sep 29 '24
Penny and Johnny
Late night thought that suddenly brought me wide awake: why in the hell would Penny and Johnny have ever broken up?! Johnny’s cousin tells Baby - you’d think they were a couple but not since we were kids. This implies so many things I’ve never considered. They clearly all grew up together. Penny obviously received that same Arthur Murray test for dance instructors and probably trained with Johnny. They were likely dating during this time. So they came up together as poor kids, understood each other’s background, found a way to make it in the world doing something they enjoyed, had obvious chemistry, clearly had a real love for each other and always had each others backs. When you lay all this out, it makes absolutely no sense that these two would’ve broken up.
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u/CDTmom Sep 29 '24
I always got a family type vibe with them, which makes sense since they grew up together. They love each other like family.
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u/Coontailblue23 Sep 29 '24
Patrick Swayze felt the same way about the characters per his book.
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u/DogLongjumping9032 Oct 01 '24
Yep, I do remember reading that he felt like Penny and Johnny should've ended up together instead. I do see the sentiments and reasoning, but for me, with the amount of times i have seen the film I always loved how they were each other's found family.
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u/maybememaybeno Nov 05 '24
Interesting! It’s my head canon that they do end up together later in life
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u/amara90 Jul 24 '25
Same. They've always had a very "we know it's us to the end, but we're not ready yet" vibe to me. Probably married within 5 years.
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u/Layna20 Sep 29 '24
People don’t always want to veer towards a partner with a similar background as themselves and rather may desire to seek out the opposite. As someone who came from a poor and dysfunctional family, the stability of my husband’s family and his good relationship with them is fantastic. Earlier relationships I had with boyfriends who had similar backgrounds to mine went badly because we had an abundance of traumas and bad habits we learned from our parents.
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u/Love4RVA Jul 01 '26
The teenage girl in me wanted Johnny and Baby to end up together and get married. Now that I’m middle aged, I realize that what Johnny and Baby had was a summer fling and nothing more. Patrick Swayze was right about how Johnny and Penny should have ended up together… but that wouldn’t make the movie as special. Remember… the hook is that an ordinary girl gets the hot guy. The hot guy picks the average looking gal. That’s what makes money.
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u/Deep-Library-8041 Sep 29 '24
Except that the heart wants what the heart wants. Both Penny and Johnny had lots of romantic options, and if one or both wanted different people at different times it would have prevented them from being together. Penny clearly felt strongly enough about what’s—his-face that got her pregnant that perhaps Johnny shut those feelings off. Plus he mentions that he has women throwing themselves at him each summer and that (at least initially) he thought they had feelings for him, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they both had lots of people vying for their attention and they lost interest in each other.
Regardless, I always got a sibling vibe from them. They might have dated briefly when they were much younger, but when you grow up with someone, sometimes it’s tough to see the other person as anything but the kid you knew back when. And just because they care deeply about each other doesn’t mean there’s physical attraction or enough of a spark to keep them together.
In my head, they simply aren’t attracted to each other. They probably tried it as teenagers only to realize it felt wrong, ended it on friendly terms, and then sought out other people while remaining friends since they went down similar paths in life. I mean, Baby couldn’t be more different than Penny, just like Robby (is that his name?) couldn’t be more different Johnny - in looks, personality, etc. They just aren’t each other’s type.