Dr. Wakeman built the XJ series after the Armagedroid debacle, and then you realize that she did so to build a humanistic protector, one who wouldn't be greeted with abject fear everywhere she went. Which is why Jenny is the final model, and the slightly-less-than-human XJ8 is her older sister.
In Escape from Cluster Prime Vega describes her mother as a (out of all the words in the world) tyrant. Considering that Vexus took away her kingdom's rights to defend themselves, and framed a foreign robot just because she didn't want to become a resident of her home planet, leaving her home planet open for any hostile takeover...
In "Saved by the Shell" after a disastrous date with Don Prima, partially caused by the Silver Shell, Jenny decides that she doesn't like either of them. Jenny never fawns over Don again in the series, but whenever the Silver Shell returns she goes back to admiring him. It could be rubbed off as a continuity error, but it's shown time again that Jenny feels very lonely since she's the only fully sentient robot in the town. In "Love 'em or Leash 'em" she immediately tries to date Kenny simply because he's a robot. Jenny is likely tolerating the Silver Shell's rudeness because she still longs for a robot partner.
Why is XJ-9 named Jenny? It's not just a random name - it's short for "Gynoid."
This troper just assumed it was because "J-9" sounds similar to "Jenny".
As pointed out in the Headscratchers page, Nora had a very good reason to program Jenny and her sisters with independent personalities and not simple machines: That way, they can come up with original and unorthodox solutions to problems should the situation arise. If they were typical, calculating robots, they would have to calculate for the most logical solution based on data. But with their own personalities, they are able to come up with their own ideas and follow their guts, which in many cases can come in handy.
Specifically, they were meant to avert the overly-specialized simple AI of the disastrously powerful Armagedroid, which itself was meant to bypass the slow and ineffective methods of Skyway Patrol. Each one in order shows her solving the next problem in line towards creating Jenny.
XJ-1 is a harmless ball containing an AI that expresses the raw emotions of a baby - Nora wanted a machine that could value emotion over cold logic, so she began with the simple goal of solving the Hard Problem of Consciousness through a robot that experiences emotion.
XJ-2 was meant to test the ability of that AI to control a weapon and make conscious decisions about how to use it, with disastrous consequences. Weapons would not be built into any member of the line for several generations.
XJ-3 is the first attempt to fit the previous onto a humanoid body shape; a step too far ahead of the computing power and material durability she was working with at the time; lacking the ability to balance.
XJ-4 purely focuses on perfecting the ability of the system to balance performing multiple tasks at the same time.
XJ-5 is a conversation-focused experiment in making an artificial personality that the public will like and trust - based on TV and radio personalities that Dr. Wakeman personally found amicable. She turned out to be too one-note, leading to:
XJ-6, the first "teenage" robot. Programmed to want to learn and adapt so that she could decide for herself what her personality ought to be like, she ended up with a jealousy complex for everything that wasn't so simple for her to add to herself.
XJ-7 was meant to avert XJ-6's inferiority issues by being pre-loaded with tons of information about life, the universe, and everything. That, predictably, resulted in the poor robot's emotional core being in a constant state of overwhelming stress and existential ennui.
XJ-8 finally has a good balance between intellect and emotion, by having significantly dulled versions of both intended to learn "naturally" over time. Wakeman saw fit to load her up with enough power to face real threats, only to find her to not be adaptable enough to use that power carefully or cleverly. She would go on to design XJ-9 with that adaptability as her defining feature.
In one episode, Jenny is shown learning French with a tape, even though the same episode shows that she is programmed to speak Japanese as well, so why would she need to learn French? One explanation could be that, while she is programmed to speak Japanese, French may not be in her program.
Why wouldn't the kindergarteners let Jenny pretend to be the robot? Because she's ALREADY one, it doesn't count as pretending to be something if you're ACTUALLY that thing.
That same episode, all of them are appalled when Jenny calls the playtime “stupid”. Next scene, all of the kids end up throwing the word back at her as she attempts to play with them in the playground, despite being shocked by the word earlier. Perhaps all the kids are simply giving Jenny a taste of her own medicine with how harmful the word is to them.
One episode features a villain called Armegeddroid. He was programmed to destroy all weapons, but goes a bit too far with his mission. When he comes back, Jenny is able to trick him via his programming into self-destructing, as he is a weapon. In context she didn't have a lot of choice, but consider that since Wakeman created Armegeddroid, he is technically Jenny's brother. She talked her own brother into committing suicide.
The series' conceit is that many robots are people too, with their own thoughts and feelings. Wakeman's decision to keep XJ's 1-8 shut down in the basement is a little harsher in that light, with the additional fact that they're Jenny's sisters. She does lighten up about it later, at least.
The Exoskin from "The Return of Raggedy Android" is still out there.
Jenny, being a robot, will most likely outlive all her friends (and remain in a teenage mindset the whole time.) Although it's somewhat mitigated by the fact that Nora has a de-aging machine, the idea that her friends specifically would de-age when they got too old has its own harsh implications, unless Nora's prepared to de-age everyone else's loved ones.
In the Christmas special, everyone who wasn't Sheldon believed that Jenny had snapped and started destroying holidays out of her own volition. This includes Brad, her best friend, Tuck, who considers her a Cool Big Sis, and her own mother. That's horrifying on two levels. The first is that this episode kinda establishes Sheldon as a Love Martyr (though downplayed since Jenny does give him a mistletoe kiss in gratitude). The second is that even people who know Jenny personally were easily duped into believing that she had turned into a raging monster, didn't bother to investigate to see if there was any evidence that it wasn't her choice to do what she was doing (and in fact were completely unwilling to believe Sheldon's perfectly valid theories on why this was happening, ex. an evil robot double or mind control) and were prepared to shut her down permanently.
The episode "Ball and Chain" has Tammy of the Space Bikers attempt to marry Brad. The fact that Brad's a teenager and is initially uncomfortable with getting married to Tammy (and deciding against it after realizing what their married life will actually be like) becomes a bit more disturbing than it already is when the later episode "Voyage to the Planet of the Bikers" reveals that Tammy is a schoolteacher. Tammy is practically an ephebophile (although, this is assuming the biological rates are the same, since they are fish people and may have different rules, customs and even maturity levels.)
The scrapyard scene in "Escape from Cluster Prime" is quite scary on its own, but it gets worse when you realize that there's a very important question that wasn't answered: Just why, in the robot equivalent of a cemetery, would the corpses be on the open for everyone to see?. There are three options:
Vexus doesn't care a crap about her subjects even in death, so she just indiscriminately leaves them there.
That place was not only a cemetery, but also of an execution room and the people there where executed.
And if that is true, why they were executed? Where they criminals? Or did they just step out of line?
Vexus let them out in the open as a way to subtly intimidate her subjects into following her rule without a question.
The people of Cluster Prime are robots. The scrapyard might be, in their value system, just a place where they discard obsolete components. Do you care about where your hair trimmings end up?
