Young Sheldon season 7 has come to an end. This marks the end of the second show of The Big Bang Theory Universe and what a ride it has been. It was a complete rollercoaster of seeing life through Sheldon’s eyes before he won that Nobel Prize.
Young Sheldon is all about growing up
When the show was first announced I was baffled. A show about The Big Bang Theory’s breakout character Sheldon Cooper? Color me intrigued.
Then I watched the trailers and the interviews of the actors who would help Sheldon become the man he would be.
My main concern was how the writers would integrate the stories adult Sheldon tells in The Big Bang Theory in Young Sheldon. There are so many, like the time he tried to build something nuclear and ordered uranium.
Or how Missy punched him below the belt while they were younger. While the writers managed to tell the story of how Sheldon tried to buy uranium, they never addressed Missy’s punches.
The earlier seasons focussed on Sheldon trying to navigate through High School as a pre-teenager and it was comedy gold. Sheldon out-professor the teachers in the school was funny but also a pitfall as it would show in the final season.
Sheldon was put in place after finding out in Germany that there were even more brilliant students and students whose parents spared no expense to develop their children as best as possible. It only spurred Sheldon on to learn more after his bruised ego was healed.
Many of Sheldon’s quirks were addressed throughout seven seasons. His fear of chickens, his having a tough time making friends, and the history between him and Tam.
Tam, by the way, is the first character to cross over from Young Sheldon to The Big Bang Theory. He was put on Sheldon’s enemy list for years.
Meet the Coopers
At the show’s start, we get acquainted with Sheldon’s family. They are George, Melissa “Missy” Cooper, Georgie, Meemaw, and his mother Mary. Together, they help navigate Sheldon through life.
Georgie and Mandy
At the start of the show, life is quite hard for Georgie. He has a smarter brother who is in the same class. Later in life, Georgie and Meemaw run an illegal gambling ring in a laundry shop. They eventually get busted when a police officer turns them in.
Georgie has dated a few girls before he runs into Mandy. The thing is, Georgie lied about his age and has Mandy pregnant. Their relationship is rocky but eventually, the two end up getting married.
This created the spinoff called “Georgie and Mandy’s First Marriage”. The show will revolve around Georgie and Mandy as they navigate life as a newlywed couple.
In The Big Bang Theory, Georgie is known as Dr. Tire and he is a self-made millionaire with car tire shops all over Texas.
Mary and George Cooper
George and Mary Cooper have a great marriage or do they? Throughout the show, they have their differences but always act in the best interest of the children. George is a very understanding father who does his utmost best to understand and help Sheldon.
But is their marriage so incredibly good? Both of them have toyed with the idea of sleeping with other people. As devout Christians, which is a theme throughout the show, it would be considered a sin.
It would be a betrayal of the vows they took when they were married. Although nothing ever happens they withstand the test and stay together until George dies of a heart attack.
Mary delves deeper into religion to find comfort and in The Big Bang Theory, we see what happened to her later in life.
Religion is a big theme in the Cooper’s house and when Georgie has a child out of wedlock, the town of Medford turns on the Coopers. Which I found quite hypocritical at the time.
The hypocrisy is that the people and Church preach unconditional love and forgiveness but oust those who don’t live up to the unconditional conditions set by man.
The Coopers are eventually let back in and it is too bad that it wasn’t shown how the Coopers dealt with that.
Meemaw Tucker
Meemaw is Sheldon’s grandmother and she is a widow who helps George and Mary from time to time by babysitting the kids and giving them sage advice.
She was in a relationship with Dr. Sturgis but broke it off to be with Dale. Eventually, she would stay with Dale for the remainder of the series.
To make money, she opens an illegal gambling ring with the help of Georgie. When she gets busted because a dirty cop told on her, she is forced to do community service. 180 hours and despite her reluctance she does finish it.
Meemaw comes back later in The Big Bang Theory and is still very fond of Sheldon and sticks up for him when Amy turns down Sheldon’s marriage proposal. But the two work out their differences.
Meemaw always has money and is known to be very generous. Sheldon may have picked up on that because, in The Big Bang Theory, we see that Sheldon just lends money to Penny just like that.
The final season has a lot of shake-ups
The final season was delayed due to the SAG-AFTRA strike and as of such, it only has 14 episodes.
Of course, as a fan, I would have loved to have the full 22 episodes to say goodbye to the cast but I understand the predicament.
Nevertheless, I am happy that the writers got what they needed and that we had a great 7th season.
In the 7th season, Georgie struggles with his mother-in-law. She doesn’t like him and doesn’t think he is the one for their only daughter.
Mandy in turn sticks up for Georgie and gives him instructions on how to get into the good graces of her mother. Georgie and Mandy get unexpected help from Mandy’s father.
Georgie ends up working in the car shop owned by Mandy’s father and takes his first steps to becoming Dr. Tire.
In The Big Bang Theory, Georgie is a self-made millionaire who owns several car tire shops. Unfortunately, he has been divorced three times by then. And here is hoping that he will have divorced Mandy three times and remarried her.
Mary and George are reigniting the spark and undoing one of the big myths of The Big Bang Theory. Adult Sheldon tells the story of the three-time knock. Sheldon ran into his father in the bedroom once and found him with another woman.
The actual version is that he caught his parents with his mother dressed up in German Lederhosen pretending to be a German Fraulein.
For George life is looking up. He has a job offer from Rice University and the Coopers will have to move to Houston. With Sheldon moving to Caltech and Georgie and Mandy already out of the house, this only leaves Missy who is overjoyed to move to Houston.
When George leaves the house, he never returns. He was hit by a heart attack and in the final episodes we have his funeral and the ramifications of the loss of George. Life is tougher on the Coopers without him.
Sheldon has trouble coping with it and becomes quiet. Missy is enraged and so is Mary. The neighbors who rejected them from church and their social activities all help out. They have redeemed themselves.
One of the best parts of the final episodes was Jim Parsons and Miyam Bialik reprising their roles of adult Sheldon and Amy Farrah Fowler. I loved what I saw, they are living a full life with a son and daughter.
From what we know is that their son is named Leonard but the name of their daughter is unrevealed. It does have a funny reference to Penny when Amy mentions that their daughter wants to take acting classes to which Sheldon responds: We should have never let Penny babysit.
The end scene with the Dire Straits’s Walk of Life as Sheldon enters CalTech was a great ending.
I will miss Young Sheldon
For seven seasons I have watched Young Sheldon turn into the person we cheered for in The Big Bang Theory.
What I really loved is that Sheldon and his family didn’t shy away from big themes such as religion, adultery, illegal gambling, and children out of wedlock. That made the show much more a dramady than a comedy.
Also, life as a prodigy is much harder than I could have imagined. Sure, it is a TV show but not being accepted by your peers because you are smarter and are misunderstood makes life quite hard.
Trying to find friends who are much older than you, in this case, Dr. Sturgis, makes life a bit more tolerable. Especially in the earlier seasons.
Later on, Sheldon does connect when he is in college. He has a few friends come over and he works together with them. I liked that they cast Taylor Spreitler of the old TV show “Melissa and Joey” for that role.
Jim Parsons did the voice-over for all seven seasons and it is like he was never gone but when I saw him on the screen again with Miyam Bialik, I found a sudden urge to rewatch The Big Bang Theory this summer.
What is The Big Bang Theory universe’s future
After The Big Bang Theory ended in 2019, Young Sheldon was already in full swing. But now that the show has come to an end, I eagerly await what’s next.
From what we know, Georgie and Mandy will have their spin-off show called Georgie and Mandy’s First Marriage. Mandy’s parents will play a big role in that. And I hope that we haven’t seen the last of Mary, Meemaw and Missy.
We know that Sheldon and his brother don’t keep in touch for 10 years as stated in The Big Bang Theory. So I hope that they are going to make a few cameos.
Maybe even George Sr. when Georgie dreams about his father or looks back on when his father gave him sage advice while raising CeeCee.
There is another Big Bang Theory spin-off but details are being kept under wraps. Earlier rumors were about a Bernadette and Howard spin-off but there was also a tiny rumor about Koothrapali having his own show.
The Big Bang Theory is vast and the creators have solely focussed on their breakout character; Sheldon. While I love Sheldon as a character on both The Big Bang Theory and Young Sheldon, I would love to see them focus on a different character.
Leonard and Penny as parents would have been nice. Or a Young Penny perhaps, since she was quite the bully when she was younger.
All in all, I am looking forward to watching the next shows from the Big Bang universe.
