Summary
- Georgie and Mandy's spinoff saves Young Sheldon season 7 from explaining their breakup.
- Young Sheldon season 7 already has enough dark storylines to cover.
- The spinoff will eventually have to address their canonically confirmed divorce, posing a challenge for the show.
While Georgie and Mandy’s spinoff will face its own plot problems, the third show in The Big Bang Theory’s universe can save Young Sheldon season 7 from one awkward storyline. Young Sheldon changed many elements of The Big Bang Theory’s formula when the spinoff debuted.
Where its predecessor was a multi-camera sitcom with a laugh track, Young Sheldon was a single-camera show. While The Big Bang Theory focused on a group of friends in their twenties and thirties, its successor focused on a family and their young children, Georgie, Sheldon, and Missy. Despite this, Young Sheldon was a hit.
Now, asYoung Sheldon season 7 prepares to end the show’s run, the series is receiving a spinoff of its own. This show will focus on Sheldon’s older brother Georgie and his love interest Mandy. Unlike Young Sheldon, Georgie and Mandy’s spinoff series will reportedly be a multi-camera sitcom.
However, that is not the only struggle that the series will face. Georgie’s first canon appearance in The Big Bang Theory season 11, episode 23, “The Sibling Realignment,” revealed that he had been divorced at least twice. This means Georgie and Mandy’s relationship is guaranteed to eventually end in tears.
Georgie and Mandy’s Young Sheldon Spinoff Makes Their Breakup Easy to Avoid
Despite this, the existence of Georgie and Mandy’s spinoff could prove to be good news for Young Sheldon season 7. The final season of the series would have needed to explain how Georgie and Many ended up separated, even though Young Sheldon season 6’s ending just saw them get engaged.
It would have been tricky for the shorter 14-episode season to jump from the beginning of their engagement to the end of their marriage, particularly when Young Sheldon also has other cast members the show needs to focus on. However, Georgie and Mandy’s spinoff solves this issue.
Their breakup no longer needs to happen in Young Sheldon season 7, since their spinoff show can explain what happened to their relationship. This is a big weight off season 7’s shoulders since the sitcom spinoff has to cover a lot of other narrative ground before it can catch up to The Big Bang Theory’s canon.
Most notably, Sheldon’s father, George Sr, cheats on his wife and dies suddenly while Sheldon is still a young teen, two pivotal character details that are repeatedly referenced throughout the earlier show. Both of these unseen events must take place in Young Sheldon season 7.
Avoiding Georgie and Mandy’s Breakup Makes Young Sheldon Season 7 Less Dark
Young Sheldon’s final season has enough bleak storylines already
While Georgie and Mandy’s Young Sheldon spinoff must explain their breakup, the show can at least focus its story mainly on them. In contrast, the earlier spinoff has more ground to cover in season 7, and almost all of Young Sheldon season 7's canon events are pretty dark.
Not only do George Sr’s affair and death still need to happen in this final season, but Missy’s teenage rebellion also needs a resolution. Young Sheldon must also explain why Sheldon’s friend, rival, and eventual crush Paige was never mentioned in The Big Bang Theory, and, judging by Paige’s recent appearances, this plot could also get heavy.
Young Sheldon season 7 also needs to justify why the free-spirited Meemaw became the more reserved version of the character seen in The Big Bang Theory, a shift that might have been a result of George Sr’s sudden death.
As such, any bleak storylines that the show can avoid should be sidestepped. This makes Georgie and Mandy’s spinoff a blessing for the show since Young Sheldon season 7 can use the duo’s wedding preparations as comedic relief during darker plots. This would be a welcome change of pace where, originally, their subplot could have ended in an acrimonious and swift divorce.
Young Sheldon Dropping Georgie and Mandy’s Breakup Could Hurt Its Spinoff
Georgie and Mandy’s spinoff will still need to justify their separation
While Young Sheldon season 7’s Georgie story can now avoid the darker side of the character’s future, this won’t help the spinoff's plot. Since Georgie and Mandy’s sitcom is about their life as newlyweds, the show will presumably need to address their canonically confirmed divorce. Any explanation that the show offers for their breakup, be it separation, divorce, or tragedy, is guaranteed to be the sort of bleak twist that any sitcom would struggle to pull off in terms of tone.
To make matters worse, the show’s reversion to a multi-camera format greatly weakens its ability to touch on heavy subjects like these. Young Sheldon struggled to explain George Sr.’s infidelity and that series was a more dramatic, less broad, and less silly comedy than The Big Bang Theory.
By going back to The Big Bang Theory’s more traditional sitcom style, Georgie and Mandy’s show will make it even tougher for the series to address the couple’s eventual breakdown. As such, Young Sheldon’s spinoff will only be able to temporarily delay a sad story set up by The Big Bang Theory years earlier.
