Young Sheldon
“Memoir”, Season 7 Episode 14
What do I know about this series going into it?
It’s a prequel to The Big Bang Theory, centered on the character of Sheldon Cooper(?) when he was a child. I’ve watched one or two short clips of The Big Bang Theory, and through pop-cultural osmosis I’m generally familiar with Sheldon’s habits, foibles, and friends.
I recognize the actor in the episode’s screengrab as the adult Sheldon, so between that and the episode title I assume this is a whole-episode flashback from the point of view of the future.
Previously On
I’m surprised this show has a Previously.
There’s a train. Sheldon is in high school and afraid of a chicken. He’ll go to church with his mother even though he doesn’t believe in God. He has a sister. A kid hugs a tire. “If it’s funny, it’s a Bazinga” - his catchphrase in the future. Sheldon gets punched by a bunch of people. He tackles the pitcher in a baseball game. There’s a tornado. He’s going to MIT, no, Caltech. His father died.
Recap
Old Sheldon is doing the voiceover (does he do it for all episodes or just this one?). It’s a month after his father died, and Sheldon and his sister are not happy that his mother wants them to go to church for the third time in a week. But he does so anyway to make his mother happy, just like he always does for others.
Freeze-frame over the voiceover, as his wife Amy objects. You never do things to make other people happy! Turns out the voiceover is Old Sheldon writing his memoirs. And Jim Parsons as “the voice of ‘Sheldon’” appears in the credits, so I suspect that the memoir framing device is for the whole series, not just this episode.
Opening credits.
Back in the past, young Sheldon brings out his laptop in the middle of church. His sister wants to play with it, and his mother tells him to put it away. Their bickering attracts the pastor’s attention, who asks him what it is and says it’s not appropriate for church. Instead, Sheldon stands up and demands everyone worship this “miracle of technology”.
Future-Amy interrupts Future-Sheldon again: We have to go to our son Leonard’s hockey game. Sheldon doesn’t want to; he can’t see the point of sports.
Back in the past, an elderly woman with a southern accent (who was in the opening scene but whose relationship to the characters I don’t know yet) talks to her husband; she’s worried about how Mary, Sheldon’s mother, is turning hard to religion in the wake of her husband’s death and is neglecting her kids.
Over dinner, Sheldon doesn’t understand why his father’s placemat is still there. This leads to awkward conversation about the atheism of the children vs. Mary’s Christian beliefs. The latter wants to baptize the former, but neither child is thrilled with the idea.
There are two other people at the dinner table, one male, one female. I don’t yet know how they fit in the family tree, but based on their ages and the general vibe of the conversation I’m guessing they’re cousins to Sheldon and his sister, and that the elderly couple from earlier are their parents, making the older woman from the opening scene Mary’s sister.
Sheldon and his sister reveal that Male Cousin kissed “Veronica Duncan”, who punched him in the face in response, and that Veronica looked like Female Cousin but younger and taller. Female Cousin is appalled.
After dinner, Male Cousin, who I learn is named Georgie, encounters Mary crying outside. She desperately wants to get the kids baptized and is upset that Georgie and everyone treats it as a joke. Between this and the following two conversations I learn that I have the family tree wrong: Mary has three kids, I think: Georgie, Sheldon, and Younger Sister (whose name I don’t know yet). The older woman isn’t Mary’s sister but rather Mary’s mother. And Female Cousin, whose name I don’t know yet either, is not a cousin at all but rather Georgie’s wife.
Sheldon is in his room, packing to leave for CalTech. Mary enters, still trying to convince him to be baptized, and while he recognizes that she makes several good rhetorical points he doesn’t give in.
Mary is at her husband’s graveside when her mother arrives. (I’ll call her Mee-maw, as that’s what Georgie called her. I also notice the gravestone says George, so clearly Georgie is George Junior.) Mee-maw gently tries to bring Mary back down to Earth, but sees it’s going nowhere and gives up.
Back in his room, Sheldon is still packing for CalTech and talking to his sister, who is finally identified by captions as Missy. Mee-maw returns from the cemetery and tells them to sit down. She’s on the verge of tears: she needs the two of them to get baptized if only to stop Mary from falling apart. They reluctantly agree.
And then, during the commercial break, comes a deus ex machina:
Back to the episode. Sheldon and Missy are in a sort of prep room at the church, and the pastor starts to say that he knows their father would- but gets no further, as Missy declares that her dad’s dead and storms out. But Sheldon stays. “I believe in you,” he tells his mother, reprising his line from the Previously.
The pastor welcomes Sheldon to the congregation, but his appearance is… a bit shocking.
In the future, Amy is reading the memoir: She never realized Sheldon was baptized! He admits that he did so because he understood how important it was to his parents, after everything they did for him. That despite how different he was from them, they accepted him and indulged him in what was important to him, and that this acceptance was the greatest gift they ever gave him… the parallel is obvious to everyone but Sheldon, but after a little bit of prompting from Amy he sees the light and agrees to go to the hockey game.
In the past, young Sheldon arrives at Caltech, saying, “I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.”
Unresolved questions
Did Missy ever end up agreeing to be baptized? Did Mary’s religious fervor subside? Where are the two of them now, and what are they doing with their lives?
What is Sheldon and Amy’s daughter’s name? Nichelle? Marina? Number One?
Were Georgie and Mandy popular enough characters to carry their own spinoff series? Will that show succeed?
Who won the hockey game?
Ratings
Story: 2/10. A very thin plot: Mary, traumatized by her husband’s death, wants her last two kids to be baptized. One of them agrees. We’re left hanging on the other, and even on whether the one was enough to assuage Mary’s pain.
Writing: 9/10. The thin plot was elevated by excellent writing and the episode’s respect for its characters and its subject. It would have been very easy to turn Mary into a caricature of religious fundamentalism, to make Sheldon out as the underdog atheist hero in an uncaring Christian community, or even just to mock Christianity in general. The episode did none of these things. Mary is a figure of grief desperately seeking solace and the other characters, both devout and atheist, recognize there is something wrong there and want to fix it without attacking her faith directly. It’s rare to see a television show have that much respect for Christianity these days. And I say that as somebody who is not and has never been Christian myself.
More generally, I was surprised at the genre of the show. I expected it to be a sort of merger of The Big Bang Theory with Malcolm in the Middle. But it turned out to be far more along the lines of The Wonder Years. While there were jokes – most of which landed! – I would characterize the episode as being more on the drama side of the spectrum. And it handled the drama very well.
Production: 9/10. This rating comes mostly on the strength of the performances. Every single character, without exception, was brought to life, which is reflected in the Characterization rating below. Sometimes actors who aren’t speaking don’t do much; in this show, every reaction shot spoke volumes, with Mandy standing out in particular.
Characterization: 10/10. In barely twenty minutes I got to know six different characters very well. I would like to single out Missy for praise, followed by singling out Mary and Sheldon and Mandy and Mee-Maw and Georgie and by the time I’m done there’s nobody left un-singled-out. Even the tiniest glances they gave each other were a window into their sense of humor, their approach to life, and their relationships with one another.
If there’s a weak point it’s the pastor, who seemed overly smarmy. I’d normally be tempted to dock a point for making him a caricature, but in the context of the others I’d say this show has earned the benefit of the doubt and then some.
Clarity: 8/10. It took me a while to work out the family tree, but I had little trouble following along once I got that sorted. I still don’t understand the two scenes between Missy and Mandy that seemed to go nowhere.
Closure: 3/10. The biggest criticism I have for the episode is that it left its central plot unresolved. Missy still isn’t baptized, and Mary doesn’t seem the “two out of three ain’t bad” type.
For the writers, Sheldon is the main character, but surely Mary loves her daughter no less and won’t stop pushing so easily. Does she accept Missy’s choice after some natural healing brought on by the passage of time? Does Missy eventually give in? Or do neither of these happen and Mary has been consumed with religious guilt ever since? We don’t know, and I feel like we should.
Still, though, there are two elements that make this a natural end to the series: first, Sheldon leaving home for Caltech, and second, the physical appearances of the adult Sheldon and Amy, representing an upgrade to what was usually (I assume based on the opening credits and the episode’s blurb) a voiceover from Sheldon alone.
Do I want to watch the series now?
I do! I was surprised, because I hated what little I’ve seen from The Big Bang Theory. But this show is very different, and – if I may be so arrogant as to leap to this conclusion solely on the basis of contrasting a random collection of clips from one to a single episode of the other – far superior.
"Where are the two of them now, and what are they doing with their lives?" since this is a prequel for The Big Bang Theory, those questions were already answered! But I should concede that there's a lot of people who never watched (and don't want to) TBBT and enjoyed this show standalone!