The Sorrows of Young Sheldon

A dispatch from Normie Country

My kids are on spring break this week, and to keep them occupied, we are visiting my in-laws in Indianapolis. The heart of the heart of the country. And they have, under the tutelage of their grandparents, become enamored with Young Sheldon.

Are you familiar, dear reader, with Young Sheldon? In my corners of the internet, it exists as little more than a meme, a show whose existence is baffling to the cultural mavens recapping Shogun or whatever. “A prequel? To The Big Bang Theory? Wow, Western civilization really is dead.”

Actually, I should come clean with you. That is the level of trust I endeavor to maintain here at VDL. I admit it, I used to watch, and like, The Big Bang Theory. I owned the first three seasons on DVD, to tell you how old I am. It was my comfort show for a little while. I lost track of it once our household cut the cord and dove headfirst into the streaming waters. But yes, I know Sheldon’s deal, and Leonard’s, and Penny’s. Sue me. 

So yeah, while my kids were watching Young Sheldon, I looked up from my posting habits to see what was going on. Maybe I could take a screenshot ridiculing the show’s premise and score a few likes? I watched…and watched…and watched…to the point where I had a mystifying thought:

Is Young Sheldon actually…good?

I am big enough to say this: it is good, actually. Not the best show ever, but pretty good. Solid. A perfectly solid family sitcom. Competent, in a way that’s often missing from flashier streaming shows that are, as Mitch Hedberg once said of pancakes, all exciting at first, but by the end, you’re sick of ‘em. And that made me think: why aren’t more critics, more online natives, praising Young Sheldon? What keeps them from seeing its genuine qualities?

Let’s establish a baseline of the show. Young Sheldon is, yes, a prequel, looking at the childhood of Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory. As advertised. Yet is is almost wholly unlike TBBT, as much as a sitcom can be. TBBT was a three-camera sitcom, filmed live before a studio audience, with laughter and applause on the soundtrack. Firmly in the lineage of Seinfeld, Roseanne, and, the show it most resembles, Friends. 

YS is not that. It is a single-camera sitcom, in the vein of Malcolm in the Middle. That’s not remarkable on its own, as many of the most popular sitcoms of the last twenty or so years are single-camera. The Office, Modern Family, Parks and Recreation. Unlike those shows, though, YS is not structured like a mockumentary. Characters do not sit down for after-the-action interviews to crack wise about the doings of their wacky coworkers. The fourth wall remains firmly in place. 

Though YS is not entirely without structural gimmicks. The adult Sheldon, voiced by TBBT’s Jim Parsons, offers a running commentary on his youthful hijinks in the form of a voiceover. It recalls How I Met Your Mother or, more than anything, The Wonder Years, where Daniel Stern offered an older, wiser voiceover on the doings of his youthful 1950s self, played by Fred Savage. That’s in keeping with YS’s strategy, as it too is a period piece, portraying Sheldon’s childhood in the churchy Texas of the 1990s. Sheldon’s churchgoing mother recalls at times Frankie Heck from The Middle, played by Patricia Heaton, to mention another single-camera family sitcom. 

All of which is to say: Young Sheldon is a firmly traditional show–and that accounts for much of its charm. It takes many elements that viewers are familiar with, from actual characters to more abstract structural elements, and puts them together in a sturdy, competent package. 

Which raises the question: why aren’t more critics talking about it? The general trend among TV criticism is praise, even nostalgize, more traditional shows over more self-consciously boundary-pushing shows. There is good reason for this: TV, if you haven’t noticed, isn’t as good as it used to be. At least, “good” in the sense of critically-praised, genre-redefining shows like The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, The Wire, etc. Much as it pains me to agree with some of the worst people on the internet, but: you couldn’t make those shows today. Instead, you have streamers trying to recreate the familiar comforts of pre-streaming TV–the sitcom, the ongoing procedural–with occasional success. This is why people love Reacher, a proudly silly show that would have fit right in with the late 90s syndication block, after Xena: Warrior Princess; The Gilded Age, a show that is somehow on HBO today rather than ABC in 2004; and especially Abbott Elementary, a fun-for-the-whole-family show that wins Emmys and accolades. 

So why doesn’t Young Sheldon receive some measure of that same praise? 

I mean, I know why. It’s a spinoff of The Big Bang Theory, a CBS show, the most normie, boomer-coded network of them all, effectively rendering it invisible from the Extremely Online. Which is funny, since it’s a better show than TBBT in every way. More amenable to online tastes too. One scene features Annie Potts and Wallace Shawn trading competent banner.

Annie Potts! Wallace Shawn! The Tumblr board makes itself. 

But if the show fails to catch on, that’s fine. I’ll be laughing along with my in-laws while online is trying to convince themselves that the latest Netflix Original is actually funny.

---

I have just started offering manuscript consultations! Drop me a line if you have a project you’re working on, and need another pair of eyes to take it to the next level. I’d love to hear from you!