“I like it when people underestimate me. It gives me an edge.”
Much like the current thinking about our universe, it all started with The Big Bang Theory. The breakout character there was Sheldon Cooper, played by Jim Parsons. For 279 episodes, television fans just couldn’t get enough. That was until Parsons asked for a huge boatload of cash and the show ended. The character was not finished. A spin-off called Young Sheldon debuted with Ian Armitage starring as a very young Sheldon, as the name implies. It’s pretty much an origin story. Parsons returned, but only to provide the show’s narration in a The Wonder Years kind of presentation. But it would add another 140 episodes to the story. In Young Sheldon we also were introduced to his family growing up. One of those family members was his older brother Georgie, played by Montana Jordan. He was very much the polar opposite of Sheldon. He wasn’t very bright, but had a bit more of what you might call street smarts, and his character’s charm would win over the show’s audience. So now the Sheldon story continues, without Sheldon, in the first season of Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage, now out on DVD from Warner Brothers.
“Some shows you can hear people laugh. Some you don’t.”
Georgie Cooper was just a late teen when he was dating the twentysomething Mandy McAllister, played by Emily Osment. One thing led to another, and before you know it there’s a baby on the way, and Mandy discovers that Georgie lied about being older than he actually was. They decide to get married so they can raise little CeeCee together. Georgie’s a hard worker, but he’s only a teenager, so they don’t start with much, so this series would bring us more in contact with Mandy’s family, who were introduced in the later episodes of Young Sheldon. They have to live with her family. Her mother Audrey, played by Rachel Bay Jones, isn’t a big fan of the marriage, or more particularly Georgie. She’s there to provide the insults. Mandy’s father, Jim, is played by Will Sasso, who I first encountered as Curly Howard in The Three Stooges movie. Here he plays a guy who actually respects Georgie and has him work in the family’s tire store. His job is basically to try to stay out of the crossfire. Mandy has a brother named Conner, played by Dougie Baldwin. With Sheldon out of the picture we need a new socially awkward character, and that’s Conner. He’s Mandy’s older brother, who can’t keep a job and lives above their garage. His room is an odd assortment of vintage and pieced-together musical instruments and equipment. He doesn’t eat at the family table, preferring to stand at the kitchen counter because even that social setting is hard for him. He’s there to provide the one-liners. It’s not until the later episodes of the season that his character is fleshed out and he’s given more to do than “stand and deliver”.
The stories come mostly from the conflicts both within their relationship and with her family. Georgie actually proves that his own kind of “smarts” turns out to be very helpful at the tire store, where he improves their profits significantly. Mandy is a college graduate with a degree in communications and has dreams of being a television weather girl. By the end of the season she gets her chance, and that’s also a bit of a controversy in the relationship. With the exception of Ian Armitage as Sheldon, all of the previous show’s regulars make appearances on this show as recurring characters. Even Georgie’s father, played by Lance Barber, gets into an episode even though he died of a heart attack at the end of the Young Sheldon run. The most prominent returners are Zoe Perry as his mother Mary and Annie Potts as Connie, his Meemaw. Sister Missy, played by Raegan Revord, shows up, but usually on the phone from college. Even Connie’s boyfriend Dale shows up, played by the legendary Craig T. Nelson.
If you liked the tone of Young Sheldon, you’ll find they didn’t shake things up quite so much here. The two leads actually have a bit of chemistry, and the laughs are certainly there. I think they did a really good job of adding depth to the Georgie character. In the previous show Armitage, like Parsons, steals the show, and I think it was a good call to leave him out of this show, at least until it gets its own legs. Lance Barber is actually pretty good here, and the character ends up with more nuance than I expected him to have. If I have any mostly negative thing to say about the show, it is with the writing. It took almost two-thirds of the season to break out of a rut. The stories were being recycled already, and the show was becoming too predictable. By the last few episodes, it appears they hit their stride and started breaking out of the box they had built for themselves. The characters and their stories started to expand and evolve. I’d say it was just in time, because by halfway in I had low expectations of this going on much longer. I don’t know if there was a shake-up in the staff or they just started to understand their own show, but it did improve, and there is some reason to believe this thing might roll a few years.
The season ends with major changes in the couple’s life. You might ask why give away the idea that this marriage isn’t going to work. You can blame The Big Bang Theory for that one. When Sheldon talks about his brother as an adult, he takes great pains to tell us that he had several failed marriages, so there’s a little bit of a corner we’re painted into here. This is going to end sooner than later by design, and all we can do is hope to have a good time along the way. It’s worth a look, and I find myself interested in where it goes from here. If you’re a fan of the franchise, this is what you have for now. “It ain’t much, but it’s ours, and it’s temporary.”
