Young Sheldon Season 6 Makes Sheldon's Impending Loss Even More Tragic
This is what happens when an original idea lives and evolves over the years, producing offshoots of sorts.
We are talking about The Big Bang Theory 's prequel Young Sheldon and the way it presents his father.
What do we know about George Cooper Sr. from TBBT? Not much, to be honest. He is a terrible person, a heavy drinker, a cheat and he died when Sheldon was a teenager, aged 13. That's pretty much it.
But watch Young Sheldon and you will see a different person, a sensitive man who loves his children and his family and is willing to make sacrifices.
What we've learned about Sheldon's father through his words doesn't do him justice. Young Sheldon shows him in a different light – as a father who encourages Sheldon in every way, including intellectually.
And now imagine how proud his father would have been had he lived to see Sheldon and Amy getting the Nobel Prize in physics for their discovery of super asymmetry!
The man's backstory is rather sad. We know that he was sacked for reporting a colleague who was involved in something illegal – breaking the rules for recruiting footballers.
This characterizes George Cooper Sr. as a person abiding by the rules. Is that good or bad? The man was written with much more warmth and sympathy in Young Sheldon than the dad Sheldon told everyone about in TBBT. Incidentally, perhaps his drinking problems are a result of his unhappy marriage. Could his cheating on Mary be the result of his unhappiness? It could well be, although it is a rather lame justification.
Finally, Young Sheldon shows George Cooper Sr. as a real person. Sometimes he is strong, often he is weak, but one thing he is definitely not – a villain and a good-for-nothing lazybones.
Interestingly, the Reddit gang was surprised that Sheldon was so unfair to his father. George Cooper Sr. is an absolute gem of a dad, some redditors say, and they wish there were more dads like him.
One user thinks Sheldon is clearly a bit autistic for having such a black and white view of his dad, while others think it may just be the point of view of a child who grew up in a family where the parents always fought over problems instead of trying to help each other solve them and be united.
"Big Bang fans have heard Sheldon tell stories about his dad for years. We try to honor those stories but also like to find unexpected ways for them to play out," the show's executive producer Steve Molaro once said.
It's true that sometimes life gets very complicated. And we are now approaching an important moment in Sheldon's life as a teenager – the death of his father. After all we've learned about him in Young Sheldon, to see such a great dad die so soon is absolutely heartbreaking.