Young Sheldon returned with its winter premiere and much like the fall finale, it was sub-par at best. The season started off strong with the focus on Mandy’s pregnancy and the resulting consequences on the family. Sheldon’s arc has shifted away from his family over the last two seasons, which has resulted in the storylines of his family members becoming more compelling which is not a bad thing. The entire cast has such immense talent that it makes sense to capitalize on this. However, the last two episodes have made it clear that the writers are shifting the focus back to Sheldon. The problem with this, is that his grant storyline is dull and will likely not sustain viewers interest for long.
The winter premiere focused mainly on Sheldon meeting with large corporations, attempting to receive funding for his grant database. Though he thought it would be an easy sell, Sheldon’s age is troublesome for the potential donors, leaving him to bring on Doctor Sturgis as a partner. Not surprisingly, they make a terribly awkward pairing to say the least. Sheldon is relieved when a group of investors appear interested in backing his idea, the only issue is that they want him to drop out of university to focus on the database full time. Sheldon is all in, but Mary refuses to allow him to even consider dropping out. Leave it to Georgie and Missy to provide some comedic relief during Sheldon’s discussion with Mary about dropping out. When Sheldon insinuates that Mary is a hypocrite because she allowed Georgie to drop out of school but now she will not allow him to do the same, Georgie retorts “I got a job and a cool garage to live in.” Missy walks in and Georgie fills her in on Sheldon wanting to quit college. She pipes in with one of her famous hilarious one-liners, stating, “I’m the only one who’s not a dropout, who saw that coming?” Fresh out of ideas, Sturgis suggests that perhaps Sheldon should cave and take the university’s offer, but he is not ready to back down that quickly. He remembers having dinner with Gary O’Brien, a financier for the university who loved his honesty. Sheldon, Sturgis and O’Brien have dinner and although he is all for backing the database, he wants too much of a say for Sheldon’s liking, and his eagerness makes Sheldon regret that he even asked him for help in the first place. Now that Sheldon appears all out of options, he will need to decide whether to agree to share the database idea with the university, or scrap it altogether. I am not sure how much viewers have invested in this storyline, or how much they care how it resolves. It would be great if it could become a little more interesting, but it hasn’t reached that point yet.
Missy, who has sadly not had a solid storyline yet this season, had a rather funny one this episode. She talks Connie into allowing her to bring her crush Dean over to Connie’s place to watch a movie. Connie agrees, but has some rules that Missy needs to follow. The date appears to be going great, until Dean brings up that his grandmother passed away recently. He is having a difficult time paying attention to the movie. He is consumed with Connie being forced to hang out alone and insists that Missy spend as much time with her Meemaw while she still can. Missy reluctantly invites Connie to watch the movie with them. Missy is ecstatic when Dean suggests that they hang out again- until he tells her they should spend the day baking cookies with Connie. Missy is annoyed, but oblivious to the fact that he is using her to spend time with Connie and she agrees to the date. When Dean prefers to be closer to Connie than her during baking, Missy quickly realizes that he is more interested in connecting with Connie and wants him to leave. Unfortunately his mom can’t pick him up until later, forcing Missy to spend more time in an awkward triangle with her crush and her Meemaw. After barely being present on the last couple of episodes, it was a treat for Missy to be one of the main storylines in this episode. Her likability and comedic presence is one of the show's strengths and an episode just isn’t the same without her in it.
George Sr. had the only other storyline of the episode. He found himself in the uncomfortable position of having to deal with Pastor Rob at work, by way of Wayne, who is being counselled by the Pastor about his failed marriage. Wayne of course has no idea that George is jealous of the pastor’s connection with Mary, and innocently invited Rob to come and pray with the team prior to the game. George protests at first but then relents, deciding that it can’t hurt and allows Rob to join the pre-game huddle. When the team wins the game, everyone hails Pastor Rob as a hero and believes that he is the team's lucky charm, much to George’s chagrin. George Sr. is even more irate when Rob tells him that he has been counselling some of the players, and they have been complaining that George is often too hard on them. Rob suggests that George Sr. take a softer approach with the guys, which George obviously doesn’t take very well. George wants Principal Petersen to let him get rid of Pastor Rob, but the principal is superstitious and asserts that Rob won’t be going anywhere until the team loses. When the team needs to make a hero play at the game, Rob makes an unorthodox play suggestion but instead of writing him off, George takes Rob’s advice in the hopes that it will make the team lose thus allowing George to axe him from helping with the team. Miraculously, the play works and the team wins, sustaining Rob’s hero status and angering George even more. It is interesting that the writers did not involve Mary much in this storyline. George did let Mary know that Rob was helping out and he was annoyed, but other than that, there was no reference to Mary and George’s obvious jealousy and anger over her relationship with the PAstor. Seems to me this would have been a great opportunity to delve deeper into that storyline. Hopefully that will be the case next episode. Viewers of the Big Bang Theory know that George Sr. left the family when Sheldon was 14, meaning this event is definitely looming. Although the show runners have stated that they are in no rush to make the separation between George Sr. and Mary happen, the cracks in George and Mary’s relationship will need to be developed further before it does and her obvious attraction to Pastor Rob seems to be a good place to start.
Over to you Young Sheldon fans. What are your thoughts on the winter premiere? Are you interested in Sheldon's grant storyline? Do you hope to see more of Missy and Georgie in the next episode? Share your thoughts below and follow me on Twitter @miss_c_almeida.
