UPDATE: Friday, Oct 17, 2025 · 3:59:09 AM +00:00
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Alonso del Arte
Just watched the Season 2 premiere. As dull as I expected. The Ghosts episode was somewhat interesting. Didn't watch Matlock. And Elsbeth turned in a surprisingly moving episode that made laugh a lot more in its first few minutes than First Marriage in its full running length.
For trenchant commentary on the socioeconomic problems of small town Texans, Georgie and Mandy’s First Marriage is not quite the show. And for more than very sporadic laughs, it’s definitely not the show.
Never thought I would declare that Sheldon Cooper really grounds a TV show. The most annoying character on The Big Bang Theory, he (Jim Parsons) got on his friends’ nerves in almost every episode of that show, and as a teenager, he (Iain Armitage) got on his family’s nerves in almost every episode of Young Sheldon.
On that prequel show, Sheldon’s family turned out to be a lot more interesting and a lot more likable than Sheldon’s descriptions on Big Bang would have ever led us to believe. Speaking only for myself, I certainly wanted to watch more stories about Sheldon’s grandmother, Connie (Annie Potts), his mother Mary (Zoe Perry), his older brother George Jr. (Montana Jordan) and fraternal twin sister Missy (Raegan Revord).
In particular, George Jr., almost always referred to as “Georgie,” turned out to be quite an interesting character. The combination of his burgeoning talent for sales and the embarrassment of having his younger brother catch up to him in high school and then progress to college leads Georgie to decide to drop out of school.
But Young Sheldon could not continue for too many years. As Iain Armitage grows up, it will become more obvious that he’s not growing up to look like Jim Parsons. Much more importantly, however, with Sheldon’s experiences on Young Sheldon, the character was starting to gain an emotional maturity that would be at odds with Sheldon’s immaturity on Big Bang.
And then there were episodes of Young Sheldon in which Sheldon himself was almost completely sidelined for the story to focus on the more relatable things happening to his relatives.
For example, in the episode in which Sheldon’s much ballyhooed grants database turned out to be a complete flop, Sheldon’s major disappointment took a backseat, figuratively but not literally, to the birth of his niece, Constance, daughter of his older brother named after Sheldon’s grandmother.
When George Sr. (Lance Barber) told Sheldon at the hospital that the baby was more important than the database, he spoke for the viewers. We, the viewers, cared more about this baby born to George Jr. and his somewhat older wife, Mandy McAllister (Emily Osment), than we did about the database.
Iain Armitage as the young Sheldon Cooper on the CBS comedy Young Sheldon.
Sheldon’s grants database had apparently given the writers everything they wanted out of it and the time had come to wind that storyline down.
A note about spoilers: I will freely mention anything that happened on Young Sheldon or will happen on The Big Bang Theory. I will try to avoid giving spoilers for Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage even though the story of this show is chronologically between the two previously aired shows, and the title already tells us the marriage is doomed. First Marriage follows Young Sheldon immediately and it might eventually connect to Big Bang. But also keep in mind that this is not a mystery show and the plots are not particularly complex (not that we should want them to be).
At the same time Sheldon was going to Germany to study physics at one of the most prestigious universities in the world, in the final season of Young Sheldon, a tornado destroyed Connie’s house, forcing Georgie and Mandy to move Connie’s little namesake to the Cooper residence. Audrey (Rachel Bay Jones) and Jim McAllister (Will Sasso) offered their more spacious residence for their granddaughter, but Georgie and Mandy were hesitant to accept that help through the end of Young Sheldon and a couple of episodes into First Marriage.
It was established in Young Sheldon that Audrey and Jim are constantly bickering, though often Jim simply accedes to Audrey. That dynamic threatens to spill over into Georgie and Mandy’s marriage, which has enough problems on its own.
The idea of a show about Georgie and Mandy raising little Constance without the annoying Sheldon being around might have been appealing to the studio executives. But the show’s producers found themselves wanting a similar character, so they gave Mandy a brother who is as enthusiastic about avant-garde music as Sheldon is about theoretical physics. To the writer’s credit, Connor (Douglas Baldwin) is different enough from Sheldon, being quite introverted and warm-hearted by comparison.
Without a character like Sheldon, this new sitcom runs the risk of being just another run-of-the-mill sitcom. But I’m not immediately writing this show off because it has the potential for important social commentary, and a few episodes so far have already hinted at that potential.
There’s, for example, the first season episode questioning the lies of the prosperity gospel, titled “A Regular Samaritan,” which first aired in December of last year. Georgie meets Valerie (Kelli Goss), a woman with an expensive sports car.
Valerie is a big believer in the idea that God gives money to those He deems worthy. Therefore, Valerie should be okay with Georgie coming to her church to drum up sales for his father-in-law’s tire business.
But also Valerie is sexually interested in Georgie, and all that stuff in the Bible about marital fidelity is just a bunch of suggestions. At the end of the episode, Mandy forcefully tells Valerie to not mess with her husband. Georgie learned nothing from the experience but maybe the viewers did.
The show’s final season will probably be about the dissolution of Georgie and Mandy’s first marriage. But if the producers intend for this show to run for several years, I think they need to tone down the couple’s marital strife. Like, Georgie and Mandy could have divorced in the first season and it would have been completely believable.
The main problem with this show, in my opinion, is that Georgie talks too much. Though he was hardly a Silent Bob in either Big Bang or Young Sheldon, he never spoke long enough to be grating. Now that he’s one of the titular protagonists, he’s expected to talk a lot more, and he quickly gets grating.
Oh, and yeah, there are laughs to be had. Few and far between.
George & Mandy’s First Marriage airs Thursday nights on CBS at 8:00 p.m. Eastern. On tonight’s episode, the first of the second season,
Things get tense when Georgie and Ruben [(Jessie Prez)] realize they can't agree on anything; Jim struggles to find his purpose in life after retiring [from the tire store].
Then there’s Ghosts, which I find mildly amusing, followed by Matlock with Kathy Bates. But the real gem of this night’s CBS line-up is probably Elsbeth, a show that manages to be a lot of fun despite the formulaic adherence to the Columbo pattern.
