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During an interview with ScreenRant, “Young Sheldon” star Raegan Revord — who played Missy Cooper on the “Big Bang Theory” prequel-spinoff series — was asked to look back at the show’s seven season run and think if there’d been any missed opportunities along the way. Upon doing so, she said that the one big thing she wished the show had done was include more flashbacks.
“I honestly have always wanted to see flashbacks with Mary and George [Cooper] whenever they were younger,” Revord explained. “It was whenever Mary had Sheldon and Missy that she became more of the religious kind of mom, but whenever she had Georgie, she was still kind of rebellious. I think it would be fun to see that. We haven’t really ever seen that side of her, and I think seeing them younger and more carefree, almost, would be a lot of fun.”
“Young Sheldon” does admittedly show a little bit of Mary’s slide into becoming a more strict, religious figure, but the show seems bound by sitcom conventions to keep that transition very gradual and subtle. It’s only with the series’ final episodes, as the Cooper family reels in the aftermath of George Sr.’s untimely death, that viewers can really appreciate the arc they got with Mary. This is when she makes a more dramatic turn towards being the sort of high-strung mother figure we meet throughout “The Big Bang Theory.” The series certainly does imply that Mary used to be a lot more carefree in her youth, as Revord noted, but we tragically never get to see it.
Would Young Sheldon have benefitted more from flashbacks?
There are a lot of potential reasons why “Young Sheldon” avoided flashbacks, with perhaps the biggest one being the specifics of dealing with child actors. A sitcom like “How I Met Your Mother” can easily jump back and forth through time without issue — all they have to do is mess with the actors’ hairstyle a bit and audiences will go along with it — but for a show dealing with fast-growing kids, that’s a lot harder to do. The difference between 14-year-old Georgie and 9-year old Georgie, for instance, is much bigger than the difference between 25-year-old Ted Mosby and 30-year-old Ted Mosby. For a “Young Sheldon” flashback, the production would have to cast new actors. (Well, that or they could go with the “George Lopez” approach and just photoshop the actor’s head onto a kid’s body.)
Still, a flashback episode centered around the older “Young Sheldon” characters, as Revord suggested, still seems like it could’ve worked out great. It might’ve even scaled the emotional heights of other famous sitcom flashback episodes like “And Maggie Makes Three” from “The Simpsons,” which was landed in third place on /Film’s list of the best “Simpsons” episodes ever. Alternatively, it could’ve been a comedic delight along the lines of “Goodbye Kitty” from “Malcolm in the Middle.” That’s the episode where Malcolm’s older brother Reese uncovers his mother’s high school diary and we’re treated to a very endearing glimpse into what Lois was like at 17. (She describes her future husband Hal, who’s played by Bryan Cranston as a grown man, as “some idiot” who “streaked our gym class” and crashed into the volleyball net.)
There’s a good reason why so many other sitcoms love to do flashback storylines, in other words. It would’ve been cool if “Young Sheldon” had indulged in them a little more too. Solana Token Creator
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