It’s worth noting that CBS was only forced to cancel The Big Bang Theory because Jim Parsons decided to leave. Recognizing the importance of Sheldon in its storytelling, everyone decided it was best to end it with a complete ensemble. The franchise thrived after thanks to Young Sheldon — an origins story for the socially-inept genius. The shows only overlapped for 2 years, with the idea of the prequel not materializing until 2016 — a year before the show premiered. A couple of years prior, however, Parsons’ character managed to mock the spinoff, and I can’t help but cringe when rewatching it.
Sheldon Insulted Young Sheldon When Watching NCIS In The Big Bang Theory
Prequels Are Important, Sheldon
In The Big Bang Theory season 7, episode 12, “The Hesitation Ramification,” the whole Pasadena gang alongside Stuart gathered in Apartment 4A to watch Penny’s special cameo in NCIS. Ahead of the actual scene, Sheldon started fuzzing about not being comfortable with simply watching a scene without any context of the previous episodes of the series. Amy leveled with her boyfriend and put things into perspective by saying that he should think of the past outings as the prequels, and somehow, that eased Sheldon’s concerns and settled him long enough to wait for Penny’s supposed cameo.
As someone who was never shy about his opinion, Amy’s explanation working on Sheldon means that he actually believed her. The problem is that, retroactively, this also poked fun at Young Sheldon‘s existence, which was technically a prequel. While I understand that Amy and Sheldon’s conversation was written before the idea of the Cooper family’s story in Texas was born, I still cringe whenever I come across this particular encounter. What makes this worse is that Parsons was heavily involved in the prequel and Mayim Bialik made a few cameos, including in the Young Sheldon finale.
