Spoilers below for anyone who hasn’t yet watched Young Sheldon’s finale on CBS or with a Paramount+ subscription, so be warned!
After six seasons of the Cooper family’s victories, struggles and everything in between, the hit dramedy Young Sheldon hung up its titular character’s assortment of hats with the emotional one-two punch of “Funeral” and “Memoir,” which immediately followed the death of patriarch George Cooper. The finale brought Jim Parsons and Mayim Bialik back for in-person appearances that addressed some Big Bang Theory inconsistencies (while not addressing Leonard, leading some to believe he’s dead now.) And though the prequel seemed to fully deflate Sheldon thinking his father was unfaithful, that never 100% happened.
In fact, even after the prior episode in question ("Ants on a Log and a Cheating Winker") aired and revealed to audiences that what Sheldon thought was infidelity was just married-couple roleplay, some fans still had suspicions about George and neighbor Brenda, given all the hints that were laid out previously. Just because he wasn’t with another woman for Sheldon’s final one-knock interruption, that doesn’t necessarily mean George was never with any other women, right? Well, showrunner Steve Molaro shared an official explanation for it, and it more or less confirms a shockingly dark Big Bang Theory detail.
Young Sheldon Showrunner Shares Definitive Answer About Whether George Ever Cheated
The story of George Cooper’s potential tryst first came out of The Big Bang Theory’s Season 10 episode “The Hot Tub Contamination,” during which Sheldon revealed that his long-standing habit of knocking on doors three times stemmed from the trauma of walking in on his father with another woman. It was an incident that he seemingly never spoke to anyone else about, at least until his admission to with sex already being an uncomfortable subject for him.
Showrunner Steve Molaro, who co-created Young Sheldon along with Big Bang Theory co-creator Chuck Lorre, spoke with TVLine about the sitcom swan song, and confirmed that George didn't fool around during that pivotal moment or any other. Even though it was such a big part of Sheldon's psyche on Big Bang Theory, despite certain details not matching up, Molaro and other writers eventually came to feel like that story turn wasn't the right fit for this show. In his words:
We’ve talked about this a lot, like, how do we acknowledge larger Big Bang canon but not have to be tied to every joke? [George cheating] felt like larger Big Bang canon because it’s tied to his three knocks, which is a big deal, and as we got deeper into the show, it also just didn’t feel like this was the kind of show where we wanted to deal with too much infidelity. We hinted at it a little bit [with the Brenda Sparks character], so we talked about a way to close that loophole. Maybe this was a thing [where] Sheldon isn’t lying, but he’s not in possession of all the facts.
So while some fans may choose to believe that George and Brenda had more going on than just friendly and possibly flirty banter, that's just salacious headcanon, and it's not the way the showrunner intended things to go. But just because Sheldon's dad turned out to be a good husband, that doesn't mean everything is all peaches and cream and happiness.
Why This Is A Surprisingly Dark Confirmation For The Big Bang Theory's Sheldon
Imagine being a kid and thinking you see Santa Claus flying through the sky on Christmas night, and how such a cherished memory can keep one's hope up throughout life, despite later knowing that it was based on fiction. Now imagine the depressing flip-side to that situation, and that's where part of Sheldon brain resides, because he never actually learned the truth. And no one was able to tell it to him because no one else knew he was suffering from such a misunderstanding.
Just in case anyone out there hopes that Sheldon and his mom Mary were able to one day sit down and talk out their closeted skeletons, Steve Molaro doesn't follow that line of thinking. Here's how he put it:
He did not know it was Mary. He still thinks he walked in [on his father cheating]. I think that’s a moment where Sheldon thought he saw something. He thought he saw his dad with another woman, and he didn’t, and there’s a sadness to that, that he’s carried that all these years.
Rather than being able to come to grips with the reality of the situation being at odds with his own experience, Sheldon will presumably go the rest of his life holding onto that confusion, turmoil, guilt and plenty of other stomach-churning feelings. It's just awful, but is also maybe one of the most low-key genius story beats that any broadcast show has ever pulled off.
In the end, Sheldon's long-lasting trauma really rests more within the heads of TV audiences, since it's not as if Sheldon was a mopey grump about it all. The fact that fans went more than nine seasons without knowing that incident existed obviously speaks to the idea that this is a fictional series where narratives are developed over time, and not all at once.
But man, taken at face value, this is easily one of the darkest sitcom details I can think of, and I probably won't ever be able to watch Sheldon's Big Bang Theory knock again without feeling weird and knotty about it. At least he didn't spend years of his life and thousands of dollars attempting to find the "German" woman that he believed his father was with. That we know of, anyway.
Young Sheldon is now completed, presumably without any further exploits to come. All six seasons are available to stream with a Netflix subscription, while the latest season (and all 12 seasons of The Big Bang Theory) are streaming on Max. Head to our 2024 TV schedule to see what else is on the way to the small screen soon.
