Georgie & Mandy Star and EP Talk Georgie’s Anxiety, Missy’s Struggles… and the Possible Return of George Sr.?
The troubles plaguing Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage take a backseat in Episode 2 of the Young Sheldon spinoff, which sees Sheldon’s older brother struggle with his newfound responsibilities in the wake of George Sr.’s untimely demise.
The episode kicks off with Georgie visiting his father’s grave. He assures Dad that he’s handling things just fine in his absence — but soon after, we see that the pressures of being a husband, a father, a brother and a son-in-law are eating at him. At one point, after a fight with Mandy, Georgie hops in his truck and drives himself to the emergency room. He fears he’s having a heart attack, but it turns out that he’s suffering from anxiety — a diagnosis that he is quick to scoff off as “some New York nonsense.”
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Later on, Georgie takes Missy to visit Dad at the cemetery. She’s recently been suspended from school, she may or may not be smoking weed, and if she’s not going to confide in Mary, Georgie would like his troubled teen sister to talk to their father. He affords her some privacy, at which point she tells Sr. just how hard it has been since he died and Sheldon moved away. As the episode draws to a close, she is crying in the passenger’s side of her dead father’s car.
In Part 3 of our video Q&A — watch Part 1 and Part 2 — series star Montana Jordan (aka Georgie) tells TVLine that the fallout from George Sr.’s passing, and the ensuing Cooper family drama, all will come to a head when the McAllisters host the Cooper clan for Thanksgiving in Episode 5. In the meantime, he says, “I think Georgie is doing a hell of a job with the way he’s handling it. I really do.” Georgie will continue to visit his father throughout Season 1 — and who knows? “I’m sure there will be some type of throwback or something,” Jordan says of a possible Lance Barber cameo. “Or he might come in as a ghost or something. You never know!”
Below, series co-creator Steve Holland dives even deeper into what plagues Georgie in Episode 2, and how the spinoff intends to fill in the gap of Mary and Missy’s lives between Young Sheldon (which ends in 1994) and The Big Bang Theory (which picks up 13 years later, in 2007).
TVLINE | We see how Georgie is juggling the demands of being a husband, a father, a brother, a son-in-law, and all while mourning the loss of George Sr. While I know that this is a direct continuation of Young Sheldon, I also couldn’t help but connect all of this back to Big Bang — particularly the episode where Georgie (played by Jerry O’Connell) confronted Sheldon about what life was like after Dad died. Was that something you had in mind when shaping this spinoff?
HOLLAND | There were all of these extra little shadings that just gave these characters so much more depth, and so much more to play with, going into it. Our thought, even going back to multi-cam, is that this doesn’t have to be a bright, shiny multi-cam. This can have some depth and weight to it. We’ve earned it with these characters. We’re in this incredible position of having these characters that people already have a relationship with, and that we have fleshed out over seven years, that we get to bring to this, and it just felt like, “Why shy away from more real things?” That it plays into Big Bang canon is great. That we know that Georgie has to take care of his mom and his sister after his dad died seemed like all this great, rich, real-life stuff to deal with, and there was no reason to run away from that. The show is very positive and full of love — it’s not a dark and heavy show — but there are real emotions…. Even if you’ve never seen Young Sheldon, I think you can relate to what it means for [Georgie] to be in that position. I don’t think it’s shutting anybody out of the world – but if you are familiar with Young Shelton, it adds a whole other layer.
TVLINE | As a 19-year-old in 1990s Texas, I doubt that Georgie will ever seek out professional help. Is talking to George Sr. as close as he is ever going come to therapy?
I think you actually hit it right on the head. When we were talking about this episode, and all of the things that have been piled on top of this young kid — with a wife and a family and in-laws… and a job… and his mom and his sister… and the loss of his dad — we were talking about those things as a Texas guy in the ’80s and ’90s, right? He wasn’t going to admit that he was struggling, he wasn’t going to admit that he needed help, and he wasn’t going to go seek therapy, so getting to go and talk to his dad, and getting to admit that he was struggling in a way that he couldn’t really admit to anyone else, felt like the therapy that he needed, and that that was enough to sort of get him moving forward.
TVLINE | We previously spoke about where we left things Mary and Missy in the Young Sheldon finale. We see in Episode 2 of Georgie & Mandy that Missy is acting out at school, and that she’s a bit of a latchkey kid now that Mary has thrown herself into her religion. Are those storylines that you will continue to explore in the spinoff?
Yeah, absolutely. This is the beginning of the pivot from the Young Sheldon Mary towards the Big Bang Mary, you know? I think you’re starting to see that shift. When we’re finding these stories, it’s really about using these [Young Sheldon] characters to inform Georgie and Mandy [storylines]…. We know from Big Bang that Missy ends up OK, so I think we can have some fun with her. Her slide into rebellion as a teenager who just lost her father feels very real, and a thing that her older brother has to deal with now as the father figure of the family.
What did you think of Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage Season 1, Episode 2: “Some New York Nonsense”? Watch our interview with Montana Jordan, then hit the comments with your reactions.
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