“I like laughin’ shows,” Georgie Cooper (Montana Jordan) declares in the opening scene of “Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage.” “Some shows you can hear people laughin’, and some you can’t. ‘The Wonder Years’ — no one’s laughin’. Is it funny? We’ll never know!”
Georgie makes this observation while watching “Frasier,” a bit of ambient exposition that situates “Georgie & Mandy” in the mid-1990s, temporally sandwiched between “Young Sheldon,” the prequel to “The Big Bang Theory” about the titular genius’s Texas youth, and “The Big Bang Theory” itself, in which Jim Parsons originated the role subsequently played by Iain Armitage. That makes “Georgie & Mandy” a spinoff of a spinoff, its franchise approaching the two-decade mark since “The Big Bang Theory” debuted in 2007 and still expanding. Another satellite show remains in development.
But Georgie’s joke is also a wink through the fourth wall at the CBS sitcom’s own in-studio audience. After making his name with multi-camera comfort food like “Two and a Half Men,” co-creator and power producer Chuck Lorre has taken a detour into a more polished, single-camera style — not just with “Young Sheldon,” but latter-era efforts like “The Kominsky Method” on Netflix and “Bookie” on Max. With “Georgie & Mandy,” Lorre (along with co-creators Steven Molaro and Steve Holland, both of “Young Sheldon”) is back in both his and his audience’s comfort zone, a shift the show makes explicit in less than a minute of screen time.
“Georgie & Mandy” even brings back other “Young Sheldon” cast members to translate their appeal into this new, or rather old, rhythm. In the final episodes of “Young Sheldon,” Georgie fell in love with and impregnated Mandy (Emily Osment), a local news anchor 12 years his senior. “Georgie & Mandy” sees the couple and their newborn move in with Mandy’s parents, judgmental Audrey (Rachel Bay Jones) and car shop owner Jim (Will Sasso), who takes Georgie under his wing and gives him a job. We know from Jerry O’Connell’s appearances as Georgie on “The Big Bang Theory” that he will thrive in this line of work, but for now, he and Mandy are seriously strapped for cash. Mandy’s brother Connor (Dougie Baldwin), a music obsessive, is a socially awkward nerd whose presence evokes Sheldon and his future roommates for extra cross-franchise commonality.
Though Mandy’s family is the primary focus, the rest of the Coopers are still around, allowing Zoe Perry, Annie Potts and Raegan Revord to reprise their roles as Georgie’s mother, Meemaw and sister. (Sheldon has already departed for grad school at CalTech in Pasadena.) Without a physics genius as its focal point, “Georgie & Mandy” has an even folksier feel, grounding itself in the struggles of young working parents to keep themselves afloat. Some storylines, like grieving the recent loss of Georgie’s father to a heart attack, are carried over from “Young Sheldon”; others, like an abortive attempt to rent an apartment directly abutting a train track, are more specific to the new show.
“Georgie & Mandy” is just starting to carve out its own identity within the universe (pun very much intended) started by “The Big Bang Theory.” Critics received only two episodes in advance, so it’s hard to deliver any definitive verdict on that effort’s success. But Jones is an enjoyably snarky presence, and Jordan shares a chemistry with Osment that’s sweet enough to make one forget about the age gap until someone points out Georgie isn’t technically old enough to drink. The credits sequence has the two tango through a mood-lit kitchen, their infatuation elevating their plain surroundings.
For viewers, “Georgie & Mandy” is a double dose of nostalgia. It’s an extension of Cooper family lore, a fruitful seed planted by Jim Parsons’ first “Bazinga!”. But it’s also a throwback to the “Roseanne” school of plainspoken, working class family sitcoms, with some modern add-ins like a subplot about Georgie’s anxiety. “Georgie & Mandy” is proud to be a “laughin’ show,” even if those are out of fashion.
The first episode of “Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage” will air on CBS and stream on Paramount+ on Oct. 17 at 8 p.m. ET, with new episodes airing weekly on Thursdays.
