Young Sheldon may have concluded earlier this year, but several favorites from the series still live on, now in a multi-camera format. Fortunately, Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage is a lot more like the original Frasier and a lot less like AfterMASH as far as follow-up spinoff TV series go. The show itself premieres tonight (October 17) on CBS, and the network had made the first two episodes available for press screening.
Montana Jordan and Emily Osment continue their Young Sheldon roles as Georgie and Mandy. Osment has quite a bit of experience in a multi-cam setup whereas Jordan is fairly new to it, but he handles it very well. If there is any uneasiness from the actor it goes right back into his performance, as Georgie himself is surely in a new situation in life. Fans of Young Sheldon saw their relationship develop, with Mandy being the “older woman” that Georgie has a child with and ultimately marries, and on screen, the two actors have found time to develop a rhythm. The show winks at its audience by hanging a lampshade as the family is watching a TV show with a laugh track, which is pretty funny.
From the jump, Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage succeeds in a way that most Chuck Lorre sitcoms manage to find a way to do: Populating the series with a strong cast of characters played by actors who are perfectly suited for the roles. Will Sasso and Rachel Bay Jones are two of the standouts of this show, giving it a presence and bar of quality that we had from the parental figures played by Lance Barber and Zoe Perry in the earlier show. It’s especially enjoyable to see how difficult Mandy’s mother Audrey can be, and there’s also a special bond that develops between Georgie and his new father-in-law Jim.
As mentioned before, CBS made the first two episodes available to press, and I think I may have liked the second installment (airing October 24) even better than the first. Why? The pilot episode seems most focused on building up the new premise, and in doing so, it seems a bit more reliant on what has come before. There are some guest appearances from Young Sheldon in the first episode, but do we really need those in Week 1? Shouldn’t the new show wait at least a week before bringing in more Young Sheldon characters that we love? With that said, he second episode does still lean on the previous show a bit but by this point, the premise and the new situation are pretty much set, giving it a more comfortable and organic feeling. Raegan Revord reprises her role as Missy Cooper in Episode 2, and if there’s any change I would strongly wish for from this series, it’s that the show would find a way to have Missy stick around on a regular basis, because I really like her chemistry with the others in the cast.
Rounding out the cast of Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage are Dougie Baldwin as Mandy’s oddball brother Connor and Jessie Prez as Ruben, a loyal but frustrated employee at Jim’s shop. The first two episodes don’t spend a whole lot of time with them, but I liked both characters and would enjoy seeing more of them in the coming weeks.
As someone with only a peripheral experience with watching the shows of the Big Bang Theory universe — I’ve probably seen less than 20 episodes of both series combined — I am happy to say that this new sitcom is easy to follow for new audiences, though again, the first one does seem to lean hard into Young Sheldon in ways that I don’t think it needed to just yet. That’s just a minor quibble compared to my largest complaint about the series: The title. Yes, it’s annoying to have to type out, but also, do we really want a reminder that the couple we are supposed to be rooting for separates at some point in the future? This can probably be subverted in that they love each other so much they get married more than once, but then again, The Big Bang Theory did establish Georgie as having had multiple ex-wives in the future. Still, the annoyingly long title puts a dark cloud on the characters, when the point should be celebrating their success as they move on to the next phase of their lives.
Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage premieres tonight (October 17) on CBS. You can see some photos from the first episode here.
