Having stumbled into the “no duh” proposition that a spin-off of The Big Bang Theory might end up making them a lot of money—an assertion backed up by no better historical evidence than the multi-season, massive success of its recently canceled parent, Young Sheldon—CBS has now ordered Xerox of a Xerox George & Mandy’s First Marriage to a full first season.
And, look: We’re sure George & Mandy is perfectly charming, since the source material it’s built from was also perfectly charming: We can make a lot of jokes about the Young Sheldon, and how we’ll never escape his sallow grasp, but the series was mostly just a well-made blue collar family sitcom that happened to have a Bazinga Child sitting in its midst. We’re less annoyed by George & Mandy, which sees Montana Jordan and Emily Osment reprise their title characters from Young Sheldon, on its own merits, than for the air of economic weaseling it seems to represent; if these characters, and this universe, were running pretty well for CBS, then trashing the old one so that you can respawn the whole thing with fresh contracts and fewer veteran cast members just feels a little distasteful.
Anyway, CBS seems happy with the result, having begun putting the initial half-season of George & Mandy on TV earlier this month to get confirmation that, yep, people will still watch this thing even if no one’s wearing a bow tie. In addition to the title pair, the series also stars Rachel Bay Jones, Dougie Baldwin, Jessie Perez, and Will Sasso, who will hopefully now have less time to pull stunts like allegedly using AI to create fake George Carlin stand-up specials now that he’s a regular on a TV show again. The show, which has received cameo appearances from several Young Sheldon alums, including Annie Potts, Zoe Perry, and Raegan Revord, was initially ordered for 13 episodes at the network, and has now been bumped up to a full season of 22. Meanwhile, the Big Bang universe continues to cook along elsewhere as well, with a Max series centered on the original show’s comic shop also apparently in the works.