Binge-watching the show in order-- it turns out to be a dramedy about Sheldon becoming a real boy, with Leonard as his Jiminy Cricket. I don’t think that was the original vision of the show at all.
Which goes to the heart to the “Sheldon isn’t autistic” thing I’ve maintained for a long time. He was improperly socialized, as are a lot of other TV characters who are quirky. Pheobe on Friends, for example or Reid on Criminal Minds. Parents with different degrees of nuttiness, on-off schooling, or being in a grade several years ahead of one’s age mates, and no one really looking out for your social development. It happens really, really rarely in real life, but it does happen, and you get people who need therapy to take them through the developmental stages, but it’s not impossible. I once knew a daughter of an ambassador, who had been schooled mostly by tutors, was an only child, and hadn’t had a lot or opportunity to play with other children until she was 10. She was in the 6th grade, because that’s where she placed, she spoke three languages, was very bright, and she was strange in a way you couldn’t put your finger on. She and I had both lived in Moscow, although at different times, and I kind of felt sorry for her because she got picked on. She was Canadian, and her father worked at the consulate, but her parents were separated, and so she was living an ordinary life for the first time in Queens, NY, and in a public school (I think her mother finally got a clue about her social skills).
I’ve known genuinely autistic people, and I can see where a lay person could confuse someone poorly socialized with someone with autism, but it’s a different thing.
So we get to see Sheldon go from being a self-centered infant, to a toddler who is beginning to grasp that other people exist outside of his needs, but isn’t happy about it, to a child, who is constantly seeing something new in people every day, and finding it fascinating, to a horny teenager, to an adult, who understands what being in love is.
Incidentally, we watched Amy go through the developmental stages a few seasons back. It started when she had her “girls’ night” with Penny. It was really interesting, because the writers were pretty consistent in how Amy came out of he shell, almost like they had a copy of Piaget on the desk.