There’s a live audience. And there’s a laugh track. They go to great lengths to pretend it’s all the audience but clearly it isn’t. This is what the actual audience sounds like.
Canned or “real”, laugh tracks are a problem.
- applause *
Yeah, to me, that’s really a distinction without a practical difference to the viewer. The tone, pacing, and general feel of the show is quite different when you have any type of laughing (beit “canned,” “pure audience,” or “sweetened audience.”) Those are all “laugh track” sitcoms to me versus ones that don’t employ laugh tracks. I don’t see any reason for me, as a viewer, to particularly care if it’s live studio audience laughter or not. (Unless, perhaps, the canned laughter is so bad you can hear the same laughs repeating over and over again.)
I do hope they show the episode where Mary has Young Sheldon tested.
I worked with autistic people for years, all along the spectrum. I know more than 100 autistic people. Sheldon is not autistic.
If I had to guess that the writers were trying to imply any diagnosable condition at all, I would guess Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder. As a personality disorder, it is different from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, which is not a personality disorder. People who are convinced there is a single right way to do everything, and not only rigidly do everything that way themselves, but try to get everyone around them (and sometimes random strangers) to follow all their rituals have OCPD.
But given how much Sheldon has changed, I would go with “he was improperly socialized.” This is both more common and more serious than people realize.
I recounted above a girl I knew who had that issue due to an unusual upbringing. But you also see it in children who lived in orphanages for their first couple of years, and had virtually no one-on-one attention, and can look, at age two, a lot like an autistic child, and may have no speech at all. But at age three, if they are adopted and have a normal family life, and maybe some speech therapy, can be nearly normal. I have seen it in two children, one from an Indian orphanage, and one from a Ukrainian orphanage. They both were adopted around two, and if presented for diagnosis immediately, probably would have gotten autism diagnoses (well, maybe no in light of their backgrounds, but if their backgrounds had been kept from the therapist, then yes). However, one is an entirely normal 12-year-old now, and the other is 3-&-1/2, and nearly caught up to her age mates.
Sheldon didn’t even begin his catching up until he met Leonard-- it was slow-going, though, because Leonard was a little behind himself; Penny kicked things up several notches, and so did Amy, but Amy had some catching up herself to do first (facilitated by Penny, with Bernie’s help).
I think that already happened, but maybe they’ll show it in a flashback. I’ll bet he lectures the diagnostician on his own subject.
I’m autistic (diagnosed at 45) and I have a 12 year old autistic daughter (diagnosed at age 3). My daughter is more like Brick. I’m more like Sheldon. That’s what I saw, a vague reflection of myself. What really made me think he’s clearly autistic is the sensory issues and the overt attempts they made at making him as stereotypically aspie as possible without slapping a sticker on his forehead. The obsessions weren’t, to me, so much OCD as obsessive tendencies that are common in autism.
But I’ll defer to your expertise.
I found it rather poignant. CBS has ordered a full season, so we will be getting more of Young Sheldon. It wasn’t just played for laughs…this is a family (mainly a mother) with an incredibly smart child trying to do the best for him in reduced financial circumstances. I thought the scene in the principal’s office was great, and I also liked the end with George and his father in the locker room. Somewhat sad that the father was fired for doing the right thing, but from what I understand that’s not unheard of in Texas.
I watched the pilot episode last night. To be honest, I was 90% sure I wasn’t going to like it.
Boy was I surprised! One of the best sitcoms I’ve seen in a long long time. Even if it was lacking in the laughs as ivy lass points out.
Ya think Brick would turn out to be a genius like Sheldon is?
Was the show suppose to be completely funny? There are other 1/2 hour shows that are funny and serious. Young Sheldon seems to be going that way and the show is not completely about Sheldon!
I love the smart aleck comments from YS, especially to the brother about being a monkey! :D:D
I got a little bit of a “Wonder Years” vibe from this show. Not nearly as good (yet) but the same kind of light comedy mixed with some drama. Even Georgie reminded me a bit of Kevin (in looks and behavior), and the dad reminded me of the WY dad.
So live audiences can also be boosted with canned laughter. I guess I always thought in terms of either/or, ever since All in the Family made such a big deal about it.
Improper socialization is something you can still poke fun at, unlike mental illness or disability, and one reason is that first of all, improper socialization is a failure on the part of the person’s parents, it’s not just happenstance, and second, the character can change. But mostly, the character can do a lot of things without having to conform to a diagnosis. There’s no DSM-V for “improper socialization.” Improperly socialized people can be anywhere on a spectrum, but the ones on TV, who are funny, are near-normal. You are never going to see someone like “Genie”, or a child with Reactive Attachment Disorder, played for laughs.
Remember 3rd Rock from the Sun? A lot of the humor came from the aliens trying to be human, and making occasional really funny blunders, but mostly getting it right. If they hadn’t mostly gotten it right, it would have been frustrating and sad. (Mildly) Improperly socialized people are kinda like aliens who took classes on learning to be humans, but missed just one or two days, so they mostly get it right, but sometimes do something off the wall.
Now, no one would even try to diagnose any of the 3rd Rock characters as autistic, because they aren’t human, and just took crash courses in how to be human. Sheldon, and other characters who are quirky, are like that. It’s no mistake that the quirky characters lay viewers like to diagnose as autistic always have bizarre backstories: Phoebe on Friends; Reid on Criminal Minds; Goran on L&O: CI, and soforth. They’re not autistic; they’re improperly socialized. They all have crazy (literally) parents, and possibly an absent parent, spotty or inconsistent schooling, and are only children, or have estranged siblings. Sheldon actually has the most normal background of them all, and we know he didn’t have a normal childhood.
Now, I suppose you could debate whether poking fun at improper socialization is OK or really wrong, but it is a different thing from poking fun at an inherent quality like autism. However, a lot of kids who get bullied and picked on are probably kids who had a blip in their early socialization, and the problem became a vicious circle, because they couldn’t make friends easily, so they didn’t have friends, so they couldn’t catch up on their socialization skills, so they got even further behind, so they were even more isolated, &c.
Sheldon’s obsessions and compulsions look more like OCPD to me, because he tries to force everyone else to play his way. That’s the P in OCPD. People with plain old OCD usually are embarrassed of their Os and Cs, and are not likely to force them on other people-- they wish they didn’t feel compelled to follow a bathroom schedule, and wouldn’t try to force one on their roommate.
Also, as a side note that the writers probably did not think about, but which is interesting anyway-- personality disorders aren’t really full-blown until a person is in their late teens, at the earliest. A person might show a few mild Os and Cs at a young age, but the P part won’t show up until later. So the thing that makes Sheldon a jerkass-- trying to force his way of doing everything on the people around him-- might not have been there when he was younger. He might still have been condescending, and convinced he was always right, but not trying to get his mother on a bathroom schedule.
Is it bothering anyone else that if this show lasts 5 years, they’re going to have to kill the father?
That can be done well, if so more power to them. I’m already guessing this might be more dramedy then straight comedy.
Yes, they would need to kill the father character, if they stick what we’ve been told in Big Bang Theory about Sheldon’s background. And before he dies, he would need to turn into a “raging alcoholic”. Also, Sheldon is nine now and supposedly started college at eleven, so after two seasons, they would need to drop all of the characters in the school (other students, teachers and so forth). I’m skeptical that they would do that, so as I mentioned upthread, I think they’ll change his history.
Well, supposedly he went to a local college, and not an elite school as an undergraduate so he could stay home; so they could keep Mom, Missy and Georgie-- although Georgie will probably be somewhere on a football scholarship.
I just realized that “Dad” is the actor who played Leonard’s bully, Jimmy Speckerman in “The Speckerman Recurrence,” you know, the guy who wanted Leonard to invent a pair of glasses that would make any movie you wanted to be in 3D. Then he got drunk, and apologized for everything, and sobered up, and couldn’t remember apologizing.
Yep, me either. I suspect I’m in the minority here, but I have no interest in Sheldon the Early Years because I think he’s the worst part of the The Big Bang Theory.
Am I missing the show? I’ve only come across it once, after TBBT. When is it normally on?
It starts for real in November. We just got the pilot early.
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Look for it Thu Nov 02, 2017. **