Weirdly, Young Sheldon has deviated from the older Sheldon’s account of his childhood on more than one occasion since it began. The spin-off’s continuity errors are particularly glaring since both shows are run by members of the same creative team. However, George Sr.’s affair seems far too important to the Cooper family’s story to be skipped over entirely.
So far, Sheldon’s dad hasn’t shown any signs of having an affair, but the tension between him and his wife Mary has been growing with each season. In the season 4 episode “A Musty Crypt and a Stick to Pee On,” the couple’s disconnect is highlighted even more during a road trip. Still, showrunner Steve Molaro is reluctant to commit to having George’s affair play out on the show.
“I don’t know what we’re going to do about that. I’m aware of it, I know it exists. I also know that… Adult Sheldon may not want to tell the audience that story,” Molaro said of the affair in an interview with TVLine. “So maybe it happened, maybe it didn’t. That doesn’t mean we need to see it. Also, maybe there’s a path where what he thought happened then, and what he finds out now, [is] different. I don’t know… It’s an interesting area of the show.”
It’s understandable why Molaro is protective of George Sr. — after all, Sheldon’s father is a richly drawn character in his own right on Young Sheldon. However, to ignore the affair entirely would be a misstep — not only because it would offer up a dramatic story for the show to explore, but also because it was such a pivotal moment in Sheldon’s young adulthood that affected him deeply for the rest of his life.
