A Brief and Seriously True - Seriously - History of Young Sheldon
Summer 2008: Big Bang Theory premieres on CBS, featuring four socially-awkward but brilliant scientists and engineers, including Sheldon Cooper played by actor Jim Parsons.
Fall 2010: Sheldon Cooper learns about rap from a documentary and begins rapping in his spare time. He adopts the rap name Yung Sheldon.
Spring 2011: Yung Sheldon makes his earliest uploads to Soundcloud, where they remain unobserved for a couple years.
Summer 2013: Sheldon Cooper decides he needs a nickname for his rap name and settles on Shellz. He releases his first mixtape, Shellz & Cheese: Cheese is a play on cheddar, which is a euphemism for money, on Datpiff.com
Fall 2014: CBS decides to adapt Yung Sheldon’s body of work as a thirty-minute sitcom, but to make it more palatable to middle America, they add an “O” to “Yung,” remove all traces of hip hop, and make the character prepubescent. They keep the bowtie, which had been one of Yung Sheldon’s signature looks, but Young Sheldon no longer wears it to the side.
Fall 2017: CBS launches Young Sheldon. Sheldon Cooper is now split between two shows and one Soundcloud account.
Spring 2018: Yung Sheldon, in an attempt to distance himself from Young Sheldon, gets several face tattoos. Sheldon Cooper’s face tattoos are a problem for CBS, but they have the ability to use makeup to cover them up.
Summer 2018: Yung Sheldon becomes even more aggressive, taunting Cornell West, daring him to release another album, and shouting “It’s CBS, biyaaaaaaaaaaa!” in his song’s intros. CBS asks Sheldon Cooper to stop shouting “It’s CBS, biyaaaaaaaaa!”
Fall 2018: Yung Sheldon stops shouting “It’s CBS, biyaaaaaaaaaaa!” and changes to “It’s CBS, ninja!” before finally crossing the line and just switching to the N-word. His first Soundcloud hit is him rapping CBS’s cease and desist with a chorus of “And we won’t stop, cause we can’t stop”
Summer 2018: To distance itself from Yung Sheldon, CBS quietly cancels Young Sheldon without anyone complaining, validating CBS’s theory that no one cared about the show.
Fall 2018: As the cast of The Big Bang Theory returned to set to begin shooting the new season, Shellz showed up to ask Sheldon Cooper why he was blocking Shellz from releasing new music. When Shellz threatened to leak the new stuff, a physical altercation broke out between Shellz and Sheldon Cooper, during which Shellz smashed a bottle of champagne over Sheldon Cooper’s head. This was a traumatic moment for most of the cast, most of all Jim Parsons. The writers were torn by what was happening – could a fictional alter ego of a fictional character exist independently of an equally fictitious primary character? They were nonetheless excited about the new possibilities Shellz’ presence provided them.
Jim Parsons begins seeing a psychiatrist resulting in a deeper understanding of himself, Sheldon Cooper, and Shellz, leading to some of the best music of Shellz’ career.
Spring 2018: Young Sheldon shows up in the writers’ room, demanding answers. When one of the writers reminds him that he was cancelled, he claims the only one who can cancel Young Sheldon is Young Sheldon and demands to see Yung Sheldon because he’s “got something for him.” It’s a plaque commemorating his most recent single, “Cite this!” going platinum, but because the staff is now used to regular provocations from Yung Sheldon, the police are called and Young Sheldon is arrested, which becomes part of Sheldon Cooper’s back story and gives Yung Sheldon the street cred he’d been lacking.
Fall 2018: Jim Parsons asks to be let out of his contract because of the toll being Sheldon Cooper has taken on him. CBS agrees but only if they are allowed to pilot a reality show featuring Yung Sheldon, who has become much more interesting than Sheldon Cooper ever was.
Summer 2019: Jim Parson’s mental breakdown is captured in stunning 4K over the course of eight episodes of Shellz Belles, a Bachelor-style dating show in which Yung Sheldon, Sheldon Cooper, and Jim Parsons all received producers’ credits but whose constant disagreements led to a disastrous production in which Jim Parsons could be often heard yelling “But I don’t even like girls!” to which Sheldon Cooper and Yung Sheldon could be heard yelling back “But we do!”
Summer 2020: Shellz Belles returns for one more season, this time starring Ian Armitage as Young Sheldon. It begins with Young Sheldon finally getting a finale and Ian asking the contestants what they thought of it. Based on the results of this impromptu focus group, Young Sheldon was removed from all streaming sites and all traces of the show’s existence were removed from CBS.com.
