Sometimes a television show begins to change during its run, morphing into something new as the writers and producers work out what works best for the characters and the story. The most obvious and frequent changes are often in the tone of the show, as the initial ideas are either softened or sharpened and things become more complex. Just look the brilliant political satire "Veep", which starts out as a cheesy dark comedy, but ends up becoming depressingly realistic in its satire, with the final season being quite black. The hit CBS comedy Young Sheldon had a slightly easier transformation, but it was no less dramatic. Already wildly different from its predecessor, The Big Bang Theory, by simple means using a single-camera format without a studio audience"Young Sheldon" has transformed even more over the course of seven seasons to become a bona fide family dramedy.

In the show's later seasons, showrunners Steven Molaro and Steve Holland combined drama and comedy in just the right amounts to make a show that had as many honest moments as it did funny ones, although there was one episode where they really had to change. things are set up a bit. The show's penultimate episode, "Funeral," mentions Cooper family patriarch George Sr. (Lance Barber), and the jokes are nowhere to be found. That's intentional, but it's the result of some re-editing that the creators felt was necessary to really make the episode sing.

In an interview with ParadeHolland revealed that while the original plan for the episode had the standard amount of jokes when they watched it in edit, they realized the humor wasn't really out of place:

“We wanted to be very respectful of George as a character and what his passing meant to this family. I think we realized that we could give ourselves permission to be a little more serious and have a little more weight at this point, which felt very real to us, we could treat it as real as we wanted.

The result was a a truly heartbreaking episode that is the best of the series, according to IMDband the lack of jokes allowed the characters to really show their emotional depth during one of the most difficult times of their lives. The loss of George Sr. would have major repercussions that would reverberate not only through "The Big Bang Theory" but also the Young Sheldon spin-off, Georgie and Mandy's First Marriage, and it's great that the creators of the series took the moment seriously.

When "Young Sheldon" began, Sheldon and his siblings were quite young, with Sheldon and his twin sister Missy (Regan Reward) starting the series at age 9, and their older brother Georgie (Montana Jordan) being 14. they were a similar age, which is pretty young to be dealing with some of the heavier themes of the later seasons, but as they got older, the show was able to mature. along with them.

Holland said that they "knew at this point that the kids were going to knock this out of the park" and that they put some of their genuine feelings of sadness over the show's end into their performances. They are all fantastic (Reward is devastating) and they make a waste of the stupid, real George Sr. i feel it is much more realistic. It's great stuff, even if it's not at all funny for what is usually a comedy series, although there is at least one joke: George actor Lance Barber has a secret job as one of the funeral attendees. Even in the darkest moments of life, there can be some lightness.