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How Young Sheldon Subtly Sets Up Conflict Between Sheldon and Mary
2023/09/05

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Young Sheldon Season 6 started off with a Sheldon problem. The series started focusing on Sheldon's family drama, which, in turn, relegated its protagonist to a lot of side-stories and subplots. Luckily, that's over, and Sheldon is back to the forefront. But "A New Weather Girl and a Stay-at-Home Coddler" introduced a new, short-term problem for Sheldon: he didn't have enough accolades to make his graduate school application stand out.

Eventually, Dr. Sturgis had come through. He found a cutting-edge research project that Sheldon could be a part of, but there was one issue: the program was in Germany and the Coopers couldn't afford it.

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Thus, "German for Beginners and a Crazy Old Man with a Bat" was all about Sheldon trying to raise funds. By the end of the episode, he had enough money, but not by his own doing. Here's what happened and why it will probably lead to conflict between Mary and Sheldon.

Everyone Needed a Break from Sheldon in Season 6

From the beginning of the series, it was clear that Sheldon was a remarkable child. After all, he grew up to be an award-winning physicist on The Big Bang Theory. However, that didn't make his early life easy. Because of his intellect and lack of social skills, friends were hard to come by.

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Combine that with his penchant for being right (and his love of telling everyone that he was always right), Sheldon could be pretty difficult to get along with. He would even argue with Pastor Jeff in the middle of a church service. Unfortunately, all that was what got him the funds for Germany.

The Coopers couldn't afford to send him to his research project, but Dr. Linkletter and the villainous Pastor Jeff stepped up. At the very end of the episode both of them showed up with envelopes full of cash. Dr. Linkletter had donated a week of his pay and passed a cap around the East Texas Tech faculty lounge, while Pastor Jeff had taken up a collection at church.

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While those looked like kind gestures at first, they weren't. Dr. Linkletter just wanted Sheldon out of his hair for the summer, and clearly everyone at church (even though the Coopers no longer attended) felt the same way. Even Missy said that she would donate if it meant getting Sheldon out of the house for the summer.

Why a Sheldon and Mary Conflict Is Coming

Fans didn't get to see Mary's response to the donations in the episode, though it's likely that she'll understand why people were so generous. It's unlikely that she'll explain everything to Sheldon. From the beginning of the series, Mary has known that Sheldon was different from the people around him, and she's done her best to cater to his needs and quirks.

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It's an absolute credit to her as a parent, but recently, Sheldon has started to think otherwise.

In "A New Weather Girl and a Stay-at-Home Coddler," Sheldon found out that he didn't have enough accolades on his graduate school application. He partially blamed Dr. Sturgis and Dr. Linkletter, but he also cast some blame in Mary's direction. Per the episode's name, she had spent her whole life coddling Sheldon, and it had made him take things for granted. In other words, she told him that he was special so much that he assumed everyone thought about him that way. When he found out otherwise, he wasn't happy.

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Things could get ugly if Mary withholds the reason for people donating to Sheldon's Germany trip. If he finds out, he'll be devastated, but he could also be put out with Mary for continuing to coddle and keep information from him. Something like that would help explain why the two butted heads a few times on TBBT.

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