School for Gifted Children

This episode starts with Mary and George having a meeting with Sheldon and Georgie’s school principal, Mr. Peterson. He circles the topic of why he’s asked them to come see him but Mary asks him to get to the point. He explains that the curriculum isn’t challenging enough for Sheldon. The nine-year-old has a tendency to get bored and doesn’t express himself in a respectful manner. The teachers are often left embarrassed, put off and are simply tired of being corrected by a kid.

Mr. Peterson says that he has talked to the principal at a school for gifted children that would love to have a student like Sheldon. Although it’s in Dallas, three hrs away, he would be well taken care of, living with a local family and he would also get a full scholarship. Mary is appalled and says she doesn’t want to ship him away but George thinks it’ll be a great opportunity. At home, after explaining their meeting, Connie says it’ll be great too.

They talk to Sheldon and Mary thinks he won’t want to leave his family but his only concern is if the family he’d be staying with has a dog. He says he will miss the family but makes his decision with an air of ‘well, sacrifices have to be made’.

Open House

Sheldon, Mary, and George go to the Academy for a personal open house. The students wear froufrou uniforms, everyone is constantly studying and the principal, Flora, is an intellectual. Flora tells Mary and George that the student that she and her husband were hosting just graduated and so Sheldon would be living with them. Her husband is a retired Astro-physicist who worked for Nasa and so Sheldon could not be more excited.

In a matter of days, Sheldon is wearing the same froufrou uniform and is saying his goodbyes. Connie gives Sheldon a ‘family heirloom’ but Sheldon finds a price-tag. It was a nice gesture, I suppose. Mary, on the other hand, is distraught. She can’t believe that she has to say goodbye to him so soon (even though he’ll be visiting home every weekend). Missy asks Sheldon if he will miss her, and he says she’s like string beans; no one asks for them, no one wonders about them, but they’re just there. Missy asks, “but you eat them, right?” and he says yes. With a huge grin on her face, Missy decides that he will definitely miss her.

3 Hours Away

The first night that Sheldon is away, Missy attempts to speak with him through their twin telepathy and tells him that their mom misses him so much. It’s really adorable when she says that she can’t hear him so she’s going to hang up now, but she really hopes he got the message. George hears this and then hears Connie and Mary arguing in the other room. Fed up with the stress Sheldon’s absence has caused his family, he heads out that night to bring him back.

For Sheldon, things begin to go awry at dinner. They don’t say grace and when he realizes there’s a string bean on his plate, he looks at it longingly. After dinner, he is appalled to learn that his host family sings hippie folk music for fun. They couldn’t really convince him to join in. Then he has a hard time falling asleep because he is worried that he is going to get decapitated by the ceiling fan. In the end, Sheldon is really glad that his dad came to pick him up. Missy is ecstatic when she wakes up and sees him because that means he must have gotten her message.

This was a cute episode but I have to say, I think the season could have done a lot better if Sheldon had stayed at his new school, even if it was just for a couple of weeks!