In a wholly unsurprising move, CBS has decided to give a full season order to Young Sheldon, its Big Bang Theory prequel series about the birth of the bazinga. Young Sheldon already had a 13-episode order, but this full season will bump it up to 22 episode and make it the first new show of the 2017-2019 season to get picked up. This comes from Variety, which notes that Young Sheldon managed to retain 98 percent of its lead-in audience from The Big Bang Theory and pulled in 17.21 million viewers. Variety points out that no other new CBS show has retained the Big Bang Theory audience as well as Young Sheldon did, suggesting that the secret to future success is to just keep making prequel spin-offs like this. Who wouldn’t love to watch Young Bull or Young NCIS?
These crazy ratings also made Young Sheldon the highest-rated broadcast comedy premiere since 2011's Two Broke Girls, which was another Chuck Lorre series.