Season 8 - promises and threats *SPOILERS*

[CassandraElise]

(2010)

"These characters, as they grow, they deal with more things. Sheldon [Jim Parsons] has grown unbelievably over seven years from where we began. We could never have imagined the stories we've been doing in the past year or so six years ago," he said.
(2014)

Well, Chuck, that's because he's not the same character. It's not growth, it's dismantlement and restructuring. Of course it opens up new stories if you completely rejig someone's personality, speech-patterns, intentions, mannerisms...and remove all their particularly defining qualities like detachment, devotion to science, romantic disinterest, routines, germ phobia, eccentricity, genius etc

We had a lovely carved chair that suffered partial conflagration in a small studio fire. So we chopped the bugger up, and retooled it into a knobbly lattice for our grape vines. Looking at it now, it's certainly part of a different story, one I "couldn't have imagined" six years ago, but it's also NOT A CHAIR anymore, and has, moreover, become infested with termites.

Laboured metaphor, but I haven't had any coffee yet.

I think the key word in Lorre's quote is unbelievably. Definition from dictionary.com:

[uhn-bi-lee-vuh-buhl]
adjective
1.
too dubious or improbable to be believed.
2.
so remarkable as to strain credulity; extraordinary

That sums up Sheldon's "growth," wouldn't you say?