Yet another quick announcement about the future of this blog

For a variety of reasons that I'll get into in the very next post, but also including health reasons and a simple lack of time (or more precisely feeling that I'm becoming too preoccupied with this blog), I'm going to scale back participation on my own blog here. Disneyfanalive has expressed an interest in contributing to this blog, so I thought, eh, why the hell not, he's in. He will start making contributions, uh, I guess whenever he feels like at this point.

For those of you looking forward to me and Mike live-blogging the Jessie finale - don't worry, of course that's still on. Provided that I'm sober enough to go through it (I've learned a few tricks from my ex so I'm pretty sure I can wing it). I'll be filling this blog with as much Jessie retrospective as I can within the next two-three days as well. Other than that...*shrug*. I probably should put a paragraph break in here before I go on (I'm telling you that because I'll be damned if I end a thought with *shrug*). Oh, and Mike and even the new guy DisneyAliveReviews, feel free to chime in at any point here.

The problem with reviewing Disney Channel and Nickelodeon shows is no less than four-fold, maybe even five-fold (I'm really, phenomenally bad at counting so you'll have to bear with me. BTW I'm studying engineering science. Not really predicting being able to go far on that one.) The first one is just time. As much as I liked Christian and Sean over at Girl Meets World Reviewed before, doing it on my own has given me even more respect for them. Even at a relatively fast typing pace (I've been officially clocked at 90 WPM which I understand is about professional secretary-level) and even limiting a post to just a few paragraphs, it's amazing and no less than astounding to see how much time and effort actually goes into these things, especially when you're doing it as a half-assed hobby. That window really starts to shrink down when you have to work around whatever ends up being the timing of the week and circumstances you have to deal with outside your blog. 

Now compound that with doing a minimum of five-seven shows a week and you start to feel like you might be drowning. It really becomes a pick-your-battles battle. There are some shows that lend themselves to weekly reviews better than others (like a show with inconsistent quality like, I dunno, Jessie or even sometimes Girl Meets World rather than a show that's consistently good like Liv and Maddie, or just consistently bland like K.C. Undercover or I Didn't Do It's second season, or what Game Shakers looks like so far) and there are individual episodes that lend themselves better to review than others, even when that episode is good (it was incredibly hard to actually review Cyd and Shelby's Haunted Escape beyond "lol lampshade hanging.") 

Which leads to Point #3: Is there much a point to review these shows in the first place? I'm thankful that there are other like-minded people like Mike and DisneyFanAlive and Sponey444 who despite their ages (actually the ages are all around the board too, it turns out) at least care enough about these stupid kiddie shows to talk about them on a level a little more engaging than, say, a dismissive blurb on TV Club's What's On Tonight?* to remind you that, oh, hey, Miley Cyrus once had a show on a network with Disney in the name (or to more accurately reflect what such a blurb would be, to mistakenly assume Hannah Montana is still on the air despite how your first clue otherwise should be nearly every single thing Miley Cyrus has done in her personal and private life for the past four years). That said, I've managed to shock myself most of all regarding how hard it is to come up with that engaging, intellectual conversation regarding these shows at least on an episode-by-episode basis. Idiot pundits rapidly running out of material like to say "it is what it is" is the most hated phrase in the English language - yeah, whatever. When it comes to the state of kiddie shows and children's programming, it is what it is. Sometimes a show comes around like Liv and Maddie and Girl Meets World with enough promise or craftsmanship behind it to sucker in older audiences or even adults, enough to sometimes actually delude these viewers into thinking, oh hey, these shows are for me too. Then you branch out beyond those core shows into the periphery of the totality of what the network has to offer (not including Nick Jr. or Disney Jr., just the core programming blocks even) and you realize that not every showrunner**, creator, or executive producer of every show is on the same page. Comparing A.N.T. Farm to Good Luck Charlie or comparing Austin & Ally to Girl Meets World is like comparing Glee to Mad Men. Both shows are prime quality productions with a mass of talent and craftsmanship stuffed into them as the people behind them can muster, but for whatever reason Mad Men just seems to work much, much better on a near-universal level. Glee is just going to be that much more of a niche show, regardless of its quality, and there will be people who will tune into that niche and try as they might like it and just be turned off. Most of the shows on Disney Channel aren't going to bother to punch above their weight class like GMW or LaM, they're still aiming straight and true for the network's core demo. Even moreso for Nickelodeon who seems to have doubled-down on the middle school-aged market or even younger (the general rule of thumb is the show's protagonists are mainly going to appeal to a core demo slightly younger than the actors themselves, the characters they play and/or both - so you can imagine the core age demo Nicky, Ricky, Dicky and Dawn must be aiming for. It might as well be a non-educational/non-inspirational Nick Jr. show).

I guess what I'm trying to say with this particular point is, sometimes it can feel very discouraging to try to convince someone that it's ok to be this age and like this kind of show and try to review and discuss it on the same level as The Walking Dead (you know, that show where AMC has a show in turn dedicated to nothing but The Talking Dead - I want to see Best Talking Whenever or Girl Meets Talking on a weekly basis!), and that, no, it doesn't mean you're also a pedophile. And that discouragement comes from not only from other people but even from the very same fandom you share or even it can sometimes feel like it's coming from the TV shows or network itself. I'm really starting to get why Bryan quit his NickAndMore blog, especially after complaining about actually getting cease and desist implications from Nickelodeon for, you know, giving them free advertising. 

That leads right into Point #4, though I guess Points #3, #4 and #5 start to blend together. What kind of audience and recognition are you trying to get from a blog that discusses Disney Channel and Nickelodeon? The type of circles that normally discuss television on message boards or blogging and enthusiast sites  - the former Television Without Pity boards, Zap2It, AV Club etc. - really do consider those two networks to be fully beneath them. AV Club in particular can't seem to garner anything but outright contempt for these networks save for the extremely rare occasions they swoop down to review a single episode of a single choice show, either usually because the show has gained the type of unstoppable hype you normally see for AMC or HBO tentpoles (Hannah Montana, Wizards of Waverly Place, Girl Meets World etc.) or when these Disney Channel/Nick tentpoles are running down to their inevitably mega-rated conclusions (sometimes you still need the latter to precipitate interest in the former). Or, most likely, they'll review a random Disney Channel show just specifically to throw mean-spirited darts at it, much like how the manly musk-drenched hunter who started rocking the hipster beard way before hipsters made it cool expresses his hormonal superiority with the traditional and ceremonial sharp, quick, and deadly placement of heavy club onto the head of a defenseless baby seal. This is pretty much how Drew Magary over at Deadspin, Concourse and Adequate Man (which together counteract Jezebel by being the #NotAllMen branch of Gawker Media) treated Jessie when he "reviewed" it. Let me point out that exactly none of those sites review TV shows of any sort on even a semi-regular basis, let alone kiddie shows. It's picking on an easy target for the sake of picking on an easy target and to pass off contempt for that target as editorial entertainment. I know I come off as overly-cynical sometimes, especially lately (more on that later), but I'm so sick and tired of how cynicism for the sake of cynicism seems to be on the path towards being the editorial and entertainment standard, and how passing off bare cynicism as a valid form of editorialism and entertainment by itself (like a punchline with no lead-up) seems to be the defining mark of hipster and Millennial-centric media, and it's one of the big reasons why I have such a deep, seething hatred for my own generation and why I am so goddamn fucking outright ashamed to be a part of said generation. 

Anyway, with all that out of the way, my point being that I don't even know where such honest and frank discussion of kiddie shows would even fall on the spectrum of entertainment-centric editorial and journalism. It's not so much a matter of being on the radar as so much as the forces in control actively pushing it off.

And then you get to the other extreme, which would be Point #5: the actual core demo fandom (i.e. 14 year old girls) and my increasingly seething hatred of that too. It's really driving home the fact that at the end of the day, no, these shows are not for you, quit leering at Debby Ryan or Dove Cameron (or worse, Rowan Blanchard - the girl just turns 14 today and yes you have a lot of men who are completely shameless in admitting that they are adult men and equally shameless in describing, in minute detail, very certain and specific things they want to do to certain parts, or rather part, singular, of Rowan's body. It is both incredibly disgusting and incredibly annoying) before someone calls the cops on you. I remember back when I first started watching these shows (which I already went over in earlier posts) and the fandom was still relatively quiet. Well, there was this one guy but that's really its own tale for another time. You had the waning Seddie/Creddie shippers on the IMDb iCarly board, and on the IMDb A.N.T. Farm board you had the Flyna/Flovie shippers plus a large number of nonetheless easy to ignore idiots making a dozen topics about when will they finally get to see Stefanie Scott or Sierra McCormick naked (sigh). Most of the topics on the boards were discussion topics for episodes and that was pretty much it. Fast forward to now, beyond IMDb into the Twittersphere, and everything is drowned out by shipping and particularly Rucas/Lucaya. It's not even particularly bad except for the fact that the opposing Rucas and Lucaya shippers have decided that the most civilized and intelligent thing to do is to get into a vicious Twitter war with each other and drag everybody else into it. So what you have are a bunch of hormonal 14 year old girls/morons who are all but admitting that their ideal sexual fantasy is to be cucked by either Rowan or Sabrina, except they're not intelligent enough to realize that they're openly talking about on public cyberspace how badly they want to be cucked by either Rowan or Sabrina, and then bitching at each other and spreading hateful comments towards each other about whether or not it's better to be cucked by Rowan or Sabrina. Oh, and Best Friends Whenever and Jessie are the worst shows ever made because they somehow get in the way of their Rowan-on-Peyton cuckhold fantasy vs. Sabrina-on-Peyton cuckold fantasy bitchfest arguments and if you like these shows you are a terrible person. Years ago I used to be very big into the anime fandom scene and it's fucking bullshit like this that drove me out. 

So, yeah, very honestly, I'm really starting to hate the fandom because they're sucking the fun out of not only the shows/characters they stan but the whole damn network. It's getting to the point where I hope Meets Texas is a dismal ratings bomb if only to specifically spite these underaged morons. But since I'm vastly outnumbered by said underaged morons that will never happen. And then you have the other part of the fandom, back to the adult creepy guys who insist on hitting anything of the opposite sex that they see on kiddie TV, which means, again, a whole lot of graphic detail about what they want to do to a very specific, particular body part of whoever happens to be the flavor of the month on Disney Channel or Nick (Rowan, Sabs, Landry, Dove, Brec and Kira on Nick, so on). And then some of these guys are particularly brilliant and realize that they're surrounded by a bunch of annoying attention-starved 14 year old girls on Twitter all simultaneously worshiping a random teen actress on a basic cable network who will never give them the time of day in their retweets, or in person, or ever. Hey, creepy adult male realizes, why don't I just start hitting on these 14-year old randos I'm stuck with?! I don't think I need to go any further with this. 

Oh look I really am bad at counting because there's Point #6, and that's just myself. I never had any intention to be as cynical as I am in my latest reviews, but now I'm just starting to hate a lot of what I watch even though a lot of you guys love it. I think that's a sign that maybe I just need to back a way for a bit, especially after Jessie ends. When I first started watching these shows they were incredibly comforting at a time when I was desperately seeking something incredibly comforting, but now the same exact shows that provided me the most comfort are just making me roll my eyes and wonder what the fuck is happening, and I'm starting to wonder if it might be more me than them. Maybe the shows and the network have served their purpose that I need them for, and maybe, I don't know, maybe it's time for me to move on to something else. Maybe act my age and start enjoying the testosterone-soaked gunplay-fests on CBS or whatever. Maybe I really do need to deal with the fact that these shows really aren't for me.

So, yeah. I don't know if anybody has anything else to add. Oh, yeah, welcome new guy!

*P.S. Todd Van der Wertt is literally the worst person alive who isn't an Al Qaeda or ISIL.

**P.P.S. there is a difference between "showrunner," "creator" and "executive producer" and while all three can be the exact same person and often are, they are nonetheless considered distinct roles.

I think you should just watch you are amused by. And yes I know that kids television can be very frustrating. But I'm very excited to see how the Jessie finale is. Hope it turns out to be a great finale.

You know, guys, there was a time where television as a whole could never be taken seriously. Sure, you could watch a great show and enjoy it, but actually reviewing it critically would get you laughed at. I think The Simpsons' influence on television extends even further, because once that show became popular, people started creating fan sites and discussing episode after episode. So if that changed at some point, why not kids television? It's still a valid form of entertainment. Can it be frustrating? It definitely can, because both Nickelodeon and Disney Channel were in much better shape ten years ago. But is it something that deserves ridicule? No, it doesn't. It really doesn't.

One of my favorite reviews on the Internet is Mr. Enter's review of "The Return of Slade" for Teen Titans Go. He talks about the depth and meaning of kids television and that the best shows are the ones you hold onto as an adult and inspire you to make your own stories. When you hold onto your childhood, you make shows like Hey Arnold or Courage the Cowardly Dog or Steven Universe. When you forget your childhood, you make something like Bucket & Skinner or Breadwinners. You start thinking you know what kids want instead of trying to understand what kids want. If you can look at a television show critically and discuss it, then you deserve the chance to write. Have you guys seen Kary's Degrassi Blog? It's absolutely beautiful. This black man in his 30s looks at Degrassi as legitimate entertainment through the academic lens of an adult. And it works on so many levels because Kary is a great writer and understands the show like no one else online. And yes, Unknown, the fandoms are the major reason why these shows aren't being taken seriously. Quality is subjective, but no one's sitting there and looking at these shows as legitimate entertainment when you have a bunch of hormone-fueled teens arguing over who should end up together. Girl Meets World, at this point in time, is not that kind of show. It shouldn't be treated like that and we really need to stop trying to treat it like that.

Oh yeah, the cynical blogger thing is really played out right now. Everyone does it at this point and they don't know how to find a balance. Also, if you feel the need to be overly cynical without any analysis or insight, you're doing it wrong and your work is going to be amateurish. Boycott the Caf, Full House Reviewed. Those blogs manage to be cynical and provocative while providing actual analysis and wit. Oh yeah, it also comes down to just being a good writer. A lot of these bloggers forget that. 

DisneyFan, welcome aboard. Hopefully, you and I will be able to hold down the fort now that Unknown is on his way out soon. School takes up a lot of my time, but I have a job here that I enjoy doing and I'm going to push myself to see how much weight I can pull. Hopefully, DisneyFan, you provide some commentary on tomorrow's big double review. 

It's funny you mention the thing about Teen Titans Go because, just today, Alex Hirsh talks about the season finale of Gravity Falls (on the official Disney Channel blog, which I think is blog.Disney.something or other) and how his childhood memories, both good, bad, and weird, helped shape that show and it really drives home how the best kiddie show creators are aware of this too. I'm willing to bet Dan Povenmire and Swampy Marsh are pretty much the same too. I think this was Dan Schneider's secret too, except perhaps he's been doing it for so long that ability to reach back into childhood has simply been worn out and that well is quite dried up by now. 

Going back to the discussion of television, it seems like most people talk about TV, especially sitcom TV, as being an art form in terms of the 70s being a watershed moment (and this inevitably means Normal Lear, though Mary Tyler Moore and the great and always affable Bob Newhart get shoutouts too). Only relatively recently are these same pundits even giving 80s sitcom TV the same treatment, and if its 90s TV it's almost always Twin Peaks, Simpsons or maybe, just maybe Seinfeld (the only multi-cam sitcom of the bunch). There is some of the same discussion now being directed at children's shows, but again it's almost always cartoons, and I think the big reason why can be summed up in two words: Adventure Time. It was so mind-blowing and revolutionary I think everybody was just caught by surprise and it just generated a lot of buzz. You'll notice the most successful copycats, particularly Steven Universe, are from people who originally worked on Adventure Time. Interestingly enough if anything Adventure Time is a copycat of Phineas and Ferb (or at least Phineas and Ferb came first). Phineas and Ferb and especially Gravity Falls are two more cartoon shows that are drawing a lot of favorable attention from "serious" TV circles but again I think a lot of that has to do with basically being Disney Adventure Time. I don't know Alex Hirsh's background (we're very roughly the same age so he couldn't have been around that long) but I know he's at least a little chummy with Marsh and Povenmire. When Disney Channel/Disney XD actually tried to do more "adult" cartoons with TRON: Legacy and MotorCity and more or less try to compete with [adult swim], it was quiet and eventually canceled. 

Bucket and Skinner...was a little bit before my time (odd for someone of my age to say, especially given that it was just three years ago) but I've still managed to see enough of it that yeah it's kind of a big pile of WTF. It was the first of what became a very long string of infamous Nickelodeon cancellations that culminated with Sam & Cat. Breadwinners...it's very clear that it's from a bunch of people who want to pretend its the 90s again and that they're kids again instead of actually mining their childhood experiences for good content. Or to put it another way, it's childhood distilled into a series of cereal commercials (the fact that General Mills actually has cereal commercials like this only helps drive it home). I think that's what happened to Jessie too, come to think of it. Back when that show was new, back in Season 1, there was a lot of content being churned out, a lot of interviews with Debby and other cast members, about how Debby was taking her own experiences growing up in Texas and putting that into the show. How Debby was excited about having an active part in shaping what the show and the title character would be like as final products, and how much of her own biographical experience was being mined for material. I pointed out in one of the previous reviews how she talked about wanting to be a doctor in The Whining (probably the last time this biographical mining was actually used) and supposedly the running joke about Jessie's sad love life actually came from Debby's middle and high school dating experiences (or at least what passed for high school, given that Debby spent her high school years in a fictional one onboard a cruise ship set). Then at some point it just started being more like a standard sitcom. I think we can all make a pretty good guess what that point was. I've been reading Spongey444's blog, which is just spongey444.wordpress.com, and if nothing else you can read his Jessie reviews and pinpoint where that transition happened. Spongey444 really liked my shout-out last time, so hey, why not, here's another one.

I think the big secret to Liv and Maddie's success is that the show really isn't even trying to live up or down to a certain expectation. Hart and Beck have pretty traditional sitcom backgrounds (they've only ventured into kiddie stuff relatively recently) so I think they're just wisely sticking to what they know they can do successfully. If you really go back and examine a typical Liv and Maddie episode, it's a lot more like a typical network sitcom than being perfectly in-line with a typical Disney Channel one. In an odd way...it's better at being Girl Meets World than Girl Meets World. I know I say that a lot so I'll need to qualify that a little more - in terms of having more of that traditional sitcom writing "feel" that appeals to older, adult audiences, Liv and Maddie is better at pulling that off than Girl Meets World despite Girl Meets World having precisely that exact, direct descendant pedigree from Boy Meets World. Among other things. I'd argue the same thing for Good Luck Charlie - it wasn't trying to explicitly be a kiddie show, it wasn't trying to have the type of humor a bunch of adults thought little kids would love, it really was just trying to be a standard domestic sitcom that just happened to be on Disney Channel. Again, Liv and Maddie is basically like that. Again, Jessie more or less used to be like that. Again, it's what Girl Meets World is trying to be. I don't know why the quality has to be all over the place though, even if not especially within the same show, or even in the same frikkin' episode! 

This is the first I've heard of Kary's Degrassi blog BTW. I'll have to check it out

Yeah, maybe I was a little unfair with the direct statement regarding having to look to Al Qaeda or ISIL to find a person worse than AV Club's Todd Van der Wertt. But he is a perfect example of what you're talking about as the cynical journalistic/editorial style is exactly what he trades in.

And I'm not trying to be on my way out at least. Oh, yeah, that reminds me, what I have planned for my future contributions! More Jessie retro reviews for starters. I guess as the very last episode forever is tomorrow, I guess at this point every episode of Jessie is going to be a retro review. Also, a lot of essays about the state of Disney Channel, Nickelodeon, and children's entertainment in general. Breaking down content, ratings/viewer numbers, the fandom etc. Time permitting at this point. In the immediate future, of course the Jessie finale, Jessie goes to Hollywood (that's the title I'm referring it to and I'm sticking to it), the I Didn't Do It finale, The Rescuers, and...because it's just such a big event, too big to ignore - we're going to be breaking this blog's rules of both not stepping into GMWReview's territory and my own personal disgust and contempt for the episode previews and descriptions released so far, but yeah, Girl Meets Texas. All the damn parts. I'll let Mike and Nick handle everything else with maybe a blurb to add to Liv and Maddie or Best Friends Whenever or Nickelodeon's stuff. 

And welcome aboard Nick! I'm glad it looks like things are looking OK for this blog still.