What is it? Half-hour multi-cam sitcom...inside a half-hour multi-cam sitcom. Wow Sonny With a Chance flashback!
Where did it air? You'll have to check local listings for your next airing of Linda & Heather. Also, Disney Channel.
Who stars in it? Well Linda and Heather obviously. Also special guest stars Dove Cameron, Joey Bragg, Tenzig Norgay-Trainor, Kali Rocha and Jessica Marie Garcia. Some people might say Shelby Wulfert and Emily Buckner but they obviously just can't seem to read "Linda and Heather" for some reason.
Why are we reviewing this?
Because Linda and Heather now, and Linda and Heather FOREVER!
Together!
Image from the Liv and Maddie fan wikia, BTW.
So I heard that a lot of people are bitchin' and moanin' about S4 of Liv and Maddie so far and I have to say...I'm like, whuuuaaaa?
Seriously guys, I know I'm one to talk since sometimes I feel like the best thing Girl Meets World can do to immediately improve its quality is to immediately end its existence (and sometimes I make it known on this very blog in my infamous semi-lucid moments) but you do realize it's still the same show, right? So ok, let's look at Ruby. *Looks at Ruby* yup, she's a typical pre-teen girl all right. So people have problems with her but I seriously don't know what. She seems fine to me, in fact I think she actually has a decent amount to contribute to the show, especially since as the show went on longer Liv and Maddie started sharing less and less screentime together (I guess that split-screen technique is more taxing then they anticipated). And at least for her age she's not a bad actress (in fact come to think of it, a lot of people feel the same about Parker, and screw you Parker's like one of my favorite characters!) As for the California relocation...eh. It really doesn't feel like it's making much of a difference either way.
But onwards to the actual episode. The last time we reviewed Liv and Maddie: Cali Style!, it was...oh, crap, all the way back in September. Um, ooops. In that review I talked about my love for Kathy Kan-a-Rooney, the episode that first introduced Linda and Heather, and shared the broad outline for a fanscript I had submitted to Ron and John (thanks SPARF-a-Rooney for giving us that obvious-yet-I-still-didn't-catch-it ship name!) about Parker and Joey meeting Linda and Heather in person (recap: in my script, Parker and Joey would be trying to bring a broken-up Linda and Heather duo, played by Bridgit Mendler and Debby Ryan, back together - while the A-plot was Kathy Kan [Piper Curda] and Fangs [Laura Marano] joining Liv for a day at Ridgewood High. Yeah it was a pretty star-studded script as far as Disney Channel's concerned). Obviously it didn't take, but I'm still very satisfied with what we got.
How Linda and Heather get involved with the actual episode regards Liv's agent getting her a gig directly on Linda and Heather in an attempt to reboot Liv's career after the sudden "I quit" fiasco with Voltage. Immediately cue Parker being interested (he in fact leaps over the entire kitchen begging Liv to take the spot). It's, uh, pretty straightforward from there.
Meanwhile Maddie is all butthurt about Ruby getting a participation trophy in basketball and wants to teach her a lesson about losing so, yeah, naturally Ruby utterly owns Maddie at everything they try to do together. It's actually a nice parallel and light callback to Kathy Kan-a-Rooney since the B-plot of that one was about Maddie being hyper-competitive against Joey after Joey accidentally won a game of H-O-R-S-E to the point where she has to trick victory back from him. So, yeah, spoiler alert Maddie pretty much does the exact same thing to Ruby, but at least not before, again, utter ownage.
And then we get to the C-plot...which revolves around Joey and Willow breaking up over yeah one of those misunderstandings that they do in these types of multi-cam sitcoms all the time. You know, remember in Austin & Ally when Dez and Carrie broke up because they didn't understand they were talking about the dinner and not the date? Yeah. Well Ron and John pulled that off too, and with two characters who are needless to say way more intelligent than Dez or Carrie. But then they realize that their relationship got in a rut (what doesn't help is Joey recreating their very first date over and over again, the munch) and that maybe its best if they give each other some breathing room for a while. Yeah, I think Ron and John may be backtracking here (or maybe they weren't solidly sold on the possibility of S4 when they wrote that episode).
Liv's guest starring role, and the future of Linda and Heather, is put in jeopardy when the title stars threaten to quit after a row, so Liv's agent ropes in Parker (of course he's all too happy to) and put together a fake show to trick Linda and Heather coming back together. Yeah, duh, it works, and it impresses the network heads so much it scores Liv a reprise as Stephanie Einstein on Sing it LOUuuuuuDdeeeeeRRRRReeeerrrRRRRRREeeeRRRRRRRRRRRR-ah!!!!!!!!!!one
For me, it's a pretty basic Liv and Maddie episode, but as a huge fan I can't exactly complain. After all, I'm a fan for a reason - it's a pretty solid overall callback to events referred to in previous episodes, from the title guest characters to Maddie's way-overhyper-competitiveness to events way late in S3. And, hey, it was entertaining which is really all you need from a show like this (screw everybody wanting Girl Meets World to be a combination of DeGrassi-lite with half the taste and all the filler combined with a Reagan-era after school special).
Episode Grade: A-, though that might be a lot of fan bias showing through. Maybe realistically a B? But whatever, my blog, my grade, so it's an A-.
Episode MVP: You get only one guess, but I'll give you a hint: Her name starts with "D" and ends with "Chloe Hosterman." Also, Tenzig Norgay Trainor because Spongey convinced me so, and he needs more MVP love.
Final Thoughts:
- Yeah, you'll have to Google "Chloe Hosterman," just don't Google it too hard. You'll see what I mean.
- In the actual version of Linda and Heather-a-Rooney, Linda and Heather are played by Emily Bruckner and Sherri Wertfing or something like that. I probably got both those names mixed around. They may not be Bridgit or Debby but they make a lot of sense since they've always provided the voices for Linda and Heather ever since Day 1 when Kathy Kan-a-Rooney first aired. You might vaguely recognize the names despite the mangling because they're also
- It took a lot of effort to not just make the entire Linda and Heather theme song the opening quote.
- so it's here instead!
Pink pink pink!
Girls girls girls!
Glitter glitter glitter!
Twirls twirls twirls!
Together! Forever!
Its Linda! And Heather!
Best friends!
- and yes, that was entirely recalled from memory, although it's not exactly a hard theme song to memorize and recall.
- So yeah, we've had a bit of a schedule slip. I'm not really keen on making a dedicated blog post just to it, so it goes in here: like Mike said, holidays. But wait, the last post your lazy ass made was all the way back in September and October! Um...Halloween is a holiday too.
- Seriously though, I've been doing a lot of prep for a major career change. It might mean less time to blog...it might mean more time to blog. Hopefully around the new year and January and February I'll have time to actually, you know, blog.
- And with that you'll get one big-ass compilation post where I try to catch up on a lot of things.
While what I've seen has been good, i get why some may have issues. I mean, they've changed location, added new characters and chopped off a few. That's always ab a sign, just look at ANT Farm.
ReplyDeleteBut so far, i think it's done alright. Nothing's too much worse in the least. (But is just a tradition now for sows with no clips in thr intor, to gain clips in Season 4?)
I like that you compared the Joey pllot to the Austin & All Episode, cuz i thought of that to. This was sooo much better than that one, as i go into here:
http://spongey444.deviantart.com/journal/Linda-andHeatheraRooney-Vs-WeddingBells-WackyBirds-650592545
Parker wins MVP for me because e gets my favorite joke in this, with his first reaction early on. Otherwise, not much to say, it's a basic fun episode.