Thursday, October 29, 2015

Ultimate Spider-Man Reviewed: Halloween Night at the Museum (3.21)

I'll be off throughout Halloween enjoying, uh, Halloween, so enjoy this rerun I originally wrote for iO9's Observation Deck! You can view the original here and I've pasted the full content below. In the meantime Nick and Mike will be going over WITS Academy Season 1. Enjoy!

What is it? Strictly speaking, an animated half-hour (24 minute) action cartoon. But beyond that, extremely poorly conceived.
Where did it air? Both Disney Channel and Disney XD, if it makes a difference
Who stars in it? Drake Bell (yes of Drake & Josh and perpetually broke fame) as Spidey himself, and all the Jessie reprisals including Debby, Peyton, Skai, Cameron, Karan and yeah that's pretty much it. Some veteran voice actress playing Morgan Le Fey, I forgot who but she's been around.
Why did we review it? Because it's Disney, it's Spider-Man, and it's animated Debby (it's not nearly as exciting as it sounds, despite all the extra attention given to Debby's...more obvious assets. Just read on).

The Ultimate Spider-Man/Jessie Crossover Was So Terribad I had to Drink to get Through It7,147

So just remember what I had to go through watching this so you don't have to.

Ultimate Spider-Man is, well, Ultimate Spider-Man. It's yet another animated permutation of the popular web-slinger airing on Disney XD as part of the "Marvel Universe" (not literally the Marvel Universe, just the name of the programming block - so for those of you worried about this being incorporated into the larger Marvel canon, you can breathe a sigh of relief). Drake Bell (famous for Nickelodeon's Drake & Josh and picking up MC Hammer's financial habits) cracks wise, throws webbing at bad guy's faces, and that's pretty much the show in a nutshell. It's a superhero cartoon series on a Disney network so of course it's going to be at least a little dumbed down, with apparent mixed results from fans depending on who you ask.

As for Jessie, it's yet another multi-cam "KidCom" hanging on from the star factory era of Disney Channel's zenith. Starring Debby Ryan (of Disney's ownSuite Life on Deck fame), it follows the eponymous character's life as a babysitter for the four rich and largely adopted children of a famous actor couple who since the second season have been almost completely absent from the show. And like many of its predecessors (namely Wizards of Waverly Placeand Good Luck Charlie), Jessie can carry its own surprising weight in charm through its unexpected human storytelling despite all the laugh track-induced demo-driven antics. That said, ever since about the middle of Season 2 the show's been more or less living down to its host network's reputation and rarely straying far from its main role as a delivery vehicle for childish physical comedy.

So, what do you get when you combine the two? And more importantly, who would even ask that question in the first place?

As it stands, Ultimate Spider-Man: Web Warrior's "Halloween Night at the Museum" barely makes any effort to address both questions in the slightest degree. For the latter question, the setup itself is convenient enough: Ultimate Spider-Man takes place in New York City. So does Jessie. "I smell crossover!" is no doubt what Joe Quesada and his Disney Channel counterpart instantly cooked up in their minds upon that realization. The storyline rationalization? The canon or continuity ramifications? The demo justification? You got me there.

The Ultimate Spider-Man/Jessie Crossover Was So Terribad I had to Drink to get Through It

A major source for Jessie's charm (at least in the first season) was the remarkable and heartfelt humanity found in Jessie herself. As a teenage Texan essentially running away from her military home and a would-be college-bound or Army service life and trying to find herself in the Big Apple instead, the character had much of Debby Ryan's own autobiographical experiences and lessons poured into her early in the show's run. Following in the steps of Miley Cyrus' Miley Stewart/Hannah Montana and Hilary Duff's Lizzie McGuire, Jessie Prescott embodied all the light "girl power when convenient for commercialization" tropes present in most Disney Channel fare, but also fully embraced the tomboyish and even badass aspects of other recent leading lady characters like Selena Gomez's wizard Alex Russo and China Anne McClain's stubborn-to-a-fault Chyna Parks of A.N.T. Farm (which has its production legacy in the same Suite Life on Deck roots as Jessie). Jessie was more than capable of fending for herself in hand-to-hand combat thanks to the obsessive God Country and Nothing Else lifestyle and zeitgeist of her father; she learned to fly helicopters, clean, disassemble and operate an AK-47 and repair the treads of a tank (all the while in swimwear as per this universe's exaggerated conception of Texas teen beauty pageants). She was more than capable of expressing a soft and classically feminine side when she looked after her charges or pined for the romantic (Disney Channel code for overtly sexual) affections of her luxury apartment's doorboy, yet incapable of blinking twice at the thought of getting her hands dirty to defend the honor of herself or her loved ones. Most importantly of all, Jessie made mistakes. Frequently. And not the kind of "after school special" mistakes where characters make fundamental lifestyle flaws, feel sorry and make obligatory amends because the plot and/or a mandate from President Reagan himself says so, but the type of mistakes that quite frankly Jessie would be quite comfortable simply walking away from. The type of mistakes that might effect the popular standing of a kid at his or her school, or give a young child a miserable birthday, but have no true consequences for herself. Sure, she risks getting fired, but bailing from a miserable, unappreciative, thankless and even outright abusive entry-level low-wage job for whatever comes next can't exactly be the worst thing to happen to her. Yet it does matter to her, and she's willing to use her talents and put up with all the crap of her job to bend over backwards (literally) for everyone else's happiness.

That is until the producers (which includes Ryan herself and long-time industry veteran Pamela Eells O'Connell, who brought to existence not onlySuite Life of Zack and Cody and its follow-on Suite Life on Deck but a bevy of near-immortal sitcoms you've no doubt seen - Married...With Children, Mad About Youand The Nanny from which Jessie serves as a tween spiritual successor to are all her creations) thought it better to double-down on pratfalls and corny one-liners at the extreme expense of characterization or plot. And thus how the storytelling and characterization of Jessie is now routinely outdone by shows with such compelling high concept titles as I Didn't Do It and Dog With a Blog, let alone the highly anticipated Girl Meets World (which brings back most of the creative staff of Boy Meets World with it). The creative staff have tried to add that human element back with the concluding story arc for the third season - and rather ineptly, with an out-of-left-field romance involving a charmless stalker (no, seriously - in the Disney Channel exaggerated-verse, Jessie's fiance uses CIA assets to cyber-stalk her. In the Disney Channel exaggerated-verse, this is considered so romantic Jessie has no choice but to accept his marriage proposal).

Given Jessie's tendency to humor and write down to its intended demographic in its latest season, and given Ultimate Spider-Man's tendency for the same since practically its conception, it's only natural that the crossover episode between the two follow suit. If that were it's biggest sin, it would at least be excusable under the lens of tween entertainment - and yet it still manages to find fundamental ways to fail. Disney Channel is no stranger to crossovers - in fact, with practically each major series having one under its belt, you can even say it's the undisputed master. Starting with the Suite Life of Zack and Cody/That's So Raven/Hannah Montana crossover That's So Suite Life of Hannah Montana (which codified the Disney Channel Live Action Universe), the crossover event has become an anticipated and welcome spectacle of colliding worlds, characters and antics - and they're usually handled pretty well. Jessie'sprevious crossovers with Austin & Ally and Good Luck Charlie maintained each show's characterizations and handled the plots believably, as far as the continuity of the universe permitted, getting a lot of mileage from the fact that half an hour from each 1-hour to 90-minute crossover episode is handled by each crossing show's own creative staff. As far as "Halloween Night at the Museum" is concerned, the Jessie cast is little more than voiced props and special guest damsels in distress for Procacious Peter Parker to banter with in lieu of rescuing.

You've no doubt noticed that I've waited this long to even get to the basic plot of the episode - believe me, you're not missing much. The excuse for the Jessiecast to cross paths with Spider-Man is that they need to visit a museum for a school assignment, and beleaguered Peter merely wants some high-minded rest after a near two-week marathon of busting bad guys. They both encounter a magical tomb inhabited by Morgan Le Faye of Arthurian legend and sealed with what's presumably Excalibur (the actual episode remains mum on that exact point); after knocking the sword from its perch, the kids are given magical powers corresponding to their costumes (Ravi becomes a sorcerer, Luke becomes a pirate - a nice nod to Cameron Boyce's starring voice work onJake and the Neverland Pirates - Emma becomes a fairy and Zuri becomes, oddly enough, Spidey's own nemesis Doc Oc) while Morgan herself is unleashed. If you're not familiar with who any of those characters are and how to keep track of them, don't worry - other than being rescue bait the kids and their newfound powers do not actually factor into the plot whatsoever. Jessie herself has some limited badass moments swinging a sword wildly through the air with complete ineffectiveness, Morgan gets stomped on by a giant lizard-turned-dragon, Spider-Man pretty much saves the day single-handedly including placing the sword back in its proper place and magically restoring proper order, and the viewer walks away struggling to find a point to what he or she just witnessed.

In the end, "Halloween Night at the Museum" is a pretty standard episode of what's honestly a pretty mediocre superhero cartoon, only with the added slight novelty of having some recognizable names from a sister network aiming at a completely different demographic lending some voicework. I can't even say that the characters resemble their live-action counterparts - yes, even in its basic character design, the crossover fails. For reference, they have this to work with:

...which they interpret as this:

Debby Ryan does not look like that. No human alive looks like that.

I did notice, however, that they did put in painstaking detail to getting one of Debby's attributes accurately depicted....

So if you're a big fan of seeing Debby's 52cs in apparent bra-free animated form (and who isn't?) then "Halloween Night at the Museum" is right up your alley. Otherwise, prepare to have all of your expectations horribly, atrociously realized.

Image of Debby Ryan copyright Just Jared Jr., used under Fair Use. All other images copyright Disney XD/Disney Channel, used under Fair Use.

...I still can't get over the fact that probably the one detail they poured the most energy into, both in terms of animation and actual plot/storytelling, is Debby's boobs apparently sans bra. We're still talking grown men who are employed by Walt Disney Inc. right?

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Reality Breaking News: Jean-Luc Bilodeau hospitalized from Halloween Party burns

Jean-Luc Bilodeau who starred in the 2010 Disney movie 16 Wishes and currently stars in the ABC Family/Freeform comedy series Baby Daddy suffered "non-life threatening" burns from a Halloween party when his costume caught fire. Jean-Luc is probably most notable to readers of this blog for the aforementioned roles, particularly when he starred as Debby Ryan's best friend and romantic interest in what turned out to be Ryan's first non-Suite Life breakout hit.

Monday, October 26, 2015

LEAKED SCRIPT EXCLUSIVE: Girl Meets World: "Girl Meets Belief in the Bay Window" (#3.Whatevs)

The opening scene: Riley and Maya sitting in front of the all-encompassing Bay Window

Riley: Maya, I need you to believe in God.

Maya: What for, Riley? It's not like that there's any proof that God exists!

The room starts to shake and the Bay Window starts to glow

The ghost from Meets World of Terror 2: It is I again! The spirit of the Bay Window! I am here because I have been summoned by Maya's lack of faith in God! For I am here to bring testament to He who is All-Powerful!

Riley: You're an angel?

Spirit of the Bay Window: Yes, I am an angel, for I am an emissary of the true power of God as welded through the Bay Window! (note: this is how it appears on the script, as the writers are unaware it's spelled "wielded")

Maya: How can God be so powerful if he can't even get my family back together?

Spirit of the Bay Window: What knowledge of you, mere mortal, that doth thee possess of God's plan? Perhaps it is not God's plan for you, Maya Hart, to be a part of that family? Perhaps it is of the will of God as expressed through the Bay Window for your role in a family to be of different plans?

Maya: does she always speak that way?

Riley: I don't remember!

Spirit of the Bay Window: It has been determined through the power of the Bay Window that you, Maya Hart, will be of the Hunter clan, with your mother Katy Hart to be wed in hand with the great Shawn of the Hunter!

Maya: But if this is a part of God's plan then why did my mom marry my dad in the first place?

Spirit of the Bay Window: It is the power of the Bay Window to be able to stretch through the reaches of time and space to bring to fruition the will of God!

Maya: do you understand what she's saying?

Riley: About as well as "astronaut horse."

Spirit of the Bay Window: It was necessary to ensure the plans of God unfold with the meeting of the Maya of the Hart with the Riley of the Matthews! For Maya is of the Hart!

Maya: Wait so the only reason why my mom married my dad is for a lame pun?

Spirit of the Bay Window: And to meet Riley! Aren't you listening?

Maya: Not with that attitude!

Spirit of the Bay Window: Oh, so you have an attitude now? Maybe the Disciples of the Bay Window will better able to teach upon you the word of God!

Maya: ...huh?

Through the fire escape, Evelyn Rand enters through the Bay Window

Evelyn: Hey girls! It is I, the other emissary-person-thingie with this here Bay Window!

Maya: You're an angel too?!

Evelyn: You're darn straight tootin'! Haha, I've had this emissary gig for a loooong while, let me tell you!

Farkle enters through the bay window

Farkle: It is true! Ever since she gave me that well-deserved stern talkin' to when I tried to sell sugar muffins as a thinly-veiled stand in for crack, I've been able to learn the error of my ways and now I follow The Evelyn, Emissary to The Bay Window, Window to the Word of God as the first of her disciples.

Aubrey McAvoy eters through the bay window

Aubrey: And ever since she gave me a stern talkin' to after I tried to cheat you girls because this is a live-action cartoon show, I have also since learned the error of my ways and now I also follow The Evelyn, Emissary to The Bay Window, Window to the Word of God as her second disciple.

All four Emissaries/Disciples start chanting ancient runes.

Maya: ...ok this is too fucking weird for me I'm outta here.

Maya brushes past the chanting nimrods and exits out the Bay Window.

Liv and Maddie Reviewed: "Cowbell-a-Rooney" (#3.05) and "Grandm-a-Rooney" (#3.06)

Ok, so what's the plan, Getting Worked Up Over Something Stupid-Guy?

What is it? We've already done Liv and Maddie so just look it up the first time.
A quick review of two episodes at once because, uh, we're falling behind a little now. Cowbell-a-Rooeny was excellent. I've said before that Liv and Maddie, especially post-Season 1, is incredibly hard to review not so much because it's so consistently good, but it's so consistent. Everything that's been said about the previous episode still applies to the next. Of course Dove Cameron is going to remain spot-on in both roles. Of course Joey and Tenzig are going to have their best chemistry off each other (at least that's what I think, they play off each other really well and it emphasizes their strengths). Of course...uh, extra characters.

Cowbell-a-Rooney is about Liv introducing her new Voltage costar to Steven's Point and basically shoving him off to Maddie to have him "wade in the deep end of the cheese pool." Long story short, Josh is replacement Diggie, so in a lot of ways it ends up being the Meet-a-Rooney we never got in the first place. There are actually a few parallels to how both Mosh and Miggie formed - Miggie was during a co-ed game and Mosh was, uh, this cowbell week thing.

There, now we got it out of our system.

So Cowbell Week involves putting cowbells around all the other students until there are two left standing in which they have to basically dunk a cowbell onto a suspended stuff bull's head from a basketball hoop so, yeah, it's pretty much exactly how Maddie met Diggie. The path to a girl's heart is through competition, guys.

The B-plot is about Joey feeling insulted over how everyone knows him as Catshirt Guy (that's totally not fair! Everyone should know you as Rocket Geek Guy!) so he hands over all his cat threads to Parker who's absolutely convinced it's just a phase (you get just one guess as to whether or not he's right, because that's all you need). It doesn't get a lot of screen time but they make effective use of it, unlike other shows (*coughPretty Much Everything Else On the Network cough*) so we're left with the meat of Maddie discovering Josh and admittedly Cowbell Week does look very fun on screen.

Then there's a potentially budding romance between Dump Truck and Andi. It's nice for Andi to finally get over Holden (something I theoretically should know something about but am incapable of). I also like Andi. And I like Dump Truck. Which is why I'm a little nervous about this pairing. We've seen what happens to relationships on this show. This show chews through ships faster than a Nazi U-Boat wolfpack or, uh, that plague on The Last Ship I guess.

Also, Maddie is a complete psychopath. Liv acknowledges this. Josh thinks this is specifically what's hot about Maddie. Actors, amirite?

Final Grade: B+. It's good but it's not Rate-a-Rooney or even Kathy Kan-a-Rooney good. Very close though.
Episode MVP: What's His Face, the guy who plays Josh. He really does make the episode, and Cowbell Week. Also, this gif:

And off to Grandm-a-Rooney (I know it's not the exact title but it totally should be). This episode received literally zero hype from the network itself (I could insert a comment here revealing my bitter jealousy over Girl Meets World but I guess that's not very productive) but third-party media outlets help make up for that. See, there was once this actress named Patty Duke who used to have this show called The Patty Duke Show about this Patty Duke actress who is decidedly not a twin but played twins anyway, and Dove Cameron has outright said that a network executive in turn outright came up to her and told her they were reformatting what was then Bits and Pieces into a 21st century Patty Duke Show clone. So to have Patty Duke on Liv and Maddie is just, by a little, kind of sort of a frikkin' big deal. There is no explanation for why this episode guest starring the frikkin' actress who inspired the whole frikkin' show would receive so little promotion from the network itself unless there was some sort of weird legal wrangling that prevented Disney Channel from specifically naming Patty Duke as a guest on promotional material (and given how weird Hollywood contracts can be, that might actually be the case). But anyway, Patty Duke plays Liv and Maddie's maternal grandmother...and their great-aunt. Yup they're having Patty Duke pull a Patty Duke, complete with a shot from the original show serving as a period photo of Grandma and Great-Aunt.

The A-plot is about Maddie being suspicious that Grandma is actually Great-Aunt pulling a Switch-a-Rooney and trying to prove it and in classic sitcom fashion going crazy over it once her methods start proving unsuccessful. But then surprise surprise! it turns out Maddie was right, it really is Great-Aunt posing as Grandma, but only because Grandma couldn't make it to the awards ceremony to present Liv with the Porcupine of the Year Award or something. But surprise surprise! the real Grandma can make it after all! And Parker finally gets his $20.

Yeah, the A-plot was a bit soft, especially for this show. The B-plot is about Joey and Artie trying to get girls to view the passing of the "Love Comet" with them as supposedly anybody who views the Love Comet will fall in love with whoever they were viewing it with (the last time the Love Comet came around, Joey fell in love with fruit peels - which is a copout since everyone loves fruit peels or you just ain't human/American - Alex [remember her?] fell in love with her chemistry set and Artie fell in love with...I forgot). Artie actually does some pretty clever scheming, tricking Joey into asking out as many girls as possible and then inviting Willow so that Willow will chase Joey right into her hands and Artie can scoop up the girls to himself - or if that fails, the girls will simply run into each other and conclude Joey's been playing them, again drawing them right into Artie's hands. I always love a clever evil plan with its own inherent built-in backup.

Well, needless to say Joey's night gets ruined, but the girls aren't too thrilled about Artie either, so it just ends up being Joey and Willow viewing the comet together much to Joey's torture, then Grandma Whatever Karen's Maiden Name Is tells Joey he has a lovely girlfriend.

Episode Grade: Eh, B-. This is practically an F for Liv and Maddie, which speaks volumes for the kind of show it's evolved into. Then again, there's a reason why this show is getting a B- and not an actual F. It's still a basically solid episode.

Episode MVP: Audrey Whitby. Sorry Patty, but I felt she was pretty much just an extended prop/gimmick.

...Actually can I do strikethrough text in Blogspot? No? Oh, great, thanks Blogspot. Anyway 1960sPoster convinced me it should be Joey Bragg, though I guess Audrey Whitby would be close. As 1960sPoster also pointed out she's Joey's real life girlfriend! Although she's also currently contracted to Nickelodeon with The Thundermans, which is another review that should be forthcoming.

Take it away, Mike and Nick.

Hey, Unknown. I agree with everything you said. Liv & Maddie is very consistent and is the best show on Disney Channel in terms of quality and comedy. I like this show better than Girl Meets World right now for numerous reasons:

1. It is like the good old Disney Channel comedies (considering it began at the bear end of the age of great comedy: July 2013). The episodes have some unrelateable and relateable dialogue, but still pullets it off. JUST LIKE WIZARDS OR GOOD LUCK CHARLIE OR HANNAH MONTANA OR EVEN JESSIE SEASON 1 & 2.

2. It isn't unbelievably preachy like Girl Meets World which tends to take its preachiness and life lessoning too far within the Disney World concept.

3. The show keeps improving. The writing department is amazing for the show. John Beck and Ron Hart are the best writers on Disney!

...I have to sleep right now because school tomorrow. Ugh high school nights. But I'll finish the review tomorrow. Sorry!

Don't worry, I can just take over again in the meantime :)

There's a thing about "unrelatable" dialogue, or at least "realistic" dialogue - "realistic" dialogue actually really sucks from a storytelling and entertainment standpoint. There's a lot of pregnant and empty pauses, a lot of "ummmms" and a lot of words that are just flat-out misspoken or misused that wouldn't make any sense. In the heat of the moment our brains are actually capable of filling in the missing or correct details, but on a script it would just come out like the pile of poorly-formed nonsense it is. This is why "realistic" dialogue actually tends to be the mark of am amateur.

This is why "relatable" dialogue is so important. It's the difference between being called the next Larry David and carrying home a bunch of rewards and being called a hack and making people write lengthy articles about why the network exec that greenlit your show should face defenestration (look it up :p ). Good relatable dialogue basically fools your audience into thinking its realistic. Mike brought it up about how Dan Schneider was really good at it before he lost his touch. Right now I'd say LaM is the best at it, on either network, by far.

I don't think Girl Meets World is all that preachy in Season 2. In fact, I don't think it was preachy at all to begin with. Now, heavy-handed, that's a different matter. Meets Crazy Hat and Meets Demolition were preachy, with Evelyn Rand giving Farkle and Aubrey a stern talking to. I mean, that's about as literally preachy as you can get. Meets Game Night was just heavy-handed. The difference is largely execution of delivery as well as message: it's being preachy by having a character either lecture a stand-in for the audience (Farkle/Aubrey/hell whatever character happens to be standing around, Sarah In The Background getting a stern talking to by Evelyn Rand about why it's bad for her to steal Darby's lunch and why she should feel bad) or just look at the camera and directly preach to the audience about why something is bad, and why the character/audience should stop doing it, and why the character/audience should feel bad. Just one of the reasons why Boy Meets World was so powerful a show in its time and genre was because it specifically avoided this when this type of storytelling was contes de jour for everything else of this genre and time period, in addition to avoiding being so heavy-handed (I guess time and/or staff changeovers have not been well to the show, at least for GMW Season 1). Being heavy-handed is when you have the scriptwriting and directing equivalent of a giant neon sign having large arrows pointing at a metaphor, symbolism or direct message because you're afraid that subtlety will fly right out the window with your audience (i.e., you have no real respect for your audience whatsoever). Kind of like how the characters in Meets Game Night kept insisting that the game they were playing was a metaphor for life every two seconds only because they had to use those two seconds to catch their breath.

A visual metaphor

So GMW isn't really preachy on the life-lessoning, just heavy-handed.

I HATE "Girl Meets Game Night." That episode was embarrassing the first time I saw it. It deserves a good thrashing sooner rather than later.

I need to get on my Liv & Maddie kick soon. I was wary of it at first because it looked like vapid garbage, but it seems like people can't stop praising it so I should see if it's worth the hype.

And yes, the show keeps improving, in fact it's improved massively. Hey, did you know that, at least IMHO, Liv and Maddie actually kind of sucked in its first season? I hated the early episodes so much I was actively rooting for its failure and I was happy that first season was just a short order at 20. Looking back on it...I'm still glad the first season was just a 20 episode short order because it meant a longer backlog for Season 2, which for the most part was excellent. There's a reason why this show's getting so much buzz, and why a lot of it only popped up once Season 2 started getting hot.

Even I still can't get over that Jessie exists in animated form, and the character designs are just so ugly (the Marvel Universe cartoons in all honestly kind of really blow).

Sunday, October 25, 2015

@RatingsNick?

This is a post for some guys that follow my Twitter @ratingsnick. It got hacked. It will be back up soon.

Friday, October 23, 2015

Last Man Standing and Dr. Ken Reviewed: "The Road Less Driven" (#5.05) and "Dr. Wendi: Coming to LA!" (#1.04)

Yeah, because that's exactly Obama's plan, to invade Texas so that he can take away everybody's pit (it makes sense in context)

What is it? multi-cam "adult" (well, family/more well-rounded age demo-wise) sitcoms for both, each half-hour (24 minutes) length
Where did it air? ABC for both. Always Broadcasting Crap.
Who stars in it? In Last Man Standing's case Tim Allen who at least as far as show concept simply let himself go, also starring Nancy Travis who used to be a thing here and there, along with Kaitlin Dever who had some notable guest roles but nothing real meaty in terms of an actual starring role, the still unfortunately named Molly Ephriam (yeah I'm sticking to that) and some chick named Amanda Fuller. For Dr. Ken it's Dr. Ken Jeong (duh), perpetual scene-stealer Dave Foley and a bunch of no-names. Margaret Cho did co-star on "Wendi in LA" but - opps - turns out that was the next episode. You can tell I really cared to correct that info, especially after the "reception" I received over it on IMDb.*
Why are we reviewing this? Because I thought it would be nice to compare some so-called "adult" multi-cams on broadcast, but after again my "reception" on IMDb, yeah, you fucking tell me.

Last Man Standing premiered around the same time as Jessie (about a week and a half afterwards actually) and given that Jessie has just come to an end after what's still an exceptionally long run on Disney Channel, LMS feels positively ancient by the standards this blog is used to. Heck, with five episodes into its fifth season it's been around a pretty good while by any real television standard anymore. Though it premieres on one of the "big" networks it's not too dissimilar from the type of material this blog normally covers, at least when it started out. Airing on Disney Channel's parent company (or is it the other way around?) ABC, LMS is the latest (well, really the only one since Home Improvement) Tim Allen vehicle about a family consisting of all three children being daughters, hence the incredibly strained pun of the show's title. Being a family sitcom, and having three main characters be tween-teen girls, there's naturally going to be a lot of crossover demo potential between this show and Disney Channel. Molly Ephriam, who both plays the middle daughter and takes home the crown for most awkward last name of the cast, played a bit role in Raven-Simone's College Road Trip (which also featured Suite Life's Brenda Song) while youngest daughter Kaitlyn Dever's going to be mostly known for her recurring role on the very much un-Disney Channel-like FX drama Justified (another show that recently ended) where she proved herself quite capable of kicking ass and taking names alongside Timothy Olyphant's Marshall Raylan Givens (and as a side note, she's friends with Disney Channel's Stefanie Scott and Peyton List in real life). In some ways perhaps LMS is trying to be the "adult" version of Good Luck Charlie or even Girl Meets World (or I guess an updated, bizarro-version of Boy Meets World), or at least trying to throw back to the TGiF days when the distinction between kiddie show and family sitcom was much thinner, if existent at all (back in the days when "kiddie show" almost inevitably meant a cartoon with talking animals in it).

And like a lot of attempts to revive this seemingly lost sitcom genre, LMS was a mixed bag. You might even say its execution was, well, a bit lumpy in the batter. There were several spots that were perfectly smooth and of the right, uh, consistency necessary to make the formula work, but the mix included too many tightly wound bubbles of tension that couldn't be worked out even with several hard whacks of a rolling pin. You can go back to the 2011 Internet archives and read what the critics had to say and it was a little bit all over the place, but if you ask me the blame more often then not went to the adult parties responsible - the crew themselves, Nancy Travis and, yes, even the great Tim Allen himself. Again, like Jessie (or at least the later seasons of Jessie) the show lost focus it never had to begin with. It couldn't decide if it was going to be a mature yet still light-hearted comedic look at a teenage girl's life, or if it was going to stick to its star guns and have the daughters just be side characters hovering around Allen's orbit, or what kind of personalities the characters would even have outside of some lightly defined stock tropes. Again, just like Jessie in its best moments, or, say, Good Luck Charlie or Girl Meets World or any other good show normally covered by this blog that you'd like to pick, it had its flashes of genius. I remember a few Season 1 episodes that really stood out and really shone when it was just about the girls, or at least during scenes that were nothing more but an invisible fourth wall of cameras staring at three girls trying to figure out how to be girls, students, sisters, friends, and all the other roles the world wants to throw at them and looking at each other for help with a laugh track being completely optional. When you're trying to figure stuff out like this, in that moment it can feel like the weight of the world, but in those episodes, or at least in those individual scenes, the show never forgot that trying to navigate high school isn't the same as trying to solve the African hunger crisis, and so yeah, it had some light-hearted fun with it, but at the same time it recognized that for someone trying to figure out who she should be, who she needs to be for friends and family and for others, and when figuring out the square root of x7 is a legitimate concern that effects your outcome the next day, all of these are weighty topics that damn right deserve some reverence and sympathy.

My biggest disappointment with the first season of LMS was that these precious family moments were too far and few between, and they were by far the best moments otherwise yet another disposable generic multi-cam sitcom had to offer. I had shared on comments from Television Without Pity, AV Club, IMDb, any relevant discussion forum, all the way to shooting off e-mails to the writers that I wanted more of this, that I wanted more of these funny yet poignant and touching moments with these three girls and that these three were the best things the show had to offer, screw Tim Allen. I had imagined the show climbing into its sophomore streak more seasoned, more attune to what had worked and what not, and giving these girls more deserved, greater due. Eve, Mandy and Kristen would up the bonding and the character moments and can supplement the main comedic delivery of Allen and Travis but at the same time provide the material necessary to make this sitcom rocket into the greats of Norman Lear and Larry David.

Nope.

While it turned out that Good Luck Charlie and even Jessie were able to deliver on exactly what I had been looking for without I even knowing, LMS instead went into probably the strangest direction you might expect from the show with even a remaining shred of realism. Not only did it go in the totally opposite direction of greater moments and character-building with the daughters, but it decided to double-down on Allen's Tim Baxter, a slight straw Conservative in the All in the Family vein and instead have Allen play the character as completely serious. The focus of character, the satellite characters around him, and the whole show rapidly pulled away from its initial premise to almost strictly cater to the Thanks Obama! crowd. Instead of trying to ditch what didn't work and emphasize what did, the show became increasingly an after school special-like prime time lesson in why the right wing is awesome. Instead of trying to become good and get rid of the shit, it just became even shittier in a really bizarre, shitty direction.

And the strangest thing of all, it worked. Ratings started to stabilize and even climb and it lived a healthy life where it still resides in the infamous Friday Night Death Slot airing opposite Jessie Prescott's life that feels like a party every day, Riley Matthews taking on the world and that Dog with the Blog. I guess pandering to a base that feels marginalized by virtue of having a minority as President is a legitimate television tactic.

And so it is that version of Last Man Standing, the version that has managed to persist for the past 4 seasons, that we'll look at tonight. We'll also be looking at what follows after, Dr. Ken since it's proving to be the breakout comedy hit of the season so why not. I saw last week's episode and I was suitably impressed. We'll see if it can keep that up this week. I don't know if Mike or Nick are going to join in today - I hope so, but I'll understand if it's not their thing (hell it normally isn't my thing, especially Last Man Standing).

So tonight's Last Man Standing was...not what I had expected. From a review standpoint I was actually kind of disappointed because I was fully expecting to rip into this one and really I was hoping to contrast it with both Dr. Ken and your typical Disney Channel show on what not to do. Alas, I was denied that opportunity at least tonight. Before I get into the review itself I just want to selectively paste what Shipping Wars are Stupid already added to in the comments, to emphasize what kind of show LMS eventually transformed into:

I understand that Last Man Standing found its niche audience with conservatives and with evangelical Christians. They brought the Duck Dynasty guys on. They pray. They believe in God. And that's all great.

BUT..The problem is the characters, particularly Allen and the youngest daughter, are all terrible people. The thing is, the show is too over the top with the conservatives values.

Every episode can be summed up like this:

"Tim Allen's character is a funny jerk, but he's right. America is being ruined by liberals like Ryan [Unknown: Kristen's husband, who after having a child while still in high school has by this point in the show grown into establishing a family of her own and is played by a completely different actress because reasons]. The military is greater than anything else."

My problem is that Allen's character has to learn to get along with Ryan and the other supporting characters in every episode. A show about running a Cabellas wannabe store would be WAY more interesting than what this show has become.

So, I haven't watched the show in years.

With the exception of last season's finale, this was the first time I've seen a full episode of Last Man Standing from start to finish since they made the changeover to the new format I guess and I decided joining in on Jessie's penthouse party evv-r-y-daay! with lounge entertainment provided by Chyna Parks and standup by Stan the Dog was preferable. Yeah, like I said before, and like Shipping Wars are Stupid says, they made the characters, particularly the main character (as it turns out his name is Mike Baxter, not Tim, shows how long it's been since I've seen this) and the strange avatar of a character already on the show that is his daughter stupid beyond belief. Yet again, like Jessie, they devolved in character development into the wrong direction. Instead of being a lighthearted straw Conservative who nonetheless was just trying to learn to adjust to situations he found uncomfortable, he just became the living personification of bumper sticker slogans. His daughter Eve (Dever), instead of being a relatively complex character (at least for the show) last child who was struggling for an identity that would separate her from her older sisters, also became a personification of see girls can be conservatives too bumper sticker slogans. And so on.

Anyway, on to the episode! This episode begins with the girls (wife included) giving Mike a birthday present, which turns out to be a '67 Impala with a 427 big block (so far all of this is real car words used accurately, but really for the purposes of the show they're meaningless beyond "hurr big motor muscle car"). The cold opening thus consists of all the jokes about how a car can completely take over a man's romantic and family life away from the actual women in his family in exactly the manner you'd expect, cue intro. Between the women and the car, you can take a wild guess which is going to be the focus of the A-plot. The B-plot consists of Eve asking Nancy Travis (I don't even remember what the character's name is anymore) if she can go to some concert or some thingie overnight and stay with her friends, to which Nancy Travis says yes, then Mandy (Ephraim) complains that she never let her stay out with friends overnight at that age. Then Nancy Travis explains to Mandy that it's because Mandy reminds her too much of herself, and that Mandy has proven her wrong by being so mature, at which point Mandy gets upset that she's turning into her mom. This B-plot lasts less than three and a half minutes, takes all of two scenes and it's all we see of any of the daughters this whole episode. I know in my Good Luck Charlie and I Didn't Do It reviews I complain about excessive plots taking away from the main plot but this is just ridiculous, especially on a comedy show that struggles to have interesting plots no matter how much time is devoted to then.

So yeah, this episode is pretty much 21 nearly uninterrupted minutes of pure A-plot, completely void of fillers and animal byproducts. Once upon a time, back on Home Improvement, Tim Taylor sold his '46 Ford hotrod to a car collector, and then immediately regretted it, going back to said car collector's fancy garage in trying to talk him back out of it only to walk away in failure, but not before learning a valuable lesson in how nostalgia is all about the journey, not the final destination, and also meeting Jay Leno in a cameo as the collector's mechanic. Well, this episode is pretty much the exact inverse of that, complete with, yup, Jay Leno as Joe, the mechanic the kids and wife bought the Impala from. In fact Joe is sooo attached to the car that he pretty much ends up stalking Mike and fixes the car up for him right in his own garage. So the joke of the A-plot is a clingy friend (or non-friend) plot, ok. Mike tells Joe to go sod off but Joe tells him that he can put the original transmission in the car to make it worth better (car nuts go, er, nuts for "all original" after all). Mike's suspicious that Joe's only saying this in order to force himself upon Mike again, so he tricks Joe into letting him and his cohorts into his garage and tries to see if this phantom transmission exists, only to get caught in the act. Joe kicks Mike and friends out of the garage and then Mike walks home to find a large empty space in his garage where a blue 1967 Chevy Impala used to be. It turns out that Joe stole the car but only to put the transmission in it and then stuff about friends and conflict resolution.

Needless to say the plots are pretty weak. This particular episode rises and falls on jokes and their delivery and I have to say Tim and Jay play off each other well. If you've paid attention to my reviews you know I tend to be a sucker for meta-humor and it was all over the place, so, sure, I'm up for it. Jay even takes a shot at Mike's Thanks Obama! idiot mentality (see the quote intro into this review). So, yeah, a decent episode and if anything a return to the granted somewhat stilted and unrefined form of the show's very first season, but it beats the hell out of what the show turned into.

I keep forgetting I Didn't Do It's Sarah Gilman (the most underrated of that cast) is occasionally in this show for some reason. I've never seen her in it because that would require watching Last Man Standing.

Final Grade: C+

Episode MVP: Yup, Jay Leno. Tim Allen is a still distant second. Absolutely nobody else comes close (though barely anybody else has even been given screen time).

And we're off to Dr. Ken which is a show about...Dr. Ken. Or more precisely, that guy from, uh, what was that show again? The Office? Parks and Rec? The Korean guy who played the Thai guy from the Hangover movies. Except he's a doctor in this one because I guess in real life he actually was a doctor before discovering that being an Asian caricature is far more lucrative in American society. Dr. Ken, the character himself isn't too bad, mostly just a normal albeit insecure guy - not only insecure about his own physical shortcomings but insecure about his financial success and self-conscious of how people view him through that filter of envy. His insecurities tend to override all other aspects of his personality - last episode had him groveling to his boss to give Saturdays back to the nurses because he was worried about said nurses thinking of him lording his privilege over them. This episode we have Dr. Ken meets Dr. Kevin O'Connell, the pale Irish dude and other offensive Irish stereotypes leaped onto him (seriously it's a major part of the dialogue gags in the first third of the episode) only to discover that not only is Dr. O'Connell actually another Korean but basically looks like Ken Jeong only minus all the fail. So yeah, it's one of those episode, your standard green with envy plot. Ken becomes so pre-occupied with exposing Kevin for whatever nonexistent faults he can find to where he inevitably only makes an ass of himself and it's Kevin who ends up coming to his rescue, cue the end credits scene where the nurses (including the male one) literally fight over Kevin.

I keep forgetting the great Dave Foley was in this one (especially considering how much he was in last week's episode).

Final Grade: C+. Again, this is pretty much your standard sitcom fare to the point where there really isn't much to talk about. All the humor is dialogue and sight-driven, playing off Ken Jeong's own acting skills and ability to play off of characters rather than actual plot or character development or for that matter much in required skill from other actors. This is pretty much as singularly-focused a Ken Jeong vehicle as you can practically get.

Episode MVP: ...yeah, Ken Jeong is pretty much the only person doing actual acting in this one, almost by design, so I'm not sure if Episode MVP is even validated in this one at all. if this was last week's episode it would've went to Dave Foley, hands down, like it should.

*BTW I've received more disciplinary action on IMDb for reporting trolling and complaining about bullying than other posters had for using censor bypassing to use racial slurs so yeah not too happy about how the IMDb boards are run and moderated right now.

Nickelodeon & Disney Channel Reviewed