Disney Channel and Nickelodeon Live-Action shows (and maybe some others) between now and the premiere of Knight Squad this Saturday, ranked

Disney Channel

1. Stuck in the Middle
2. Andi Mack (yes I've decided I like Stuck in the Middle better than Andi Mack)
2. Bizaardvark (yes I've also decided Andi Mack is tied with Bizaardvark)
3. Tangled: The Series (yes I know it's not live-action but at this point it really is making up a huge chunk of the original premiere schedule so, there you go)
4. Raven's Home (see mid-break review)
Unwatchable flaming piles of garbage tier: Bunk'd

Nickelodeon

1. Hunter Street, and you know what, we might as well group all the other "daily" specials they air in whole month-long blocks at a time right in here, everything from Lip Sync Battle Shorties and Paradise Run to I Am Frankie and, well, Hunter Street
2. ...you know what, starting with "2" still implies that whatever's the best show is still good, which is an incorrect implication, so let's start somewhere more appropriate...
3....
4....
5. The Thundermans
6. Nicky, Ricky, Dicky & Dawn (you know this show actually was good, wtf happened in Season 4? This is seriously worse than Jessie's and Austin & Ally's late-season downfall combined...)
7. The Adventures of Kid Danger (yes I know again, see above with Tangled)
8. Henry Danger
9. ...you know, I'm not sure if I should put Game Shakers in here and School of Rock in 10th place, or just move both of them into an "Unwatchable flaming piles of garbage tier" especially since I skipped entire seasons of watching either show on the account of, you know, unwatchable flaming piles of garbage
10. See immediately above




MIKE: I really don't think a show like Knight Squad lends itself well to being a cheesy multi-camera sitcom. Not every new show has to be done in the same format. I get that Nickelodeon hasn't cared about the live-action department for five years now, but why can't this be a single-camera show? Wouldn't that cut production costs? I don't know, just a thought.

Don't you think you're being a little too hard on NRDD? I mean, let's be honest, it was never that good in the first place. Is it worse now that the kids are all going through puberty and their annoying, somewhat endearing kid personalities turned into annoying, scratchy-voiced teenage personalities? Probably. But I don't think it was ever shooting for anything higher to begin with.

Damn, you really gave it to The Thundermans there. I agree, and I'll do a write-up on it at a later time when it ends, but still, that show's been with us for four years, dammit.

I actually watched a School of Rock episode for the first time this month. It was a new one where Kendall from Big Time Rush was a janitor at the kids' school. My first impression is that the show is pretty damn lame. Like, lame to the point where it doesn't stand out at all and if it ended today, nobody would care. They probably wouldn't even know it ended until they look it up on Wikipedia one day out of complete boredom. They'll be like, "Wasn't there some rock shit that came on Nick that one time?" How to Rock was definitely ahead of its time. If it started airing in 2014 instead of 2012, it would definitely get to three seasons.

The main chick on Hunter Street reminds me of Frankie from Degrassi, in voice and appearance. While we're on the subject, Degrassi is atrocious now. I'm all for them addressing social issues, and not all of their attempts fail, but they are way too concerned with being progressive and making a point rather than be entertaining. The show was never so blatant about what it was doing before it came to Netflix. But anyway, Hunter Street. "You used real garbage?!"

You like Stuck in the Middle more than Andi Mack now? I say this having seen almost nothing from either show, but why is that the case? Is Disney Channel getting that good to the point where two live-action shows are consistently pulling off A-quality episodes?

Olivia Rodrigo is going to grow up gorgeous, that's my prediction. Is Bizaardvark a discount iCarly? I heard about the concept a while ago and I just thought it was a ripoff of something we're already familiar with. 

I'm just going to ask, why is Bunk'd still on? Why did Disney Channel renew it for a third season, much less a second one? Why has Peyton List not moved on yet? Why is Jadakiss as hard as it gets? And why am I writing this with the confidence that whoever's reading this will get the reference?

I think Disney Channel needs to get some new blood. They're starting to run out of shows from what I'm seeing on that list. 

RAY: I'm kinda surprised you think that about Knight Squad, I'd think the basic concept of a show like Knight Squad only lends itself to a cheesy multi-cam. It's basically about four buddies who go on knight adventures, and a little bit of school because tween sitcom. To me that screams cheesy, tween/teen multi-cam sitcom. Plus - I'm not saying John D. Beck and Ron Hart (yes the Liv and Maddie guys!) can't do single-cam...but they seem to have really mastered and nailed down the multi-cam format and know what it's good for, especially when it comes to cheese and simple viewer entertainment. After four years of Liv and Maddie (plus the work they did on Shake it Up) and something like two years more or less actually talking to these guys (well, what passes for it on Twitter) plus the heaps of praise Disjointed is getting...I more or less unequivocally trust them.

That said, I'm not entirely sure. I haven't seen it yet. More on that in a bit actually....

As for Andi Mack...I was going to write a more detailed post on this (and I probably will) but...this latest season just doesn't seem as interesting as the first one. Now that you've mentioned what kind of a mess DeGrassi is (that's another show I've never seen much of, as I didn't even have Nick when it was running on that network and I don't even know how to watch it now other than...move to Canada?) I think it's suffering a few of the problems that show has, plus the same ones Girl Meets World has. Namely, Jonah is this show's albatross hanging around its neck. The parts involving Andi herself and Jonah...just aren't interesting anymore. The parts with Buffy aren't all that more interesting, especially since most of her stuff lately seems to revolve around the middle school basketball team equivalent of a teamkilling, team-stealing asshole. Yeah that's really frustrating to deal with, and that's not necessarily a situation that's easily resolved, but as much as creative writing teachers harp on students that you need conflict in order to have a story, you also need actual traction to that story. Otherwise you're just gonna have Buffy stand there in frustration when her own freakin' team captain steals the ball from her. Yeah, that's conflict - and that's all there is. You don't have a complete story without pushback, and without resolution. And yeah, I know, those parts are coming more or less but the conflict doesn't feel interesting. It just feels...exactly like the type of frustration Buffy is feeling, just spinning her wheels helplessly.

But I guess what I'm getting at is...my greatest fears about Andi Mack seem to becoming true. That it's getting so wrapped up in what it wants to do that it feels more tedious to watch than fun. Good Luck Charlie was fun to watch. Hell even Jessie was fun to watch a lot of times, as I've said time and time again, to say nothing of Liv and Maddie especially as that show brilliantly matured. Hell, Stuck in the Middle is experiencing that same brilliant maturity and so is Bizaardvark. And I just want to make it clear that it's attempt to tackle relevant social issues isn't necessarily the thing that's making it a chore to watch. Cyrus' parts are my favorite parts of Andi Mack now. And as it turns out it's not even so much about Cyrus being gay and finding himself, but dealing with the fact that the buy he's attracted to is his best friend's boyfriend. That's brilliant. That's very excellent writing. And just the parts where he's still struggling to fit in, for no other reason than because he just thinks fitting in might be fun, perhaps with a little FOMO in there. But while there's some interesting developments in the actual Mack family, it's overshadowed by Andi-Jonah-Amber drama and as for Buffy...it's as if the writers decided that it'd be cool for Buffy to be the sole girl on the boys' basketball team...and literally just stopped there. Like, once they got to that point they didn't know what to do with her and just left her hanging there. 

And if it sounds as if I myself am stuck on S2E4...yeah because I pretty much am. I didn't get through watching the show in time before I got a DVR upgrade and lost all the episodes, and after that my DVR crashed so I lost the episodes again. But...I've had something like three or even four whole months to catch up on those episodes, and I didn't. I don't do that unless I have reservations that a show just...might not be that interesting to watch anymore. And I don't have reservations on a show without reason, especially a show I've already watched the whole first season on. I make a point of watching Bizaardvark and Stuck in the Middle at the most days after they air because those shows are fun to watch. I make a point of watching Hunter Street hours after viewing, if not just viewing it on the live feed (which is perhaps a habit I need to get back into). Because those shows are actually pretty fun.

...but that's another essay/post altogether. 

...at this point I'm just looking at Thundermans even being on my DVR recording list and...smh. I don't even know if I'm going to make it to the show's end at this point.

And speaking of having my DVR crash, I lost Blurt, although I did watch Zombies (or is that Z-O-M-B-I-E-S?) at least. I can't find Blurt on the Nick app which just seems...par for the course given Nickelodeon's general apathy on everything.

No, I don't think I'm too hard on NRDD at all. They were cute in the first two or even three seasons, but it's just so painfully obvious they've outgrown the whole concept of the show without some major retweaks - retweaks that probably aren't that hard to do, save for apparently the writers' and crew's own reluctance and inertia. FFS Lizzy Greene turns 15 in just a couple of weeks, and it's gotten to the point where she can post provocative pictures of herself on her Insta and it's only slightly less disturbing than when Daniella Cohn does it. I'd argue she'd even at least somewhat outgrown her super-comedic, super-intentionally-awkward role in Tiny Christmas. For some of the other castmates like Casey Simpson it's at least as bad if not worse. And then there's Mace Cornell who, as Mal might say, decided to ditch this popsicle stand completely. 

And then there's School of Rock, and while I'm at it Game Shakers and to a lesser degree Henry Danger, although that degree of separation is rapidly shrinking. Or even Thundermans. I think in Thundermans and Henry Danger's cases it might just be the show's getting old - there's a major difference between two different shows doing the same basic humor, and the same show doing the same basic humor it did during its first season. A skilled crew (like Beck and Hart) knows how to make it work, but it's almost useless trying to hide pure and simple creative fatigue. But School of Rock managed to accomplish that feat within the first few episodes. As someone trying to put real honest effort into these reviews, I really want to precisely articulate, exactly nail down, ok, why does School of Rock suck? Aside from just being lame, that is. But the thing is, I can't. I can't nail down exactly why that joke doesn't work, why this plot falls flat, etc. The saying "you know it when you see it" exists for a reason and I guess...School of Rock just can't interest me. 

And Game Shakers just isn't even trying. It does what a lot of Dan Schneider shows post-Drake & Josh (and even Zoey101 did this in spades) tends to do, although iCarly and VicTORious (yes I'll keep insisting on spelling it like that, it's on the damn title card) are lightweights in comparison. Just a lot of dialogue and situational-based humor that's funny in accordance to Schneider's really weird, warped sense of humor and not much else. In iCarly, a lot of the humor was just flat-out physical, and in VicTORious, the situational comedy was very relevant and just made sense. Drake & Josh just about had a perfect balance of this. I can't explain wtf happened.

I'll talk about this more but...long story short, very little of these kiddie shows interests me anymore. As far as I'm concerned these imported/imported-in-spirit "dailies" and game/special event shows (like Paradise Run and Lip Sync Battle Shorties) are what's keeping Nickelodeon afloat. I'm hoping Knight Squad can add to that, but that's based entirely around the reputation of just the specific people who put the show together. I really enjoy Bizaardvark and Stuck in the Middle but those are now the oldest shows on the network, and they're long in the tooth season-count if nothing else (or in other words, they don't have much longer in this world). I really enjoyed Ducktales, but it's been now going on months since the last episode aired and it's painfully obvious DXD itself is a dying network. Disney itself sees the writing on the wall, hence Disney's big announcement of a paid subscription service which might be the future and might spell the actual death of Disney Channel. I'm not paying extra for kiddie shows without a kid of my own, sorry folks. Plus...you know, these shows were great when I was at a certain time and place and headspace, but that time and place and headspace was a long time ago. Part of my problem is that the time and place have moved on, but the headspace didn't necessarily. But I'm slowly starting to realize that that headspace wasn't as great a headspace to be in as I thought, and it's just time to fucking move on already. Now I'm just more into books, I've got strong potential career commitments coming up that promise a better, more evolving headspace - and part of that includes the real possibility of writing my own stories instead of just absorbing and reviewing the stories other people make up. Are they also kiddie stories of the same ilk as all these shows? Yeah. But at least they're my own, in formats that promise more potential than what Disney and Nickelodeon insist on sticking with, even with Andi Mack.

And videos. That's right, I've made the commitment to move onto YouTube.

But really...I'm not even sure what to do anymore.