Saturday September 14 2013 - Saturday September 14 2019: Reflecting on six years

...well ok not exactly six years but it is when I technically started a blog. Namely, this one. But I feel it's an important anniversary for this blog (i.e. the one you're reading now) all the same. 

For starters September 14, 2013 is the day after the premiere of G.I. Jessie which of course was the 2nd season finale of Jessie. We've done a review of that here - and umm, literally the exact same review again here (the biggest post of the year by far - and very close to being this blog's last at the time) but I also feel that was a pretty big watershed moment for myself and really, this whole KidCom deal. Not a sudden one mind you but it was a start.

As I mentioned in the aforementioned review I'm not entirely sure which season of Jessie was best: S1 or S2. S2 definitely had a tonal shift, simultaneously (and yes, contradictory) dramatic and subtle - but a big part of being both of those at the same time was that it wasn't exactly sudden.

Well, not entirely so. S1 was definitely more "grounded" like a normal(-ish) Disney Channel KidCom of the time, or at least compared to say Good Luck Charlie (and of course Liv and Maddie but we're not quite there yet, timeline-wise). But even quite a few other shows at the time with high-concept plots like say Shake it Up and even to a lesser extent Wizards of Waverly Place had a relatively "grounded" feel. Or to put it another way: it was more character-driven than plot driven. Actions (and consequences, a really big driver with KidComs) felt more driven by the actual characters and their naturalistic actions and motivations rather than to merely serve as vehicles to move the plot forward (as in say Austin & Ally and A.N.T. Farm, although A.N.T. Farm certainly had extremely character-driven episodes, to its credit. And so did Austin & Ally too, to that show's credit). I've had discussions with some of you on Twitter about this, especially around Tuber and Maile and how they were major drivers behind the scenes with S1.

S2...for the most part...was still very character-driven with, for the most part, actions and consequences in turn feeling character-driven. But that tonal shift was readily apparent with The Whining (which for some reason is the highest-rated episode on IMDB? Seriously, WTF?) where it's pretty clear that, instead of having the characters influence and drive the plot and from there, the consequences, the characters were instead effectively hijacked by the plot in order to force them along a predetermined path, and the consequences instead coming off more like the tacked-on conclusion paragraph of a 7th grade essay about how rising gas prices affect fossil emissions. In other words...it's not so much that the writers had an idea of what the ending was going to be as so much as what the actual character consequences are, and just basically wrote the rest of the episode around that.

This is pretty much how they wrote those cheesy, awful, morals-based after-school specials back in the 80s. It's writing down to your audience and while even I'll admit Jessie wasn't exactly the greatest Disney Channel KidCom ever, it certainly suffered moreso for it.

I think that's why I'm not exactly fond of Trashin' Fashion and Lizard Scales and Wrestling Tales either. In the former the A-plot was absolutely ruled by arriving at a pre-determined set of consequences, and in the latter, both plots were. And it's especially noticeable when both episodes are ostensibly extremely character-focused episodes on Emma and Luke respectively, with ostensibly big character development. 

...but the writers of those particular episodes don't know how to write character-focused episodes. Or at the very least, they've confused pre-arranged consequences for actual character development.

In a lot of ways Gotcha Day - the episode that got me into this show (and at least in some part the network as a whole) is like this too - but going back watching the show, the characters actually feel more naturally-motivated. And as much as Christian and Sean over at Girl Meets World Reviewed hated Green-Eyed Monsters, that was absolutely, entirely an episode where the characters actually felt naturally self-motivated instead of being intellectually stuck on rails forced into a predetermined conclusion. 

S2 would certainly see an uptick in this kind of episode - Pain in the Rear Window and Toy Con are ones that really stick in my mind especially since they were pretty close to each other in original premeire date. And of course I think this gets to Mike's points about G.I. Jessie. But S2 still had plenty of episodes that feel very character-natural including some of my most favorite episodes of the entire show - The Trouble With Tessie, Why Do Foils Fall in Love (really stupid title BTW but whatever) and Kids Don't Wanna Be Shunned (again, with the last two especially because they're so close in proximity to when they premiered) and Punch-Dumped Love despite it's incredibly stupid, inane B-plot. And of course the penultimate episode of S2, Break-Up and Shape Up which is still well-praised by the fans (at least according to my Twitter interactions) and makes for a much better finale than G.I. Jessie. But still, I think the actual character-focus vs. consequence-focus was still there.

Things started to fall apart at a slow pace still as S3 continued - Ghost Bummers, Caught Purple Handed, and so on (October and November and just the beginning of the season in general weren't good months for good Jessie episode premieres, it turned out) but you still had a ton of great actual character episodes like The Cheapskate, the Primate and the First Date being a good one in the October-November window. And Hoedown Showdown for a very Emma-focused one. And of course at the very end concluding with There Goes the Bride which makes a much better finale than Orray for Ollywood/Jessie Can't Make Up Her Mind For a Finale Title but unfortunately we still have a few episodes of S3 and a whole S4 to go. But the ratio of consequence-focused episodes was definitely creeping up - Morning Rush, Coffee Talk, Spaced Out (double points for being yet another dream fake-out) and so on. 

And yeah, speaking of S4...that whole damn season was pretty much consequences-focused, from Africa is So Far...i! to Jessie Goes Submitting Multiple Episode Titles. The only episode I can think of that really even comes remotely close to feeling like a natural character episode is A Close Shave, then all the way near the end with Identity Theives, and more-or-less Dance, Dance Resolution which was a lot closer to Identity Thieves than A Close Shave, air-date wise. 

But yeah, I just wanted to get that out for the six-year kindaversary so, there you go.