I Didn't Do It, Austin & Ally, K.C. Undercover Reviewed: "Bite Club" (#2.18) "Scary Spirits and Spooky Stories" (#2.15) and "All Howl's Eve" (#2.23) and Monstober 2015 retrospective

I see you have a Dez.

I see you have a Logan.

What is it? Yeah if I didn't bother to do this when we bothered to review two shows at the same time I'm not bothering to do it for...whatever this jumbled mess is. Thanks Monstober crossover idiocy!

Ok, so, I Didn't Do It was boring, K.C. Undercover was weird, and Austin & Ally was weird and boring. Awesome.

The joke quoted above is probably my least favorite type of crossover joke. It just seems like the kind of thing you have to say when two shows interact and they have similar characters. It tries to be witty and meta, but since we see the joke coming, it just comes off as very predictable. I don't think I'll ever see a better crossover than "The Simpsons Guy," since it managed to make fun of both shows and combine their respective styles of humor in a way that felt fresh and unique. Just a thought. Of course, I shouldn't be expecting much from these crossovers. They're just like, "Look! Characters from other shows! Let's get them to talk to us for a few minutes and never appear again!"

I guess I'll Do It first, heh heh. The absolute best thing about that episode, in fact the only thing worthwhile, is that quote right above. Trish and Dez and Delia and Logan met, interacted for like 45 seconds, had fun, moving on. You can see it in the promo here. That's it, watching the rest of the episode is strictly optional.

There's something that needs to be said about I Didn't Do It, and it goes all the way back to the beginning of its second and what turns out final season. When I Didn't Do It started it was a wacky version of Friends for middle-older teens when people thought that demo was still worth grabbing on these networks. Turns out it wasn't and ratings were in the toilet, but at least I Didn't Do It had something in its plot structure that made it more different than every other show on Disney Channel. It was more plot-based hijinks than the random, see-what-sticks kind of humor that a lot of these shows tend to have, especially A.N.T. Farm and Austin & Ally. The cast sometimes got sub-divided but often they would go through the plot in one big group (The New Guy) and the plot would be one big, continuous lead-up to to a climax like a plot should be, and not a bunch of loosely randomly-connected boring stuff about as exciting as getting the mail like a plot shouldn't be. But Disney Channel decided a shake-up was necessary to keep the show from getting ratings hovering in the 1 mil range, so they threw out the old crew (don't worry they moved on to our next show, K.C. Undercover, it turns out) brought in the old Good Luck Charlie crew and then decided that a bunch of random, loosely-connected plots with all the excitement and anticipation of getting your cable bill was EXACTLY what will save this show. 

If you've been reading these reviews you've seen me mention and rant about the A-B-C plot structure and why it's a horrible way to plot out a TV show, especially a 20-24 minute multi-cam comedy like this. Good Luck Charlie was good in spite of it on its best of days, and I Didn't Do It is just too saddled with its initial premise and quite frankly cast to pull it off. As the name implies you've got three separate, maybe loosely-connected plots that may or may not converge going on during the same episode. Yeah, I know what you're thinking, duh. But stop and don't just think about it, analyse it. That means you're dividing the cast three ways and usually having little interaction between them. I Didn't Do It was sold on its cast as a whole, and they went back and demolished that. Go look at Austin & Ally and Girl Meets World - those are all "best friend" casts, and very rarely do they split apart. Good Luck Charlie and Jessie can get away with splitting their casts up because they're families, not friends, and families don't spend 100% of their time together. Yes, neither do best friends, but the whole point of best friend casts is that they're interesting when they're together. Splitting them up for the sake of the stupid A-B-C plot structure destroys that dynamic, and it destroyed the show with it.

Also, you're not just splitting up the cast, you're splitting up an absolute most 24-minute time slot which means at the very most you've got 8 minutes per plot presuming giving each plot equal time. 8 minutes is about:

 - the time it takes for me to get through three slices of pizza without getting heartburn or indigestion 
 - the time it takes for me to prepare a salad to go along with that pizza

 - the time it takes for me to drive to the local library

 - the time it takes for me to hunt though the closet for a light bulb

 - the time it takes for me to get through my Twitter timeline

 - the time it takes for me to set up my coffee maker

 - the time it takes for me to get my mail, with like 5 minutes to spare

Needless to say 8 minutes isn't a long time, especially to establish an actual plot. You're pretty much just setting up the joke and then BAM!, punchline. So you either have to come up with a really good punchline that can be delivered with little setup, or you're pissing away all your time with the setup and all of a sudden you can't fit a punchline in, so all too many times the setup itself becomes the punchline. Guess which one I Didn't Do It tends to lean more towards. Guess why it tends to be so boring.

Now, not everybody thinks like this. I Didn't Do It was probably the most divided show on the network, even moreso than Dog With a Blog. A lot of people liked the older-skewing Friends ripoff premise, a lot of people didn't, and when they changed the formula naturally the fanbase flipped opinions. I for one liked the old setup. If they wanted a new Good Luck Charlie, they should've just canceled I Didn't Do It and recast everyone into a new Good Luck Charlie. And it didn't save the show anyway as its airing its last episode ever the Friday after this coming one. So yeah, mission completely blown, guys.

It turns out moving the show to Friday with the Jessie, Girl Meets World and Dog With a Blog anchors did as much or more to "save" the show and pull ratings up as did the dramatic changeover in writing staff. I wish those knuckleheads at the network realized that option first. 

Regarding the Monstober Spooktacular: Delia and Logan do a science presentation in New York for some reason as an excuse to meet Jessie, Trish and Dez and so Delia can start dating Luke Ross and put that awkward situation out there; Garrett and Betty LeBow's little nephew trick the old neighbor lady who isn't Mrs. Dabney from Good Luck Charlie into giving them all her candy and garden gnomes which I'm sure was something Good Luck Charlie also did; and Lindy and Jasmine play this super-boring subplot about Jasmine thinking Lindy is a vampire but it doesn't matter because the people tuning in at this point would still tune in if it was just 22 minutes of Olivia Holt and Piper Curda just staring at the camera, in fact they'd probably prefer it that way (look, we're just watching because Olivia and Piper are hot, can you like get rid of the other guys they just get in the way - though apparently Austin North is a huge draw for the core female audience, which probably explains why Jogan is one of the most hugely disproportionately popular ships on the network). The last few episodes especially have been utter let-downs as the show winds down to a close. Really, Betty LeBow is the best thing about it now and the only change to the show that actually adds something, because she actually provides a great sounding board for the main cast to bounce off of. She and Judy (more on her right after) are the only sassy characters I actually like because 1.) they pull it off and 2.) they play with it (in Betty's case they make fun of it as much as they presented it just at face-value to be funny, not to mention the actress is just good enough to pull it off, while Judy has a more well-rounded character to avoid having it be the sole thing that defines her, plus again the actress is actually good enough to pull it off).

Episode Grave: (again intentional Holliday-themed misspelling): C-. It's slightly more meh than just meh, but if I give it a D+ or lower that actually implies that there's a so-bad-its-good element to it.

Episode MVP: Ah, fuck it, Piper Curda, just because I think she's insanely hot. Piper Curda gets series MVP from now to eternity because if the second season was just her standing in front of a camera I'd enjoy the show a hell of a lot more. Hopefully she just doesn't completely disappear from television because that will piss me off, even if all the Jesus Freak Bible quotes on her Twitter kind of turn me off. Runner-up is Olivia Holt because she's also insanely hot, followed by Sarah Gilman because I actually think she's really hot too (the nerd glasses do it for me). 

Ok, so K.C. Undercover. Fortunately for this show Zendaya is, like, seriously ridiculously insanely hot too so I'll watch no matter what, but for the most part the show can stand on its own too. Even in the episode where she was under disguise as a dude who couldn't shower, she was still hot and the episode was actually really good on its own merits. It didn't dwell on K.C. being a woman in a men's club (or men's military academy it turns out), it was just about K.C. and Ernie working together and focusing on the mission. The 1-hour Runaway Robot special was also really good too. So what about this episode? It was kind of...both meh and weird, but more weird than meh than say the Austin & Ally episode which managed both parts equally. Though I guess I'm in the minority here because according to my Twitter TL everybody thought it was fucking hilarious.

First we have the excuse plot of Ernie and Judy going to New York to find this werewolf serum that The Other Side (no seriously that's the name of the "bad guy" group, The Other Side) wants to use to turn its soldiers into, well, werewolves (and their soldiers apparently consist either of other teen boys and girls like K.C. or middle-aged obviously hired stuntmen depending on what happens to be convenient for the casting director, so either that would be extra-squicky or just conjure up images of middle-aged stuntmen in cheesy werewolf costumes, depending on how it would've worked out. Probably the second one). The dad, whose name I forgot, played by Kadeem Hardison who I really, really like in the role despite not being able to remember the character's name, says that it specifically has to be Ernie and Judy, played by Kamil McFadden and Trinitee Stokes who again I really, really like in their roles while offering no explanation why it has to be them specifically. So they go to New York, meet Emma and Zuri in a few scenes that's pretty much 100% sass and doesn't really contribute anything, and they meet their contact who for some reason is a really old guy in an Elvis costume and it just draws to attention why Ernie and Judy? Wouldn't it make much more sense for the mom and dad to go on this mission? Even Old Fart Elvis points this out. Fortunately Judy saves the sitch by explaining that they're just really well disguised and she wants to get it over with so she can go to the hospital and see her grandchild be born. Then Ernie fucks it up trying to impress Emma and now he's exposed to the werewolf serum, but don't worry, other than a few cheap jokes this doesn't factor into anything at all.

Meanwhile the writers have decided that K.C. Cooper, the teenage super-spy who goes off on exciting missions, would be really awesome to feature in a plot about hosting a Hallween party in her house to which her parents not only gave her expressed permission to host, but just about downright gave a parental order for her to host the party. This is an absolutely guaranteed recipe to an episode that isn't going to be boring. Most of this sub-plot (really both plots are competing equally to be the B-plot based on how engaging and consequential they are) is just K.C. standing around in a pleather catsuit-ish thingie and Marissa, played by Veronica Dunne who is probably the only other actress on Disney Channel who can really compete with Zendaya on the hotness scale and has a body as curvy as Debby Ryan's, plus like both of those actresses she's also legal-aged so you don't have to feel awkward about it, also stands around next to K.C. wearing this bee costume that just conveniently illustrates just how curvy you need to be to compete with Debby on a show that also has Zendaya on it. No, I'm not complaining about it, but I still feel obligated as a snarky reviewer sitting pretty in his basement to point out that it feels like a tacit, not subtle at all admission that the writers just don't have any ideas for this one so, yeah, stare at our eye candy and objectify these actresses to your heart's content. This whole thing about the show using the Halloween theme to its advantage to shove Zendaya and Veronica into these getups and use the theme to claim, no, we're not fetishizing, it's Halloween! actually goes on for a good while before we even come to anything resembling the plot finally turning its wheels. K.C. loses her magic spy bracelet while passing out treats so she kidnaps the kid  whose bag of treats it fell into, interrogates him, and then retrieves the bracelet out of her own backyard because it turns out that's where the kid hides his candy. And that's the episode.

Seeing a teenaged girl who is a legal adult in real life and whose career is exploding at the same rate as Ariana Grande's interrogate a kid half her age and height is, to me, fucking weird.. Yes, I know, it's Disney Channel, weird for the sake of laughs is their currency. I guess in my sadly adult eyes it just doesn't work. The rest of the episode is just fucking boring no matter how you cut it.

Episode Grave: Eh, I'll give it another C- for the same exact reasons as I Didn't Do It

Episode MVP: Tied for Zendaya and Veronica (but especially Veronica) for being such troopers as to agree to let themselves be objectified like that on a children's show. Also for being insanely hot. 

So now we come to Austin & Ally. Hoo boy.

Ok, confession time, I fucking loved Austin & Ally's first season, though that may just be the result of a grossly skewed and colored perception at the time that I'll actually cover in one of my Jessie retrospectives. I came to this realization when I noticed that Season 2, and especially Season 3, started sucking the big one and I thought damnit why can't they maintain the same quality as Season 1 then I went back to watching Season 1 shows and realized damnit the quality is the exact fucking same. Austin & Ally, by the balance, isn't a good show. There's a very specific reason for it. Actually a few reasons, really:

They just can't be compelled to write a show without having it devolve into gags that aren't so much gags as they are actors running about in an overly-exaggerated fashion (and I mean everyone, stop picking on Calum), and when they do make an attempt at actual humor it's a really, really bizarre sense of humor. If you've ever seen A.N.T.Farm or iCarly on its worse days, you'll immediately know what I mean. It's a humor style that tends to go for the surreal and just outright bizarre in an attempt to be funny, except it's watered down for Disney Channel consumption so it just comes off as being alien and outside a realm of what would be considered normal, socially acceptable behavior than any genuine attempt to be funny or just surreal for its own sake. It doesn't so much elicit guffaws for older viewers as so much as it just makes them scratch their heads and make them wonder if the writers might have some sort of, I don't know, how do I put this politely because I honestly am interested in being sensitive here, folks...condition? Obviously the writers aren't like that, but it's still both odd and interesting at the same time that they think such a writing style that emphasizes such mass-consumption surreal and oddness - almost like, I don't know, call it McDadism - that's so weird it's distracting yet not weird enough to be entertaining can actually, well, be entertaining. And yet the most bizarre thing about this is that they're apparently right. Austin & Ally is a ratings smash hit. iCarly had this exact same type of humor and its probably the greatest live-action kiddie show of all fucking time. So I'm just left to conclude that the adult mind and the tween mind is just that fundamentally different.

Kevin Kopelow & Heath Seifert worked on All That, Kenan & Kel, Sonny with a Chance, and Jonas (the first season, I believe, not the atrocious second season). They get a pass from me for their contributions to kids television. 

I see where you're going with this, to an extent. I used to think of Austin & Ally as generic, run-of-the-mill Disney Channel crap with absolutely no redeeming value. But.....here's the thing. I started watching a whole bunch of episodes and I realized I really liked it. I mean, unironically liking it. Calum Worthy has always been a treat. Dez is another dumb character, but Worthy's portrayal of him always makes him entertaining even with all the stupid punchlines he gets. One of my favorite scenes in the history of the series is when Dez makes this weird concoction full of random stuff in it. Austin was having a throat problem at the time, and you would think that the joke is Austin drinking it. In fact, the guys all thought that Dez was giving it to Austin to drink. We find out that he wasn't, he just really wanted to try it at that precise moment. Then he drinks it and says, with a big smile on his face, "Yup. I was right. It's disgusting!" That joke lived and died not only because of the subversion, but because Calum himself does so well with playing Dez that you could automatically expect it to be funny.

Need I mention Chuck? Come on, you never liked Chuck's rivalry with Dez?

Of course I love Chuck's rivalry with Dez! Even when it shown through on the Coppertop Flop segments it was awesome. They really play well off together. Plus Chuck's (redhead) sister is kind of hot. Fun fact: she was in Good Luck Charlie, was Axl's girlfriend on The Middle last season or whenever, and was topless on Shameless.

Topless. Just pointing that out.

No lady is safe on this blog. ;)

But to address the bigger point, I noticed that as you said, iCarly has a very off-the-cuff, Seth MacFarlane-type of humor. And that has a lot to do with Dan Schneider having created the show and written several episodes. His approach to comedy is very hard to replicate for other writers because they never seem to understand why it works or how he makes it work. Without getting a grasp on that sense of humor, the jokes come off as very awkward. Even Dan himself has had trouble making his own sense of humor work. When iCarly and Victorious both declined, they were almost painful to watch. The subplot to "Robbie Sells Rex" is one of the stupidest plots I have ever laid my eyes on, and the worst part is that not only is it stupid, the ending itself is anticlimactic and unsatisfying. AND THE CHARACTERS THEMSELVES ACKNOWLEDGE HOW DISAPPOINTING THE PLOT WAS. 

I'm not done yet though, because in addition to all of that the A&A writers also love stereotypes. For the most part the stereotypes are just as bizarre as the humor they prop up, and there's a prime example right in this episode. But moreover I want to cover specifically writer Aaron Ho, who is Korean, who created two characters named Sun-Hee and some guy who's name I forgot who are very blatant Korean racial stereotypes who might as well be wearing signs that say #WeSupportYellowFace. What the fuck,man? Does he think that since he's Korean it gives him basically what's sometimes referred to (such as on TVTropes) as "N-Word Privileges" and that he can get away with such blatant racism on a kiddie show? Again, what the fuck? I don't know. When you have someone such as Spike Lee, for example, he uses it to paint as clear a picture as possible exactly his artistic vision and what he's trying to tell you about his own personal experience, and/or the collective experience of his race or people of color in general, and illustrating an integral, inescapable part of what it means to be a person of color living in a world where discrimination and racism are as real as the hands on the ends of your arms. It's real fucking art to the absolute truest sense of the word and intent. When Aaron Ho does it for Austin & Ally on Disney Channel, it feels like it might as well be some white guy who does this because having Ally wave the Confederate Flag and lecture Trish about how "her people should swim back to Cuba" would be too blatant and on the nose and probably also hates the fact that people like Zendaya and probably Piper Curda especially since she's also Korean - literally the first Korean star in the network's history - are allowed to exist on the network. I mean, really, again, for the third time, what the fuck? Are you self-hating, Aaron? These become legitimate questions when you pass off shit like this on a show specifically produced for influenceable children.

Ok, yeah, another day another rant. Back to the episode. It's a three-part setup just like last year's Monstober episode. Each of the three parts aren't worth reviewing, if you really want to see them it's on Watch Disney Channel which you either get for free as part of your cable package, or you're a sucker who bought into Time Warner Cable, or you don't have cable at all in which use this as a reminder that you didn't work hard enough to earn the right to have cable TV and go back to fucking work you degenerate wage-earner, no overtime or welfare benefits for you, you lazy freeloading Democrat-voting bum. In one part Austin plays an accountant who's also a British stereotype for some reason, and he literally spouts off terms vaguely associated with accounting and British-y the whole time,and that's  pretty much it. That's all the time I'm going to devote to actually reviewing any of this so-called anthology since it directly related to what I was talking about above. And Kamil McFadden and Trinitee Stokes get to collect a paycheck as guest stars while they spend their whole time just looking at Austin, Ally, Dez and Trish and remind you that you can also see them on a show about a teenage girl who's also a spy.

Episode Grave: Fuck it, I'm taking a page from MikeTheTVBlogger again and giving it a D-. Seek help, Aaron. It's ok to not be white. I'm glad Piper's on a completely different show so she doesn't have to work with you.
Episode MVP: Fuck it, I'm giving it to Piper Curda again despite the fact that she's nowhere near this crossover just because Aaron's self-hating racism bothers me that much, despite the fact that none of his racist Korean yellow-face caricatures actually appear in this episode either. If you keep insisting that I have to award MVP to someone who was actually in this episode, I guess I can give it to Trinitee...nah, no, fuck it, I'm still giving it to Piper. If you're going to keep insisting that I award Episode MVP to someone actually in this episode, I'm going to make it tied with Debby Ryan just to spite you.

You've already added some thoughts, anything about final grades and MVPs Mike?

Well, Unknown, you've already done a fantastic job here with this review so I don't have any other thoughts on final grades and MVP. Especially considering the fact that I'm still not acquainted with some of these Disney Channel shows and it frightens me. I don't know, I'll give all my MVP awards to Gumby or something. He looks pretty funny.

If racial stereotypes bother you this much, especially Asian ones, avoid any Thundermans episodes with Mrs. Wong. She's pretty much every single old Asian lady you've ever seen on TV. 

I wanted to add some thoughts to your Best Friends Whenever review but I haven't gotten around to watching the episode yet. I'm not surprised Christian and Sean weren't taking too kindly to it because that's the same reaction they have for a lot of Disney Channel shows. I'm not trying to knock them since that's exactly the review I expected but......let me put it this way. I watched Bunk'd more than an hour ago. I don't have enough material for a full-on review because the FiOS app on my Kindle kept screwing around but from what I saw, it wasn't that bad. I guess Jessie has crushed my spirit so much I can't go into that kind of stuff with an open mind anymore. I guess it's all up to perspective, but the show looks better than I anticipated.

Invisible Sister, however? I want a piece of that action. It's going to be tough since this will be my first ever movie review in any capacity, so we could always tag team it. You know, because your commentary on why Paris Berelc is hot is vital to this write-up. ;)

Hah, thanks! I don't blame you for not being acquainted with everything under the sun; it's a lot to ask for (especially with daily serials now like the Caterina Ledobear shows, i.e. W.I.T.S. Academy and with Make it Pop! making a return sometime down the road) and it's not exactly the type of thing you get praise for when you brag about it. I'm tempted to put down your choice of MVP as Piper and Debby in the books, but I think I'll leave it at Gumby :)

Oh, God, Mrs. Wong. Mrs. Wong. Yeah, I've ranted about her elsewhere in message board/non-blog form. Oddly enough she's...getting better. She's shaping up to be a nice pseudo-villain/nemesis for the Thundermans, but it's still not really great. It's still better than Sun-Hee and what's his face because while Mrs. Wong has the accent Sun-Hee and what's his face draw further attention by specifically having stereotypical traits beyond just appearance or accent, down into actual personality traits. Plus Mrs. Wong vs. Max is always a blast.

Eh, I'm not in a hurry to knock Christian or Sean too since really they're the whole reason why this blog even exists. I'm honestly surprised they didn't appreciate BFW more (or at least Sean, he hated it, Christian actually liked it enough) but I see where they're coming from on everything else. If you're jumping straight into, say, Austin & Ally Season 3 or 4 without seeing Season 1 and appreciating how they built up and utilized that humor style like you talked about, it's not going to be very appealing. If you're jumping into Jessie Season 3 or 4 or even 2, when the show went into a less subdued and grounded direction, I can see why they think the humor falls flat and why it might turn them off. Green-Eyed Monsters was a Tessie episode through and through, and all of its charm was derived from it being a Tessie episode (I have to agree with Christian and Sean the B-plot is kind of meh) so if you don't come into it appreciating Tessie I can see how more of the flaws will shine through. Also, in regards to Debby's acting, come to think of it (I've rewatched the episode several times since thanks to Disney Channel incessantly rerunning everything and compared it both to episodes in adjacent production order and just other episodes) there is something very wonky going on in that regard too. I swear, she was a better actress in Season 1, and she's a better actress in other Season 2/3/4 episodes too. That tells me it's probably the director who I'm going to look up now and it's...Rich Correll. Ugh. And...what? Rich Correll is the most frequent director of Jessie, in fact he's the most frequent director of any Disney Channel show period. He's literally Disney Channel's go-to guy. Name any random episode of any random show in Disney Channel's entire history (barring the imports) and there's like a 45% chance he's the director. He didn't just direct Hannah Montana, he's the show's actual creator (so yes he's also responsible for the monster that is Miley Cyrus). Needless to say just given the sheer volume he's directed both good and bad episodes of Jessie. So it doesn't really explain the wonkiness there. Then again, a part of Correll's success is that he's a very...adequate director. He's spent a career mastering and honing a very inoffensive, very safe and very bland directing style that probably works best and only with this type of network catering to the tween and teen demo that also gets a lot of attention from parents and "Think of the Children!" groups where safe and bland is more desirable than taking creative risks (and Chuck Lorrie sitcoms). 

I don't know if it's because I'm looking at her acting through a biased perspective, that Debby really is just a lousy actress, or if it's bad directing, or if there something very wonky going on, but right now I stand 95% convinced something wonky was just going on. You look at the string of adjacent episodes - The Whining, Make New Friends but Hide the Old, Green-Eyed Monsters, 101 Lizards, Trashin' Fashion - and the best are probably going to be Make New Friends But Hide the Old (where Jessie was really confined to the very secondary B-plot) and 101 Lizards which is very wonky with visual proof right there on the screen because if you pay very close attention Debby is actually thinner there than in the other episodes in that string. There was a filming hiatus shortly after Season 2 even began after they filmed a small number of episodes (pretty much what I named above) in order to accommodate filming the Jessie/Austin & Ally crossover and during that hiatus I guess Debby took advantage of it to thin down or something, whatever, this blog isn't into fat-shaming or least of all direct it at Debby so there's no point in speculating over details. I can at least say she did switch to being a vegan as she tweeted and blogged about it around this time. And I bring it up because in 101 Lizards she does look thinner, then in Trashin' Fashion she looks the same as she did in the other episodes, and then in the crossover she's back to looking like she did in 101 Lizards where she's more or less stayed ever since, so it implies that 101 Lizards was actually filmed much later, possibly after the crossover, and sneakily inserted into the production order as if nobody would notice (and nobody would've if it wasn't for Debby's just-noticeable physical transformation). So it leads me to believe that maybe there is wonkiness going on there, maybe they were trying something experimental, maybe they was something "new" enough inserted into the production equation that threw people off-balance and they had to grow used to things again. 

Also, Debby does blink a lot in that episode, I have to give them that. I still wonder if they tried a Season 1 episode or a different Season 2 episode if they would've liked it better, maybe thought Debby a better actress. Maybe I'll even go back and rewatch Bunk'd, when those episodes premiered I was actually in a pretty cynical mood and I was just about ready to write the entire network off as "oh yeah, once Jessie and A&A are done this is it and Liv and Maddie and GMW are going to be the only things worth returning for." The first episode wasn't that bad except for poor damn Jorge, the second episode was...I guess ok, I liked the B-plot a lot better than the A-plot which was honestly just stupid and it's Jorge's strongest by a million lightyears, the third episode was actually pretty good and I liked it even though I can't for the life of me remember what the B-plot even was, it had to be some sort of Ravi and Jorge thing by default, the fourth episode was no no no God no no no these plots are always stupid. I like Best Friends Whenever at least, and as I touched on above K.C. Undercover's hit or miss, but it's certainly had hits.

Well, that was awkward and not about any of the shows we were talking about. Oh, yeah, Invisible Sister. Monstober DCOMs are always huge, probably the hugest DCOMs aside from the cynically obvious mega-cashins *coughDescendantscough*. They're always a hoot and a half. I highly recommend the entirety of the Halloweentown series if you can manage the time, they're all up on Watch Disney Channel. In fact every single Monstober/Halloween-themed DCOM ever made or even remotely resembling one is on Watch Disney Channel right now, even Now You See It which was like actually a January premiere or something? But Halloweentown really is the quintessential classic DCOM, it's always the one that's pointed to for the "good old days" when DCOMs were fun and legitimate whole-family entertainment instead of straight-line tweenie-booper faire near-explicitly drawing in the girls through Zac Efron's sex appeal (or the boys through Vanessa Hudgens and Ashley Tisdale). Twitches is good too, though those movies still aren't Halloweentown. Actually, what is a real hoot is the deceptively lamely-titled Girl vs. Monster which again stars IDDI's Olivia Holt with Katherine McNamara (who is a redhead so...uh, you know). This was actually the very first DCOM I ever saw upon its premiere three years ago (wow, it's already been three years!) and it was a blast. Not quite as classic as Halloweentown, it's more just raw action and fun-packed. The Best Friends Whenever to Halloweentown's Liv and Maddie/Girl Meets World.

So yeah, I'm looking forward to Invisible Sister just because Disney Channel has a near-flawless record when it comes to Halloween DCOMs. It's where they really shine. And yeah, you can see it a million lightyears coming, of course Paris Deceptively Impossible to Pronounce Last Name Berelc (you say it as if that awkward c hanging at the end was never there, BTW - Burr-elll) is...wait, she's only 16? Ok nevermind then. But hey I can still talk about how massively popular she still is with the fandom, she has a lot of fandom good will built up through her stint on Mighty Med. It will be really interesting to see her outside of a superhero role just like it will be interesting to finally see Rowan outside of GMW, or especially for that matter Karan Brar finally break out of the Ravi (or Ravi-ish) role. Hopefully.

To wrap up Monstober 2015 it was...well, better than other years in some ways, not as good as others. It was certainly a much bigger presence and celebration this year as far as the regular Disney Channel shows go, entirely a byproduct of the crossover aspect. At least it's a nice Monstober sendoff for Jessie, Austin & Ally and I Didn't Do It, too bad Dog With a Blog didn't quite make it. It was definitely Jessie's strongest one (compared to where they dress up and play paintball which was really just a regular episode, but still fun precisely because it's not trying too hard at Halloween; and then trying too hard at Halloween and spoofing The Shining; and then trying too hard at Halloween again and spoofing Ghostbusters; and then fuck it it's a Bessie episode even though everyone hates Bessie [if you don't know what I'm talking about I'll cover it very soon]). It was A&A's weakest; the anthology they had last year was definitely better, and best of all was their first episode which was just a regular episode with costumes and probably Ally's most important character-building episode ever. Of the two I Didn't Do It episodes this one was by far the worst, especially since the first Halloween I Didn't Do It is what canonized Jogan in the first place and showed that Piper and Austin have great chemistry together. It's very hard for any of the other shows to top that, it's probably the best Monstober episode of any show on Disney Channel during IDDI's abbreviated run. That's really the only thing people even remember about that episode, I vaguely remember Garrett being a disco ball who got stuck in a corn maze and something about a giant pumpkin or something. See kiddies shipping works, when done properly. Both World of Terror episodes were pretty bad, to the point where I'm halfway convinced it's Micheal Jacobs' way of protesting being forced to play along with the rest of the network and having his franchise "Disneyfied". A much better and far less childish way of doing that was demonstrated by Best Friends Whenever by completely spoofing the concept from start to finish (also by Shake it Up's "Whodunnit Up" back during the first Whodunnit Weekend). The first World of Terror wasn't even that bad, it was just so bland and boring and a whole bunch of nothing, especially Farkle's story where it pulls a fucking Tony Soprano and fades to black right where you'd expect the climax to take place (at least GMW has the excuse of practical FX and budget reasons). The little monster story was actually pretty charming, but World of Terror 2 is just so disjointed and random and I fucking hate that Hot Feet song, it shows so little effort at actually being a song I submit it as evidence of Micheal Jacobs giving the network the finger through blatant not giving of fucks. 

What else...although it's no longer with us Dog With a Blog had a pair of decent Halloween episodes too, especially the second one which was a really touching character-builder between Stan and Ellen. This was also by far Liv and Maddie's best Halloween episode for the same reasons why IDDI's first one was so good (Lolden is a proven straight-line formula for a great episode, not being sarcastic on this one), though I did really like Helgaween-a-Rooney (Kang-a-Rooney was just kind of soft, when the show was still desperately finding its feet, thank God it found them). Shake-it-Up's Halloween episodes were pretty good too though I barely remember them. Back when A.N.T. Farm was a thing it made a big deal of MutANT Farm which ran through all three seasons, the first one being a near one-for-one retelling of the pilot but a Halloween What-If theme where the students are monsters instead, and it actually managed to be comedic genius especially having seen the pilot. MutANT Farm 2 wasn't nearly as good (though it did have IDDI's Austin North!) and MutANT Farm 3 managed some flashes of genius when it was revealed that the MutANT Farm-verse and the regular A.N.T. Farm/Disney Channel Live-Action/TGIF/St. Elsewhere-verse now I guess were parallel dimensions and the MutANTs found a way to cross over (see this Halloween crossover thing isn't new either). Good Luck Charlie's Monstober episodes were...adequete I guess. Scary Had a Little Lamb was ok I guess, though it had a distracting subplot of Teddy smelling bad due to being punked in a Halloween prank. Le Halloween was a weak effort trying to play PJ's clown fears and the Speddy card too much (I think the GLC writers just suck at shipping) and the last one was the best by default I guess. The Suite Life on Deck Halloween episodes were "stealth" Halloween episodes like Jessie's first, they'd almost perfectly blend in as regular episodes if it weren't for the vaguely spooky-themed plot or if you looked back on the original air date and saw it was in early October (there wasn't any indication that it even took place in October according to these episodes, IIRC). That was the earliest Disney Channel series I've seen other than on Replay actually, I haven't seen any of the Zack and Cody episodes. I don't even remember if Wizards of Waverly Place even did Monstober episodes (I've seen them all, but nothing sticks out as being obvious) or if you'd be even able to tell which ones are which without looking at air dates, it's pretty much the Monstober Halloween special series (it even originally premiered in the middle of Monstober, right after Twitches 2 - well, then again so did Dog With a Blog after Girl vs. Monster). 

So in terms of actual Disney Channel episodes I'd rate it mid-upper pack. But - the sad thing is that unlike other years there isn't going to be an imported Halloween or horror-themed show on Disney Channel this year. These can be quite a treat actually. Last year it was a British or Australian or something series called Evermoor about a girl learning that she's a member of a powerful witch coven, like Wizards meets Degrassi - a single-cam pure drama no less, almost a rarity now on these kind of networks. The year before it was Wolfblood as which the name implies was about teens discovering they are werewolves, again a single-camera pure drama. The year before that it was Season 2 of My Babysitter's a Vampire, yes as in the movie we covered way down below (actually over on the next page now) earlier and that show is certainly a hoot and ranks as one of the best Disney Channel's ever aired, and the year before that was Season 1 of MBAV. So I'm going to have to knock down some major points for not having a horror-themed import this year just because it's become as much a part of the Disney Channel tradition as everything else. Oh well, at least we have a DCOM this year, let's see how that works.

Also, I forgot to mention this even though I specifically jotted it down in my notes to "include when you talk about Monstober." This Monstober was very shipping-heavy. It was just about as much about shipping as it was about the crossover element or actual Halloween or anything else. Tessie got back together, Delia and Luke got a little bit of action, Lolden was a major plot point. Oddly enough the two shows that rely most on shipping as storytelling crutches - Girl Meets World and I Didn't Do It - were completely absent of shipping. But as I noted in my Liv and Maddie review that was more than made up for in the previews of the upcoming episodes which promise to be nothing but pure unadulterated 100% Rucas and Jogan, which combined with the shipping that was actually happening in Monstober Spooktacular Weekend caused the entire Disney Channel collective fandom to wet their fucking pants at once and just completely spam anyone and everyone they could with how awesome it's going to be to go to sleep at night with images of Riley and Lucas and ignoring how inevitably utterly disappointed they're going to be when they actually watch Meets Texas and realize that Disney Channel can't even legally make their expectations come true and that they've squandered their teenage years being morons, but it doesn't matter because Meets Texas will just continue to build on their unrealistically false expectations. Especially since it's I Didn't Do It's very last episode, and especially since we get three nights in a row of Rucas, Rucas, RUUUUUUACS. Goddamit.

Shipping isn't bad per se, like any storytelling tool or trope it can be handled very well to be very enjoyable entertainment with something for the audience to take away from. Liv and Maddie with Lolden and Miggie is handled very well, especially remarkable because kiddie networks usually just take a straight line towards fucking shipping up (more on that in just a little bit). In fact Liv and Maddie handle it with shocking realism and maturity while at the same time not conceding anything from a storytelling standpoint. It really starts to unfold as a decent romance or even coming-of-age friendship instead of just shipping, with a lot of bumps along the way and how the characters overcome those bumps. Those are some pretty important things tweens and teens can relate to. You know, just throwing it out there, I Didn't Do It handles Jogan pretty surprisingly well too, especially when that ship was just birthed, but I think a lot of it just boils down to the on-screen chemistry Piper Curda and Austin North have. It's exceptionally rare to find actors who can pull that off in this age bracket. Chemistry isn't even something that's getting emotionally developed within the tween and teen years (though it helps that both Piper and Austin are either 18 or very close to it, which is also especially helpful for making me not seem quite as creepy over declaring Piper to be "insanely hot.") And again, Debby and Chris Gayla were more than old enough to have whatever puberty issues worked out to try to practice some on-screen chemistry too, and it also helps that that show laid the groundwork for Tessie back in Season 1 when they still had enough goodwill and raw staff talent to make it work and worth investing into. So yeah, I like the shipping in LaM, IDDI and Jessie because I just feel it's done well.

And then we get to the shipping in Austin & Ally and Girl Meet World where it's mostly just used as a crutch and a shortcut to save the writing staff from actual effort. The writers of Austin & Ally figured out real quick that all they need to do is get Laura Marano and Ross Lynch in a room together and they've got kiddie sitcom gold, which is why most of Seasons 2-3 at least are pretty much nothing but that. Remember all that stuff I keep saying about how the fandom would probably prefer it if Bunk'd or I Didn't Do It was just Peyton List or Piper Curda staring at a camera for 22 minutes? Yeah, maybe I should take it back because we more or less saw that in action with Austin & Ally. I think the GMW writing staff is starting to catch on to the fact that not only do their core demo fans have the same reaction to Rucas, but they also hit triple-gold with Lucaya and even any combination of the girls and Farkle (even including if not especially three or even four-ways. Man, I honestly never knew that tween and teen girls can be such horny perverts with no internal filter controlling their actions to speak of, at least on the Internet. It kind of makes me wonder where the hell were these girls when I was in middle and high school. It's also kind of disturbing that these girls give so little thought to how openly sharing these thoughts and attitudes will in turn influence how people, especially boys they know, will look at them and start objectifying them and encourage them to perform sexual acts or other behavior based entirely on externally-influenced impulse and a lack of sexual understanding that might be emotionally or even physically harmful instead of well-thought out consensual safe-sex practices utilizing contraceptives - but that's for another rant). I mean, just this morning I was looking on the IMDb GMW page and Bam! there it is, someone talking about how lucky a dog Lucas is because he'll probably have a three-way with Riley and Maya, even hinting at details of how such a sexual encounter would go down. It's really amazing, in a shocking, disturbing, absolutely not good at all kind of way. And people wonder why I spend so much time actively bitching and cursing (well, "*beep*ing" to be exact) at the fandom and calling them morons.

Anyway, yeah, the shipping on Austin & Ally and Girl Meets World is pretty fucking horrid and the most base examples of doing whatever you can to pander to the fandom, but of course it works because it's the bottom-line definition of storytelling as a means of raking in ratings and nothing else. If the audience just wants porn and doesn't realize they have this thing called "the Internet" or are too afraid of parental blocks then just give them as much porn as the network will allow. If it's a kiddie network that's squeamish about even showing kissing (seriously it took a loooong time to even show Austin and Ally actually kissing for some reason) then you just lay down the shipping thick and heavy using old-fashioned near-obsolete, "dead horse" romance tropes that may or may not reinforce and encourage unhealthy attitudes about teen romance in real life so that it builds a foundation for which the kiddie audience can use to erect their own mental-porn and lemon polluting Fanfiction.net and graphically describe on IMDb.com sexual acts between Lucas and Riley that might limit Riley's ability to comfortably sit and go on, without a shred of sarcasm or irony or realization of what they're actually talking about and how it would actually feel like if someone did such sexual practices to them, how awesome it must be for Riley and Lucas and implying how awesome it would be to have a guy who would do that to their own bodies. 

I know it feels like I'm ranting about a stupid issue and being too much of a "moral guardian" and overly projecting (something I've been frequently accused of on IMDb), so I'll leave that issue there. So, yeah, Monstober, shipping, crossovers, whee. I think I've concluded all that I can say without going into further weirder rants.

Best Friends Whenever Reviewed: "Cyd and Shelby's Haunted Escape" (#1.09)

Regular Teen Girl!

What is it? Yeah it's the exact same from when I first reviewed Best Friends Whenever and holy shit I never actually finished this review, damn!

Ok, so it turned out that the Monstober Best Friends Whenever was good enough for its own review. It was waaaay better than Meets World of Terror 2 so I'll have to give them credit. I know GMWReviewed says they're going to review this episode too because of the GMW connection (so far they haven't yet, if they decided it's too crappy to review) but screw that I liked it.

Again, if you can't be good, at least be funny. Best Friends Whenever gets that. Yes, I laughed out loud and I'm not afraid to admit it.

The B-plot was kind of lame, but then again that just comes with the territory of Disney Channel shows. Really, the B-plot exists mostly to justify the large casts they like for whatever reason and I guess because they're too afraid to come up with an A-plot that takes up a whole 24 minutes. 

The A-plot isn't much home to write about either - Cyd and Shelby get stuck in a puzzle room with Riley and Lucas (RUUUUCAS RUCAS RUCAS RUCAS GIRL MEETS TEXAS RUCAS RUCAS ok I'll stop) and Cyd tries to solve the puzzle by breaking everything. I don't care if you say this drawer can't be opened! Screw you I'll make up my own rules! Yeah the puzzle room is interactive too it turns out, with this electronic ghost painting-thingie that mostly just unsuccessfully tries to tell Cyd to quit breaking things. Then Cyd and Shelby turn into ghosts and they pass out of the room and act confuse, then figure out they're ghosts and then go back and inhabit Riley and Lucas' bodies. Regular teen girl stuff! Yeah, I'll offer this as proof that the BFW writers know how to write Riley and Lucas better than the actual GMW writers at times, sorry Christian and Sean. Anyway by inhabiting their bodies they can touch each other and time travel again, so they travel back in time to destroy the transporter laser that gave them the power in the first place, and so I guess the stuff that happened when they helped out Holden and Liv back in Liv and Maddie to delete the photo never happened? Does this mean that the photo with Holden and Liv got out? Also OMG HOLDEN HOLDEN HOLDEN RUCAS HOLDEN RUCAS TESSIE TESSIE RUCAS RUCAS GIRL MEETS TEXAS RUCAS yeah I ran this one into the ground long before this point didn't I?

Now all of you who have been polluting my Twitter timeline with this shit knows what it feels like.

...and here I come to actually finish this review a record 10 months later, oops. Anyway:

Episode Grade: B+. Despite what Christian and Sean say (just between you and me I think they tend to be spoil-sports when it comes to things not strictly related to Boy Meets World anyway) I thought this was one of the best of the stupid idiotic whole Monstober crossover headache. What makes it work for the most part is just that the writing was sharp on the humor and it realized it didn't really need to be anything else out of this gawdawful, intentionally ambiguous in canon status mess. That's the most that can really be said about it anyway, but hey if and when it pops up again it's worth another chance.
Episode MVP: Regular Teen Girl a tie between Landry Bender and Rowan Blanchard. Really, in this case neither one could pull it off without each other.

Liv and Maddie Reviewed: Haunt-a-Rooney (#3.04)

What is it? multi-cam kidcom, half-hour (24 minute) length

Where did it air? Disney Channel

Who stars in it? Dove Cameron (guest bit in Shameless, but this really is her first "breakout role"), Joey Bragg (ditto), Tenzig Norgay Trainor (ditto, also grandson to the guy who co-climbed Mount Everest for the first time, true story bro), Kali Rocha, Benjamin King, with Jessica Marie Garcia, Audrey Whitby and Jimmy Bellinger as significant guest star roles.

Why are we reviewing this? Because this was when I thought it was realistic to review every single damn show on the network, and sure I can do all of this frickin' Monstober crossover nonsense, no problem, and had to learn the hard way this takes hours of work per review because I didn't pay attention to when Christian and Sean were doing it.

Why is this ahead of the traditional opening quotation instead of behind it? Because it makes the most sense to keep it this way to preserve the original context. Trust me on it.

OMG LOLDEN LOLDEN LOLDEN RUCAS RUCAS RUCAS LOLDEN RUCAS LOLDEN RUCAS RUCAS OMG TESSIE TESSIE TESSIE RUCAS RUCAS RUCAS TESSIE RUCAS TESSIE RUCAS TESSIE TESSIE TESSIE RUCAS RUCAS RUCAS LOLDEN LOLDEN LOLDEN RUCAS TESSIE RUCAS LOLDEN RUCAS RUCAS GIRL MEETS TEXAS RUCAS TEXAS RUCAS TEXAS OMG JOGAN JOGAN JOGAN RUCAS RUCAS RUCAS TEXAS RUCAS GIRL MEETS TEXAS AUSALLY AUSALLY RUCAS RUCAS GIRL MEETS TEXAS RUCAS RUCAS RUCAS

God, can we stop it with the ship spamming?

This Monstober has been as much about shipping and A-B-C plots as it has been about the crossover gimmick and, you know, actual Halloween. Oddly enough Girl Meets World and I Didn't Do It are the least offenders despite normally being the biggest shipping feeders. But that's ok because they more than made up for it with promos for their next episodes which is all about OMG RUCAS RUCAS RUCAS JOGAN JOGAN JOGAN RUCAS RUCAS RUCAS GIRL MEETS TEXAS RUCAS RUCAS RUUUUUCAAAAASSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

UGH.

And just to be clear, I'm not talking about shipping in the shows themselves (though Lord knows I've seen that handled poorly in anime circles) but specifically the fan reaction to it. Jesus Christ I think the "core demo" of GMW just about collectively wet their pants when they ran the Meets Texas promos. But I think I'll save that for another rant. Long story short, I've been massively disappointed by the fandoms at large, especially the GMW fandom whic is so bad I think it's actually ruining the show. On that note I really need to do a review or so of a little something called Inuyasha while I'm at it. IN-U-YASHA! KA-GO-ME! IN-U-YA-SHA! KA-GO-ME! RUCAS RUCAS RUUUCAAAS! 

Yeah I'll quit that joke it's even getting on my nerves. You get the point.

Anyway, Haunt-a-Rooney. Really, this show consistently proves why I think it's the best show on Disney Channel right now. It was laugh out loud hilarious and they not only handled the crossover pretty well (Hey! They actually acknowledged shows other than the ones directly involved in the crossover! Hey! Shelby and Cyd actually contributed to the plot!) but also the shipping aspect. See, most relationships in high school are what we in the real world call awkward. Girl Meets World kind of sort of gets into it but it tends to get drowned out with RUC...well, you know. It's pretty ballsy of LaM to completely torpedo not one but both of their major ships like this and make them stick, at least for now, especially given how shipping-obsessed the Disney Channel fandom at large is. Yeah, Liv and Holden and Maddie and Diggie will probably get back together. In fact I hope so! I like Lolden and Miggie! The show actually bothered to make me care about Lolden and Miggie instead of force feeding us RUC...you know.

Anyway, there are these two characters named Cyd and Shelby who are in this show called Best Friends Whenever and they actually met these characters named Liv and Holden where they did this thing called interaction. And Cyd and Shelby did this thing called they helped Liv and Holden out with a problem. And then Cyd, Shelby and Liv did something really amazing, called bringing attention to the fact that there are other shows involved in the crossover. Cyd and Shelby going nuts over Austin Moon just about won the night, even if we never even saw Austin Moon. It's kind of odd that for example Jessie never mentioned Austin Moon even though they sang a duet together or never ran into Liv even though they spent a Christmas as neighbors (again, unseen in that one for some reason). It's a nifty attention to detail thing and I think this show is pretty keen on those little details that other people may forget or even actively scoff at.

Then we have the A-plot (yes the Lolden/Cylby drama is really the B-plot) of Johnny Nimbus swearing revenge on Maddie and then dying. Haha, I wish all my enemies would just keel over every time they swore revenge against me. Of course it was part of a prank to scare Maddie, it's almost impossible not to know that coming in. It's one of those things that tends to get telegraphed a billion lightyears away no matter how you handled it - so you handle it by making it funny and enjoyable. Take notes here, other shows.

And then we have the C-plot which like on Jessie was barely there, just Mom Karen and Pops uh I forget his name learning that if you give out toothbrushes and tongue scrapers on Halloween, you're going to get a piss-poor yet well-deserved reputation, and their efforts to better that rep. It's been done to death on these shows, thank God it's got like 3 minutes of actual run-time.

Joey's costume fucking rules, BTW.

Of course, absolutely nothing of what I just said above will matter to the rest of the fandom.

Big thanks to Liv and Maddie creators John D. Beck and Ron Hart for playing along on Twitter.

Yeah, there's no way we can give the rest of the shows their own reviews and not be typing here until Wednesday and just keep crowding things, I say we just mash K.C. Undercover, Best Friends Whenever and I Didn't Do It into one review, especially since I Didn't Do It and K.C. Undercover were pretty damn bare anyway. What say you, Mike?

State of Nickelodeon Address

It's MikeTheTVBlogger again. I'm posting in orange for the sake of this post and some other ones down the line. I see it as symbolic for my rant/commentary/analysis, whatever you want to refer to it as. My primary color is still green, but for a couple Nickelodeon-related posts, I might turn to orange. So be on the lookout for that.

With that being said, I wanted to talk about Nickelodeon this morning. Last night, I had just come back from watching a new episode of 100 Things to Do Before High School and started writing this up. I'll sum it up like this: It's the kind of show that could use a lot more promotion and love from the network. I don't see it as something that will save Nickelodeon or make the channel look better but from what I have seen, I can't hate it. The vibe I get from 100 Things is like Ned's Declassified mixed with Unfabulous, and that feeling comes from the fact that Scott Fellows is the creator of this show. Isabela Moner comes off as likable from the very beginning. There is just something really charming and cute about the girl from the way she says her lines to her role as the narrator. She's almost like a reincarnation of Clarissa Darling, but only time will tell. I really enjoy Fenwick. I need to see more episodes, but at this moment, he is my favorite character. Of course, he reminds me of Cookie from Ned's Declassified, but......the trap you fall into, right? Crispo is a stupid character, but he doesn't annoy me yet. I mean, he most likely has other things going on besides being stupid, right?

I really hope Scott Fellows doesn't end up with Dan Schneider Syndrome. He makes a couple shows and exposes his flaws as a writer and creator because he is unable to create new, interesting characters without using his previous shows as a crutch. And they all end up as annoying, bland, uninteresting archetypes of the same characters we've seen before. I mean, in the one episode I just saw, there were sound effects all over the place. It felt like an episode of Big Time Rush. And I hate being reminded of the fact that season five of BTR will never be a reality. It was a great run though. At least the kids constantly having something new to do every week will keep the show fresh. But yeah, I love Isabela Moner. Nickelodeon better keep her around. And hopefully, Fellows can make something out of 100 Things and not become diagnosed with DSS.

Speaking of Dan Schneider, I honestly think he has nothing more to say. About anything. I give him all the respect in the world. His unique style of humor is very hard to replicate for most other writers without coming off as extremely awkward and he has been a huge creative force in kids television for several years. Drake & Josh is as beloved as any 90s Nickelodeon show. That speaks volumes as to how the quality of the show remains to this day. Zoey 101 was underrated in its own right, and while iCarly and Victorious both wet the bed at some point, they were very enjoyable and gave you something to look forward to every episode. Now the stuff Schneider makes is lame kiddie stuff with no value. Sam & Cat was a cheap cash grab that was never built to last. Henry Danger is inoffensive and stale, but nothing to make you tune in every week. Game Shakers is just garbage. If there's one thing that bothers me time and time again, it's when writers fail to do a stupid character correctly. The reason why they fail is because most of them have only one trait: They're stupid. Everything they do or say revolves around this trait. It's extremely lazy and for a veteran writer with multiple hit shows under your belt, you should know better. Nobody likes stupid people in reality. Those kinds of people get ignored or made fun of, or they end up in the race for the Republican nomination. What makes these writers think that we want to root for these people on TV? Even the new Alvin and the Chipmunks cartoon puts Game Shakers to shame.

I'm serious about that. Alvin and the Chipmunks is a genuinely enjoyable show. The animation choice makes it look like it was meant for little kids, which is weird. I mean, if you want to make jokes about free marketing and the energy crisis, at least do 2D computer animation. Besides that, nothing else is really a problem. The characters are all written well, the jokes are actually funny, and I feel like I spent my time watching something with substance once it ends. Season two better be in production as I write this, because between this and Harvey Beaks, Nickelodeon should count their blessings and praise somebody. At least these shows give the animation department a leg to stand on. The sad part is that in 1995, a good or great Nicktoon was to be expected. Now shows like that have become the exception, not the expectation. We're pleasantly surprised to see a good animated series on Nickelodeon in 2015. That's grim to think about.

Which brings me to my next topic: The Splat. On Monday at 10pm on TeenNick, the 90s Are All That gets rebooted into 90s Are All That 2.0. It will run longer and start airing more shows in regular rotation. I have a crazy idea. Why not just take all of the 90s Nick shows and give them their own 24-hour channel? Did the Nick execs really think about that? Because this is still the 90s Are All That. The only difference is you're extending the timeframe and not airing Hey Arnold/Rugrats/CatDog/Rocket Power 900 times a week.


 Look, I get it. You want to keep the 90s Are All That, but you know you have to expand your programming or else you're not living up to expectations. And more shows means more of an opportunity to see The Secret World of Alex Mack. Larisa Oleynik was gorgeous back then and she still is to this day, so don't move in on my lady. But no matter what you do, there will always be those people who don't have anything good to say. What if their favorite show doesn't get airtime? What if you end up focusing on the same four shows every night? What if you don't really embrace the whole 90s nostalgia thing and just air the episodes with no fanfare except for that rare occasion?

A year or two from now, The Splat will most likely become as stagnant as the 90s Are All That has become. Creating a new network dedicated solely to these shows ensures that each program will get played at least once a day. Although, now that Degrassi has migrated to Netflix for good, TeenNick really has nothing else to draw fans in. People nostalgic for the 1990s brings in a mammoth audience. So it's kinda like, "I scratch your back, and no one has to tune in for those Nick Cannon shows anymore." I just hope The Splat succeeds. The 90s Are All That was a brilliant idea, but it got very lazy and stagnant. Hopefully, The Splat gives those new viewers the same feeling I was given four years ago when the 90s Are All That burst onto the scene. It was like entering a different world. A cool world that people older than you tell you that you had to have lived in to fully appreciate. 

I bet The Adventures of Pete & Pete will never see the light of day. That's really sad because I hear that it was one of Nickelodeon's best shows in the 1990s and really showed you what it was like to be a kid. You know what the creators of that show are doing now? Working on Sanjay & Craig. Geez, what a step down.

Let's take it back to Nickelodeon for a moment. This is what I like to call the "rant" portion of this address. Their scheduling practices are atrocious. Think about this for a minute. The Thundermans started airing in 2013. At this moment, it is currently in its third season. Since then, it has been on Saturday night, moved to every weekday, then back to Saturdays, and now Wednesdays. WHAT KIND OF BACKWARDS THINKING IS THIS?! You know what the sad part is? The Thundermans could easily be a hit show if Nickelodeon invested more time in promoting it. Kids will watch the show if you promote it enough. Why do you think Teen Titans Go is Cartoon Network's cash cow, or at least one of them? Why do you think shows like SpongeBob and The Simpsons and Family Guy and South Park have maintained longevity? Because of how the shows are promoted, fans flocked to them and stayed there because of the quality. People will do the same for The Thundermans. Instead of promoting Henry Danger and Game Shakers 900 times a week because Dan Schneider's handprints are on them, talk about The Thundermans. Get fans excited to see the show, market it as the best thing on Saturdays, whatever. But this constant schedule shuffling is doing nothing for anybody. I wouldn't be surprised if Thundermans ratings are going down because of this. Bella and the Bulldogs apparently just premiered the opener of their second season on Wednesday. I don't recall seeing any promotion for that. Two shows on your network that are actually not that bad and have potential to be big hits and you treat them like this? How is anybody supposed to get behind your products without any promotion? I'm still in high school, but I understand that this is a very basic thing to do when it comes to advertising. Give people a reason to care about your content.

7:30 PM - 100 Things to Do Before High School/Nicky, Ricky, Dicky, & Dawn
8:00 PM - The Thundermans
8:30 PM - Bella and the Bulldogs
9:00 PM - Henry Danger
9:30 PM - Game Shakers

This right here is a potential Saturday night lineup that Nickelodeon could use. You have a warm-up show at 7:30, a new episode of a show that could use more attention. At 8:00 and 8:30, you have your heavy hitters. These are the shows you use to let people know what your flagship programs are. Plus, they are the two best shows you have. 9:00 and 9:30 have shows that really aren't that interesting, but they're from Schneider's Bakery so you might have a built-in audience. They have an animation block on Fridays that makes sense, why is it so hard for Nick to put faith in their live-action block? They used to thrive at this, it's called SNICK. Do the executives remember the existence of SNICK? You know, back when they had live-action shows AND cartoons that were both really good? Seems like a parallel universe, almost.

Then we have the imports like House of Anubis and such. Look, I get why Nickelodeon has these types of shows. They're extremely cheap and easy to make, but a lot of them suck. Like, really bad. House of Anubis was actually pretty entertaining as I recall and had effort put into it. But Every Witch Way? I want to throw up. Talia in the Kitchen? Who cares? Talia herself is pretty cute though. A freaking Every Witch Way spin-off? Are you insane? That's like having a spinoff of Breadwinners or something. That damn cartoon is still on, eh? Let's pray. The fact is, these imported shows do nothing for anybody. They get very little positive attention. They're in the background and collect dust. These kinds of shows can be hacked up and remade multiple times, but that doesn't mean they're any good. You're going for quantity, not quality. What a waste of time. Of course, I could say that for the entire network at this point.

I've grown up with Nickelodeon. It provided an outlet for all these great live-action and animated shows. Even today, we see people get excited over watching shows that have been off the air for years. That's a testament to what this network did for children back in the day. It spoke to them like their best friends and understood them. Now it doesn't choose to understand kids. It already thinks it understands kids when it has been out of touch for a very long time. Disney Channel isn't much better either, but at least with them, they have less to work on in order to regain their success. Nickelodeon has problems all across the board. Could you imagine this scheduling buffoonery on DC? People will go crazy over that. One thing I know for sure is that Nickelodeon has been extremely stagnant for a while now. The hostile takeover needs to happen soon because at this point, the network is looking more and more like something you just have kids watch to get them to shut up. 

The Unknown, you want to creep to the mic like a phantom? 

Sure! I've been a little distracted by doing the Disney Channel reviews and some real life things. 

Really, you've pretty much covered what needs to be said. I'll vehemently disagree about Every Witch Way and W.I.T.S. Academy as I'm actually a huge fan and looking forward majorly to W.I.T.S. Academy tomorrow. I'm also a big fan of Talia in the Kitchen and I especially like Valarie, the redhead, because as I said in the other thing she looks like the second coming of Jessie Prescott and I have it real bad for redheads. But I also know that those type of halfassed-hybrid kidcom/telenovella setups aren't for everyone and there's a lot to look past, and not everyone can look past the crap. 

I'll also tell you what else really impresses me on Nickelodeon right now - Pig Goat Banana Crickett. Yes, the ratings for that show are in the toilet too but it's exactly the type of thing I think Nick needs more of. Or, judging by the ratings, maybe not. But meh, whatever, I really like it. It's the type of laugh out load raw comedy that's increasingly becoming a throwback. In an ideal world, the thing that makes it a throwback is an increased sophistication towards good and even deep plots, but sadly it seems to be more moving towards the wayside in favor of shipping and what aging middle-aged comedy writers perceive as being the things little kids find funny (Austin & Ally and anything touched by Schneider are huge offenders of both). At least we have Gravity Falls on Disney XD which actually achieves that deeper plot structure I was talking about.

Also, as I didn't have Nickelodeon back in the 90s I had to Google Larisa Oleymk and holy crap you are not kidding. Also Drake & Josh is Godly. To this day it's one of the best sitcoms I've ever seen in my whole damn life. It's one of the very few kiddie sitcoms from either Nick or Disney that I think actually has a strong shot on a network primetime slot. If you completely ignore the fact that Drake and Josh are teens it's pretty much a network primetime sitcom already, as it is. And I think, especially looking back now, the show has as much or more to owe to Drake Bell and Josh Peck's talent as it does to Dan Schneider's. Also, don't forget The Last Airbender and even Korra. Korra Season 3 is one of the best, finest seasons of television I've ever seen in my life. I rank it up there with the same year's Fargo and True Detective with absolute sincerity. Season 4...not so much.

I have no idea what's going on with Nick's scheduling either. It's like they want to kill of a show, and it doesn't make sense, if you hate the show that much, why did you order it in the first place? If it's because you're running out of primo slots and you're just shoving the poorer-performers into throwaway slots, again, why did you order so many in the first place? Either Thundermans or Bella can easily slot into the loose half-hour they have hanging off of 100 Things, that slot is currently used for a rerun of the Wednesday Thundermans premiere anyway. It might seem like a moot point and a nitpick but advertisers care most about the premiere timeslot - rerun slots just aren't as sexy even if they nab better ratings. It's the premiere slot performance that grabs the Deadline and Variety headlines. 100 Things is spread out that they can pull a Disney Channel and alternate it with Nicky, Ricky Dicky and Dawn and just need an extra half-hour to put in the final show to make the night complete - something that they've done in the past, I should mention.

But going back to the larger issue, I think Nick's still trying to find a decent response and is still reeling from a larger issue I've been meaning to write about anyway, something I call the Kidocalypse. I'll reserve the finer points for later, but long story short for whatever reason the ratings dipped for Disney Channel and completely cratered for Nickelodeon in late 2012 when iCarly made its exit. Victorious hemorrhaged ratings, and Nick had cancellation after cancellation after cancellation of shows that would often just run for a dozen episodes or less throughout the entirety of 2013. As much as 2013 was perhaps the height of post-Hannah Montana or at least post-Wizards of Waverly Place Disney Channel, it was the utter pits for Nickelodeon. Wendell and Vinnie and Marvin Marvin were watching what was happening over at Disney Channel, looking on as Austin and Ally and Teddy were rockin' it up in Jessie's penthouse where it feels like a party ev-er-y daaay! and wishing they could have a piece of that action while they were being swept out of Nickelodeon studios and fighting over who'd get top bunk in that refrigerator box they found lying on the street.

What really sucked was the total bomb of Sam & Cat, which was a critical linchpin in Nick's programming and when it was knocked out it created a little bit of a panic. Nobody beyond those parties directly involved will ever know what happened, barring say Ariana Grande writing a tell-all book which granted given the way things are going might actually happen. If you look at the raw ratings it wasn't the stellar performer people strangely remember it now - it posted Disney Channel-like ratings often but many times it dipped into A.N.T. Farm territory (trust me that's low). Whatever, it's long gone, dead and buried and with it the legacy of teen comedies that goes back all the way to All That. 

But it wasn't just the utter collapse of Sam & Cat that put the network in a bind. Unlike say a failed Apple or Lexus product launch a TV show is almost effortless to replace and refill; there's almost literally dozens of scriptwriters and veteran producers banging on your door with ready-to-film scripts. There's no shortage of talent, no months or years-long development lead and lag-times like that associated with consumer electronics or cars. You just scan what's available, pick a script, and start shooting. It might take a couple of months to actually finish the post-prod but so what, especially with Nick's non-regular premiere sched you can push things back and use reruns to create a seamless transition. Most networks actually keep shows already produced and ready to go waiting in the wings exactly in case this sort of thing happens (and then premiere them mid-season if their time doesn't come prior). Look at how quickly Henry Danger premiered after Sam & Cat's demise, for example.

So no, it's not just Sam & Cat, I think Nickelodeon looked at what was happening across the board and concluded that the tween-teen demo was pretty much dead. Hence their move to aim younger with stuff like Henry Danger, Nicky, Ricky, Dicky and Dawn, 100 Things to do Before High School (it tells you right in the title) and now with Game Shakers. Thundermans really is a holdover from the 2012-13 era before they thought the tween-teen demo was no longer viable. Even Bella and the Bulldogs is firmly in middle-school territory. Their animated shows - Harvey Beaks, Sanjay & Craig, Breadwinners, Alvin!!! And the Chipmunks - are dead square at the pre-tween/tween demo. The days of Nick catering to an all-age demo with adult appeal are done, dead, gone.

It's a strategy that might have mixed results, but it's a strategy. That and going cheap, cheap, cheap with Every Witch Way and the other Caterina Ledobear shows. So cheap that they can post profits no matter how bad the ratings are, and it's just dumb luck (and in my opinion a testament to Ledobear's talent) that they happen to be pulling in almost the same ratings on daily throwaway slots as the prime Saturday premieres. It's the same thing with Max & Shred and Make It Pop! - import shows from Canada where someone else already sunk the costs in for you, or even pitch in a little bit but it's still less than making a show entirely yourself, even if it's a single-cam with a major song number in every episode like Make It Pop!

So like it or not this is the near-future of Nickelodeon as they're more or less in survival mode. They need survival programming. Every Witch Way and its ilk along with the imports  provide raw bulk ratings at bargain prices. The younger demo shows like Nicky Ricky Dicky and Dawn and the new Schneider shows attempt to draw in a completely new, fresh demo and hopefully grow brand loyalty into them; likewise the animated cartoons which will probably be more successful attempts. Whether or not this will work remains to be seen, but it's a better strategy than Disney Channel which is more or less to stay the course and pretend or hope the ratings blips aren't permanent (though maybe Disney Channel is starting to pick up the same strategy too if Stuck in the Middle is any indication). 

So yeah, I get what you're saying, but it might be a consequence of the ratings reality that's beyond our control. Though it doesn't give an excuse for the new Schneider's Bakery output to be so awful - unless we're just that out of touch with the humor of a pre-middle schooler (or perhaps the other way around). Nor does it give an excuse for Bella's awful scheduling. But, eh, whatcha gonna do.

Henry Danger/Game Shakers Reviewed: Henry and the Woodpeckers (#2.04) and Mego the Freakish Robot (#2.05)

Unknown: Quoting these episodes implies plot and action happened, which would be blatantly misleading.
Mike: Here's a stupid quote from a stupid episode I barely saw of a stupid show I hope dies out before it overstays its welcome even more. No, wait, that implies it was actually welcomed and I never welcomed this. Game Shakers: "My dad's a pelican." "Your dad's a dentist." "Well, either way, this is a good pretzel." This was an actual attempt at a joke. Someone got paid to write this. 

What is this? Yeah I'm seriously not doing this for two shows at the same time, I'm sure you can figure it out for yourself.

Yeah if we're going to be reviewing every premiere on Disney and Nick we're going to have to pick and choose what we want to primarily cover and just compress the rest. Jessie and I Didn't Do It have enough episodes left combined that you can count them on one hand even with a few fingers shot off, and the last of both are due to air on the 16th, so we might as well do them proper treatment and review them in full. Girl Meets World has their own blog so we only need to cover it as we feel like it. We might give Bunk'd its own treatment at first at least, and we'll certainly give Liv and Maddie its own treatment since its good enough to justify it. Austin & Ally only have a small handful of episodes left as well plus they're stretched way the hell out on the schedule so again we might as well fit them in. Best Friends Whenever...eh, I think we'll just have to give a trial basis. K.C. Undercover is usually so straightforward and generic we can probably just roll it into something else from the start. The current Schneider's Bakery productions, again, I've found to be pretty generic enough we can probably just roll them in, we might even roll Thundermans and Bella and the Bulldogs together too. W.I.T.S. Academy and Talia in the Kitchen? Forget it - we might just do a weekly retrospective or maybe even every two weeks (those shows might be a challenge for you to watch anyway, Mike. No, that is not a good thing).

So, Henry and the Woodpeckers. Once in a while Dan will sneak in an episode that's clearly a disguised rant against...something? By "something" I mean a social issue but the social issues end up being so soft to begin with, and are handled with kid gloves to the point I'm amazed why he's bothering. He did it in Sam & Cat with the Blue Dog Soda episode. and he does it again here. Another thing about Henry Danger is that so often the superhero premise doesn't even factor in at all. That's a problem Mighty Med has too, while the more "mundane" and "grounded" shows on Disney Channel often veer into more fantastic directions. This weekend on Disney Channel and Nickelodeon, Riley and Maya travel back in time and fight ghosts, Jessie saves outer space, Liv becomes a space werewolf, while bionic superheroes Chase, Adam and Brie plan how to handle a sales rush at the electronics store and Kid Danger coaches a peewee basketball team while Captain Man is in a beard-growing contest. These are all actual episode plotlines, people.

So yeah, Henry and the Woodpeckers is about Henry coaching a peewee basketball team and Captain Man is in a beard-growing contest. It's exactly as lame as it sounds. Henry gets in trouble because he's being unfair to his team by being too encouraging and making other players feel more special than others by giving them rewards (so yeah, it's a kid-glove swaddled "rant" against helicopter parent society). Then he figures out a clever way to give the peewee basketball team oversight board their comeuppance, and I didn't pay attention because at that point I abandoned my reviewer civic duties to see who's on Periscope instead. I guarantee you I didn't miss much. There's almost nothing in this episode whatsoever from a valid entertainment standpoint. I can't even call it pure empty calories because that still implies I got something resembling flavor out of it.

Grade: I'm tempted to give it a big fat F but I have the feeling I should reserve it for something that might end up being truly offensive, not for something that just utterly bores me. So I'll take a page from Mike's blog and give it a D-.

Episode MVP: The actors playing the board people who agreed to be on this show specifically to play evil cardboard cutouts and receive some lame half-baked humiliation in the end. Also the actors playing the little kids in order to show pity for them not being old enough to know better than to be on an episode like this.

Moving on to Game Shakers - there's a robot called Mego that has an unhealthy obsession with...what's his face? Hamlet or something? So he tries to frame Trip and then he tricks Trip into coming up to the roof where he (oh, I'm sorry, Mego has no specific gender assignment) it tries to throw Trip off the roof but Dub comes up and throws Mego over instead. And, uh, stuff. Stuff happened. At least stuff happened.

Grade: C. At least stuff happened.

Episode MVP: Like hell it's going to be some short person in a clumsy PVC "robot" suit. I'm giving it to Benjamin "Lil P'nut" Flores because .1.) he has actual range beyond cardboard and 2.) I miss The Haunted Hathways.

As you can tell there isn't much to talk about these episodes. Take it away Mike, and if you can come up with some pretty good insight I'll add from there.

Thank you for referencing my blog, first off. It definitely reminds me of something else I should be doing along with this........soon enough.

You miss The Haunted Hathaways too? God, I thought I was the only one. Nickelodeon did that show like a criminal and was moving it around constantly. It was one of the very few shows on Nick that I actually had no problem watching. Lil P-Nut is one of the very, very, very few positive attributes that Game Shakers has. And that's only because.......well, because he can act. He fits Dan Schneider's style of humor well and he can bounce off of his cast members pretty well. Oh yeah, and Kel Mitchell. Man, I love Kel. It's a shame him and Benjamin have to be saddled with this dumpster fire of a show. 

Oh yeah, the blonde kid is named Hudson. And he is one of the worst characters Dan Schneider has ever had anything to do with. Everything he says or does is based around his stupidity, and when that's not the case, he just giggles like an idiot. The sad part is the characters themselves know they don't need him around, but I guess when you're going to grow up with special needs, your friends are going to have to show you what it's like to live with someone with basic competence. A lot of writers think that because the character is supposed to be stupid, we'll laugh because we're in on it. No, I don't want to be in on it. That's not the way it works. I'm annoyed by stupid people in real life, why would I want to see them on TV? Patrick Star, Homer Simpson, Peter Griffin, Eric Matthews.......there's a reason why these characters became so beloved in spite of them being stupid. I don't think Dan really cares, though. He only does this because Nick probably forces him to or he wants quick cash.

You know what could be entertaining? A Henry Danger/Thundermans crossover! That makes actual sense and gives both shows a sense of purpose as they shine a light on the whole superhero thing. If one show ends without having ever crossed over with the other, that will be a huge disappointment. 

But yeah, you just made me realize how demanding this job is going to be. It means going through shows that are very.........challenging. I actually like The Thundermans and Bella and the Bulldogs gave me a little something to chew on as well, so I might cover those. The fact that they are being shuffled to Wednesdays is infuriating, but I already put that in my State of Nickelodeon Address. Henry Danger gives me almost nothing to talk about. I don't hate it, but it rarely ever does anything interesting or engaging. They had a chance to give us some real drama with Henry dating that girl from the Walldogs, but nope. Nothing. It's just Henry is going to continue dating the girl because......well, she is hot. I can't lie. Anyway, I might have something more to say about Game Shakers because unlike HD, it really does frustrate and confound me. How do you have multiple stupid characters on a show? Most shows can't even do one correctly, you want to try three? That's just an admission of giving up. 

I wouldn't touch W.I.T.S. or Talia in the Kitchen with a ten-foot pole. I'll give them a few sentences each to acknowledge their existence and never discuss them again. 100 Things to Do Before High School? I don't know, Unknown, we might have something there. It's a Scott Fellows show and he doesn't have Dan Schneider Syndrome yet, so I have hope. And if nothing else, Isabela Moner carries this show. You just want to like that chick. I might hold down the fort there.

I'll do what I can with the Disney Channel stuff, but I have become very disillusioned with the network as a whole. At least Nickelodeon gives me material, DC just has a lot of mediocre live-action stuff. If I see a Girl Meets World episode that gives me something to talk about, I'll definitely go for it. I think I'll keep my thoughts to myself until the Texas episodes because it's not like the show is going to have anything valuable to say until then. Austin & Ally has never been a problem for me, but if it has declined like Unknown says, then we're in for a treat. Jessie......screw that, when it finally ends after 956 episodes, I will happily talk about why it never should have been on this long. It's an old dog that needs to be put down. I don't know what Disney Channel is getting out of Bunk'd. The summer camp thing already has lost its meaning and no Cameron Boyce means you have to rely on new characters even more. New, potentially worse characters..........I feel sorry for kids sometimes. Animation in 2015 is thriving like it's the golden age, but live-action still has a painfully long way to go. 

Everything else? Dear Lord, show me the way. At least Best Friends Whenever has Landry Bender. Not bad to look at. ;)

Yeah, this job is going to be very demanding especially since we're doing it absolutely for free, not just on the quality but on the sheer quantity. There's just so damn many of them. They're multiplying, like cockroaches. Or hangers. I've pretty much pissed away all my weekend morning (including Friday) going back and fourth just on the reviews of these shows. We're really absolutely going to need to pick and choose our battles.

Oh yeah, you're definitely going to be doing Jessie. I'm dragging you along for that show whether you like it or not. 

This might come as a big shock, but I legitimately love Every Witch Way and Talia in the Kitchen, and I'm being completely serious and non-ironic about it. They're really shitty in the beginning but if you're a glutton for punishment like me and stick through it they turn into series actually worth investing into. I'm pretty stoked about W.I.T.S Academy. I especially like the girl who plays Valarie on Talia because she pretty much looks like the second coming of Jessie Prescott and if you can't tell already I really, really have it bad for redheads and am willing to tolerate a lot of shit for them (which pretty much describes my personal relationships). But it's a total of 40 episodes(!) run through October, and there's no physical way we can do that and all the other shows and peel ourselves away from the keyboard for any meaningful time. I'm barely keeping my head above water just with the Disney premieres. I haven't even touched I Didn't Do It yet. I say we roll K.C. Undercover and Best Friends Whenever together unless either comes out with an episode that justifies its own review. We'll probably roll Bunk'd into Girl Meets World. Fortunately Jessie, I Didn't Do It and Austin & Ally are coming to an end and Stuck in the Middle isn't until next year. We're going to have to roll Henry Danger and Game Shakers together both on a quality and quantity standpoint, and even then maybe do it optionally. The nice thing about 100 Things - the nice thing from a review standpoint, certainly not from a fan standpoint - is that its ratings are completely in the toilet so there's a big question how long it's going to stick around. That means there might be potentially few episodes to review in the future, and it means we damn well better enjoy the show while it's still around. I think I'll just let you handle Bella and Thundermans and chime in, that's probably going to be the most practical way. 

Back to Henry Danger, yeah, this episode was a borefest. Give me Debby Ryan very awkwardly talking about her home life and ensuring her fans that no she's not going to disappear from TV now while she points the camera so that you can barely see her face but clearly see how deep the neckline on her barely-fitting Tee goes any day (that's the Periscope thing I keep referring to). 

Just putting this out there so you know I'm not just projecting. And if I'm coming off as a hater, it's just my trying to be overly snarky for the sake of this blog - you keep doing what you're doing, Debby, and we'll still love you for it.

Back to Henry Danger (and bringing this blog back to its mission statement and away from creeper This-Actress-Is-Going-To-Get-A-Restraining-Order-Against-You territory), this show had a pretty funny episode just a week ago. It was a clever twist on the dating triangle plot (even lampshading that plot) and it was funny. Schneider is good at raw physical comedy. It's the one thing that really separates Game Shakers from Henry Danger. It's what kept Mego from being a complete borefest. If Game Shakers can keep good physical comedy it will be worth watching for a chuckle but not really worth blogging about. And that's on a reall good day. Unless you want to continue seeing just how weird I can be over Debby I think that's about the maximum I can say on this issue. 

I really need to carpe this diem-morning. 

We're at war, man. We're at war with Nickelodeon, Disney Channel. But most of all, we're at war with ourselves. :)

I can't wait to give Jessie a well-deserved thrashing. I need at least one show that I constantly come back to for good reviewing material. Mr. Enter and PieGuy both have SpongeBob, and I need something too.

You know, when I was younger, I was a big fan of Marvin Marvin. I probably still am, so I shouldn't judge people. Yeah, I think rolling a bunch of shows together will help take some of the load off. Besides, not many of these shows really need multiple reviews anyway. It depends on what they do and how they do it. I plan to just review Thundermans and Bella in the same post to save time. The sad thing is that 100 Things will probably never get a second season and in two years, Dan will have a third show in production. If he's allowed to have Henry Danger and Game Shakers on the same night, then Scott Fellows better be allowed to keep his own freaking show. Even if it does remind me of Big Time Rush..........the memories.

We'll be happy to support Debby Ryan in her continued use of the camera to suit her......physical assets. I like redheads too.

My favorite thing about Dan Schneider's shows is that they tend to have dialogue you wouldn't even hear on other kids' shows. His style of writing is purposefully awkward but with the right actor or actress, the lines become brilliant and hilarious. Take Josh Peck for example. He wrote the book on how to do Schneider's Bakery humor. Like in the episode where he grows a mustache and Drake says that Josh's grandmother has more hair on her upper lip than that. The response? "You will not speak about Grammy's hormonal IMBALANCES!!!" The line is so deliciously awkward, which makes it perfect for Josh to say. There are lots of Schneider-type lines running around these shows, like when Carly tells Sam and Freddie, "Don't nonchalantly sip your drinks!" The best part about this type of comedy is that it is almost impossible for a lot of other writers to replicate without coming off as trying too hard. But when Schneider does it, it becomes gold. 

Well, at least I can always pawn off W.I.T.S. and Talia on you because there's no way I'm going to sit there and watch for the sake of a review. I might chime in every now and then, however. 

Yeah Debby and I have a...complicated...relationship (can you call staring at an actress on a kiddie TV show a relationship? Yes, yes you can, if you want to be super-creepy. So no) as the guys on GMWReviewed even pointed out. I'll actually explain that one very soon in the Jessie retrospectives I'll put up (man I am so running behind). I'll probably just cover Talia and W.I.T.S. occasionally.

You're dead on about peak-era Schneider. There's a reason why he has so much cloud and power as it is. You can Google articles about how he managed to create the impression of being more in-touch with what kids got, or look up on TVTropes about "Schneider Speak" (it's on the Dan Schneider page, not its own separate article). Henry Danger and Game Shakers especially seems like a leftover corpse of all that. 

And, um, that's pretty much it.