What good is a dynasty if it doesn't fall?
Seeing as how Ray had an interesting concept with his post about shows from 2009-2011, I wanted to carry it on and see where else I could go with it. Although, this will be from my personal perspective more because that's the only way it will be any fun for me. Plus, this actually gives me the opportunity to talk about something I've been putting off for a long time now. But we'll get to that later.
2011 was an interesting time for Nickelodeon and Disney Channel. Both networks were going strong with entertaining shows, and I was still a fan of both at the time, but there was a notable difference from the previous era. The elements that made up that time period were slowly disappearing or being erased entirely. This is more on the Disney Channel side of things, because Nickelodeon was still running on the same engine as before. By this time, a new generation of shows were being introduced to Disney. In just that one year, A.N.T. Farm, Jessie, and Austin & Ally all made their debuts, and they all ran for multiple seasons. Hannah Montana and The Suite Life on Deck both ended their runs, closing out a six-year period of episodes if you count The Suite Life of Zack and Cody. Demi Lovato decided not to return for the third season of Sonny with a Chance, which led to the show being retooled as So Random! and getting a 26-episode run before being cancelled. Wizards of Waverly Place was on its way out as well, with the series finale airing in early 2012.
Disney Channel was making a lot of moves during this period. It was getting rid of the past and preparing for the future by going for an almost entirely new lineup. For a while, the network was defined by its stars. Demi, Selena Gomez, Miley Cyrus, the Jonas Brothers. By the beginning of 2012, they were all gone from the network, and Disney Channel no longer had crossover appeal. The kind of appeal that meant that shows like Family Guy and South Park were taking notice of them. Slowly but surely, the network started to decay, because some of these new shows were decent, but not as entertaining as previous shows. The acting across the board became less charming, the writing became more simplified, brighter colors were emphasized more. By the end of this period, Good Luck Charlie was the only show with any genuine humanity, and it was closing its doors also. Disney Channel was smart enough to know when to change their brand and eliminate the "superstar" mentality it had from 2009-2011, but their new mentality meant their new stars (and by extension, their new shows) wouldn't get as much traction.
Meanwhile, things looked like they were never going to get any better for Nick. iCarly, Victorious, and Big Time Rush were all huge successes, and the anchors of the network during this period. Unlike Disney Channel, which embraced change as soon as the 2010s hit, Nickelodeon didn't have the same urgency. The only new scripted shows that came out in 2011 were Bucket & Skinner's Epic Adventures, House of Anubis, and Supah Ninjas. Only House of Anubis really had much of a run worth talking about, and if you asked people who grew up with 2010s Nickelodeon what the other two shows were, they would most likely tell you they didn't even know they existed.
For a long time, Nickelodeon never had to worry about the future in terms of live-action programming. Whenever an old, long-running show closed its doors, a new show took its place. This is the same network that once had Drake & Josh, Zoey 101, Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide, and Unfabulous all running at the same time, all of which became successes. 2011 was another year where Nickelodeon was riding high off the strength of three shows that were not only ratings hits, but instantly memorable and entertaining in their own ways. Big Time Rush never got anywhere near the success of the Jonas Brothers or other Disney acts, but they were Nickelodeon's first real attempt to make a musical sensation, and they did a respectable job. Also, as quiet as it's kept, their music was really damn good. You don't realize it until you play back Elevate one day and you're wondering why you never cared about songs like "Show Me" and "Invisible" until now.
The point is, Nickelodeon was embracing the art of having crossover appeal when Disney Channel was beginning to abandon it, whether it was by design or not. It really seemed like the network was just going to continue having more success as the 2010s rolled on.
But then 2012 happened.
That was the year iCarly ended its run and Victorious was unceremoniously cancelled. Honestly, I don't think Nickelodeon ever recovered from losing both shows like that. While iCarly was growing stale and needed to end at some point, Victorious most likely had one or two more seasons left in it. The reasons for the show ending are still unclear. While it was Nick's decision, many theories have been put forth since 2012. The show reached the end of its required run and was never going to get more episodes to begin with. The show was appealing to teenagers and adults, but the key demographic (children) wasn't tuning in enough. Victoria Justice was trying to branch out and in the process, put the cast and crew of Victorious in a bad spot. The show was becoming more expensive to produce. I don't know the reason Nickelodeon decided to pull the plug, but they're paying for it to this day because Victorious has gained a second life on Netflix. People are watching the show like it's still running today, and it's being hailed as one of Nick's best programs.
I don't subscribe to that belief. While I've always been a fan of Victorious, and still think the first season is fantastic, the show fell off as soon as season two. There were some legitimately bad episodes in that season ("Tori Gets Stuck," "Prom Wrecker," "Tori Tortures Teacher") which makes them stick out even worse when you compare them to the good episodes ("Ice Cream for Ke$ha," "Jade Gets Crushed," "Terror on Cupcake Street," "Blooptorious"). As the show went on, it kept fluctuating between really good and really bad, and with the way season four turned out, it makes me wonder how much worse Victorious would have gotten if Nickelodeon let it continue.
Victorious was the last Dan Schneider show that was capable of being good. Before that, his track record was flawless. iCarly was a legitimately funny show for a while, which is something even I forget about. But the fact that Schneider was working on both shows at the same time led to neither of them getting the attention they really needed. It worked in the mid-2000s, but lightning didn't strike twice. The humor became broader and more shallow, scenes started dragging on, the acting performances became more exaggerated, and stories began descending into nonsensical territory. Could you imagine an episode like "Josh is Done" even being attempted in 2013? It wouldn't have, and if it had been, it would have been slowed down by corny, awkward jokes that killed the mood.
In 2013, not only did Victorious air its last episode, but so did Big Time Rush. At least that show got a proper finale. How to Rock began airing in 2012 and ended that same year, which is a shame because that show was at least decent and never got the chance to become better. Marvin Marvin had a short run also, and since Victorious was a consistent disappointment at the time, that show stood out as being infinitely better. Not even joking, I genuinely liked Marvin Marvin. I know everybody hated it, but it was nothing but ridiculous fuckery every week and I lived for it. Would I watch it now? I don't really know, but at least it gave Lucas Cruikshank something to do besides scream everything he says in a high-pitched voice.
Disney Channel wasn't in a great place in 2013, but at least it knew what it was trying to do and had an actual direction. Nickelodeon had the direction of a broken compass being used by a crack addict. I believe Ray has referred to this as the Kidocalypse. I remember shows being cancelled left and right, whether it was deserved or not. Nickelodeon was hitting the panic button more times than necessary, constantly transitioning and rebuilding. The perfect structure from 2010/2011 had crumbled completely, and in less than three years, the crossover appeal was gone completely. Nickelodeon and Disney Channel were no longer cool. They were just there for background noise.
By the end of 2013, Nick had three live-action shows holding things down: Sam & Cat, which put two characters with no chemistry together and carried none of the elements that made the original shows good. The Haunted Hathaways, which was a respectable show and at least had somewhat of a run before it got cancelled. And lastly, The Thundermans, which lasted much longer than the other two shows and was actually decent, having a little bit of that old Nickelodeon charm. A new generation was forced to come to Nick, but you have to wonder what that generation would have looked like if some of the shows were allowed to crawl before they could walk.
In 2014, Disney Channel introduced one of its most memorable shows in the last decade, and the one show that constantly tested my patience as a fan and a reviewer: Girl Meets World. As much as I talked about the many problems this show had, it was usually interesting and gave me a consistent source of material, good and bad. But I don't want to get ahead of myself here. This is for the next write-up. That same year, Nickelodeon introduced the newest member of the Schneider's Bakery family, Henry Danger. This show was interesting because it represented many things. First of all, it was a superhero show, not just a sitcom. So at least it had some unique element to it. Second, it was made entirely from scratch. What I mean is the show starred people that had never worked with Dan Schneider before. iCarly and Victorious weren't spinoffs, but they starred actresses who had already been on other Schneider shows. Even Drake & Josh had the built-in Schneider connection. So, for the first time ever, Henry Danger was a Schneider's Bakery show with no lineage to anything that came before it. Sam & Cat also ended this year (coming up short of its 40-episode order), bringing an official end to an era that had started seven years ago with iCarly.
2014 also brought us the debut of Nicky, Ricky, Dicky, & Dawn. It's okay if you don't remember that this show existed, or that it ran for four years. Sometimes, I have trouble remembering too.
The question now is, what happens in the next couple years for Nickelodeon and Disney Channel? I don't know if I want to find out, maybe Ray can do it for me.
And yeah, I know this blog literally started in 2015, but even then, I wasn't paying nearly as much attention to Nick and Disney as I did five years ago.
Wednesday, March 25, 2020
Tuesday, February 18, 2020
Are we just all stories? (and what are stories anyway?)
Happy The Year of Barbara Walters 2020s! The Year of Coronavirus and the Death of Decency, any Reason, Justification and Will to Even be Bothered to Keep on Living and the Human Race Itself Anyway so Why Bother?
This wasn't exactly the "first post of the decade" that I really had in mind. Really, I just wanted to continue with evaluating the shows of the past decade (which if I really wanted to get off my ass would've been done before the year was over) but Mike is actually working on the 2011-14 section and, spoiler alert, what he's done is brilliant and I really want him to finish up with that because he's really spot-on with that. I've also wanted to move into more Netflix reviews, since Netflix is (was?) a hotbed of tween/teen entertainment right now, not to mention Insatiable and (me completely dead set on binging) Bojack Horseman, but I didn't just want to open up a whole new decade on just another review, especially since we just got done closing out arguably the most important decade in all of human history as far as tween and teen entertainment is concerned.
Then again since I had intended to finish my lookback at the 2010s last year I guess I really don't know what kind of post I had been intending in the first place. I guess I'll go with yet another post on why this type of storytelling matters, and a general look at least as far as why the last decade wasn't just so important but the most important (beyond just television, since the lookback series is covering that in more detail).
But as to why this particular decade is the most important...let's look back at the very beginning of tween/teen entertainment....
...which is more recent than you think.
The concept of tweens/teens didn't even exist until last century at the latest, and really "tween" as a concept wasn't invented until this one, more as a response to describe just what the hell Disney Channel and Nickelodeon were marketing in the first place, incidentally. The concept of a "teenager" really grew out of a rapidly growing middle class at the beginning of the 20th century and even then, really referred to a particularly privileged type of teenager (the concept of a middle class itself was pretty brand-new and...it's hard to really define within strictly the cultural context of that particular time period and divorced from its context now. Basically, it meant your kids were actually going to school instead of demonstrating why this era also gave birth to child labor laws). Many of the things we associate as being teen and even tween entertainment - fairy tales; Dickens, Twain, Alcott and the Bronte sisters; hell even cartoons - were strictly for adults up to that time. Hell literacy among the adult population was still in at best a plurality, let alone for teens. The "Downton Abbey era" was the first where you actually did have books published specifically for teens and tweens and...well, it's more of a fucked-up era than you realize because these books were the direct immediate ancestor for the "Tijuana Bibles" of the 20s and 30s (yes the back-then equivalent of 50 Shades of Grey actually was one of the first books intended specifically for tweens. We're very literally talking about tween smut here. True story, folks). Needless to say these operations tended to be quite underground.
And tween and teen entertainment would for the large part continue to be underground and...shockingly smutty...until the late 30s and really the end of WWII. Sure, you did have a few books written for literate (and highly privileged) teens, and yes you had children's books, but for the most part entertainment and culture as a whole existed almost exclusively in an adult world. Between child and adult, again that really wasn't a concept. Television made for an explosion of children's programming (which was still live-action - cartoons at best or worst depending on how you look at it were still about a 50/50 split adult/kid) but still, nothing tween or teen-specific. Yes, you still had adult-specific shows - I don't think The Honeymooners can really be called "family entertainment" under any real context regardless what decade it is and I think we've all seen Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble hock cigarettes by now. Really at best you had "family shows" that tweens and teens can watch along with the rest of the family.
You really have to go all the way to the 1980s to find teens (or tweens, although they really weren't marketed to as such) as an actual demo, and even then it would be a pretty slow trickle for years. In the 60s you started to have some entertainment marketed towards teens including a few books (well, one book - The Outsiders - and arguably to the close of that decade S.E. Hinton would be one of the few authors writing to teens, with her mixing it up with a good number of very much adult-demo books in the process - and really not until the mid 70s with Robert Cormier's The Chocolate War which, trust me, is way way more cynical than The Outsiders) and especially movies (Bonnie and Clyde being almost the ur-example with "New Hollywood," up to and very much including everything pre-Star Wars George Lucas did, especially American Graffiti which if anything one-upped The Outsiders).
But nope, other than that not really anything. Aside from movies which, again, really were the vanguard of defining teens as a demo on their own - The Outsiders and The Chocolate War being adapted into movies, The Wave on TV and really an entire artistic movement, that aforementioned "New Hollywood" which again includes at least very early George Lucas. But most books were, well...pretty kiddie, to put it one way, and TV was dominated by family sitcoms and dramas outside of Saturday morning and afterschool. Even The Wonder Years...well, that was as much feeding off adult nostalgia as it was appealing to viewers the actual age of the characters (trust me I know a thing or two about adult nostalgia). In 1985 racist homophobic asshole Orson Scott Card (yes I will keep referring to him quite specifically as this until something comes along to show me he's changed) came out with Ender's Game - today it would be so totally a YA novel and even its movie adaptation(s) have been marketed as such, but back then it was just another pulp sci-fi book.
And then Britney and N*SYNC happened.
Really, even moreso than movies, it was the music industry that was rapidly defining the teen marketing demo. Families were now giving their children, particularly tweens and teens, enough allowance to let them make regular purchases, or even just giving into their purchasing demands outright. Now all of a sudden kids 11-17 were a group that was worth bothering to market too. And I'd be remiss to forget video games, which largely pushed tweens and teens as a demo for boys.
But I'd be equally remiss in not mentioning Nickelodeon's and Disney Channel's direct role in all this. After all, Nickelodeon started pushing kids TV "upmarket" back in the 90s and even 80s with Clarissa Explains it All, Salute Your Shorts and Hey Dude for live action and Ren and Stimpy and Rocko's Modern Life in animation. And as I mentioned, it was Disney Channel that practically invented the concept of "tween" in the first placewith their blatantly obvious Clarissa Explains it All ripoff except way more boring with Lizzie McGuire and later That's So Raven and The Suite Life of Zack and Cody.
But the tween and teen demos really blew up last decade, and we have the rest of media and the industry trying to inevitably play catch-up with Nickelodeon and especially Disney Channel to thank for that. Well, and Twilight and Hunger Games but not quite to the degree I think people give credit for (remember, I went to graduate school for this so I'm an expert!) Those books gave greater attention to an already defined demo and showed that it wasn't all just what had been narrowly defined up to that point (although ironically coming to dominate so thoroughly it merely changed what that narrow definition was instead of expanding upon it) but from a wider cultural standpoint it really was Nickelodeon and Disney Channel that did the heavy lifting in the 2000s, and it just leaking more into the wider culture in the 2010s.
I guess this kinda contradicts my point about the 2010s being the most important decade in tween and teen entertainment, but there is a huge distinction between doing the heavy lifting and when the fruits of that heavy lifting actually bear out, especially when much of that fruit is just a lot of people playing catch-up or just trying to join in on the cashing in. Towards the very beginning of the 2010s (or the very end of the 2000s, when Twilight and Hunger Games came out) the young adult genre really exploded as a major, dominant genre - if not the major dominant book genre. YA/teen and tween movies weren't just a niche thing that existed or even pushed for but, again, was a pretty dominant genre filling the whole spectrum of budgets and studios aside from the absolute stratosphere a superhero or major franchise sci-fi movie dictates (and even then, you can argue the MCU Spider-Man movies are pretty dang YA-ish, to say nothing of Into the Spider-Verse. Hell you had what's basically a half-assed attempt at a YA Star Wars movie with Solo). You had everything from major studios to independents pumping out YA/teen movies - some being more successful than others (to put it one way, a whole bunch just come off like the directors and/or producers were listening to Nirvana desperately trying to recapture their own teen years way too hard, way too many times). And of course Nickelodeon and Disney Channel were at their height - sure, Hannah Montana hung up her mic for the last time and High School Musical may have been so 2000s but their influence was still a major presence through the 2010s.
And that is why, through volume and numbers if nothing else, the 2010s were the most important decade for teen and tween entertainment.
Other Thoughts
- I know I promised I'd talk about why stories matter and, umm...I definitely dropped the ball on that. I've just been watching a lot of Bojack Horseman (a lot of Bojack Horseman) and I'm just struck by what Princess Caroline says about people being just a collection of stories, or something more. But moreover, I think stories are important for conveying and capturing something that's hard to do in a single sentence, paragraph, or even entire conversation, and the show itself does a great job doing that.
And umm...I've got nothing beyond that. Which is why it's just being shoved into a paragraph in what's essentially the afterthought section.
- speaking of which, Bojack Horseman is pretty freakin' incredible and probably the best show on Netflix period so far. I'll be writing a review of it soon but...it's not exactly perfect either God I hate Todd but it's absolutely fantastic in the exact messages and emotions it wants to convey.
- I've also been watching Insatiable which got recently canceled and...Good God this might be the worst show on Netflix so far. Ugh. Just...wall-to-wall awful. Considering this and Sing It! I just really don't think Debby has what it takes to stay on television post-Jessie, sorry.
This wasn't exactly the "first post of the decade" that I really had in mind. Really, I just wanted to continue with evaluating the shows of the past decade (which if I really wanted to get off my ass would've been done before the year was over) but Mike is actually working on the 2011-14 section and, spoiler alert, what he's done is brilliant and I really want him to finish up with that because he's really spot-on with that. I've also wanted to move into more Netflix reviews, since Netflix is (was?) a hotbed of tween/teen entertainment right now, not to mention Insatiable and (me completely dead set on binging) Bojack Horseman, but I didn't just want to open up a whole new decade on just another review, especially since we just got done closing out arguably the most important decade in all of human history as far as tween and teen entertainment is concerned.
Then again since I had intended to finish my lookback at the 2010s last year I guess I really don't know what kind of post I had been intending in the first place. I guess I'll go with yet another post on why this type of storytelling matters, and a general look at least as far as why the last decade wasn't just so important but the most important (beyond just television, since the lookback series is covering that in more detail).
But as to why this particular decade is the most important...let's look back at the very beginning of tween/teen entertainment....
...which is more recent than you think.
The concept of tweens/teens didn't even exist until last century at the latest, and really "tween" as a concept wasn't invented until this one, more as a response to describe just what the hell Disney Channel and Nickelodeon were marketing in the first place, incidentally. The concept of a "teenager" really grew out of a rapidly growing middle class at the beginning of the 20th century and even then, really referred to a particularly privileged type of teenager (the concept of a middle class itself was pretty brand-new and...it's hard to really define within strictly the cultural context of that particular time period and divorced from its context now. Basically, it meant your kids were actually going to school instead of demonstrating why this era also gave birth to child labor laws). Many of the things we associate as being teen and even tween entertainment - fairy tales; Dickens, Twain, Alcott and the Bronte sisters; hell even cartoons - were strictly for adults up to that time. Hell literacy among the adult population was still in at best a plurality, let alone for teens. The "Downton Abbey era" was the first where you actually did have books published specifically for teens and tweens and...well, it's more of a fucked-up era than you realize because these books were the direct immediate ancestor for the "Tijuana Bibles" of the 20s and 30s (yes the back-then equivalent of 50 Shades of Grey actually was one of the first books intended specifically for tweens. We're very literally talking about tween smut here. True story, folks). Needless to say these operations tended to be quite underground.
And tween and teen entertainment would for the large part continue to be underground and...shockingly smutty...until the late 30s and really the end of WWII. Sure, you did have a few books written for literate (and highly privileged) teens, and yes you had children's books, but for the most part entertainment and culture as a whole existed almost exclusively in an adult world. Between child and adult, again that really wasn't a concept. Television made for an explosion of children's programming (which was still live-action - cartoons at best or worst depending on how you look at it were still about a 50/50 split adult/kid) but still, nothing tween or teen-specific. Yes, you still had adult-specific shows - I don't think The Honeymooners can really be called "family entertainment" under any real context regardless what decade it is and I think we've all seen Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble hock cigarettes by now. Really at best you had "family shows" that tweens and teens can watch along with the rest of the family.
You really have to go all the way to the 1980s to find teens (or tweens, although they really weren't marketed to as such) as an actual demo, and even then it would be a pretty slow trickle for years. In the 60s you started to have some entertainment marketed towards teens including a few books (well, one book - The Outsiders - and arguably to the close of that decade S.E. Hinton would be one of the few authors writing to teens, with her mixing it up with a good number of very much adult-demo books in the process - and really not until the mid 70s with Robert Cormier's The Chocolate War which, trust me, is way way more cynical than The Outsiders) and especially movies (Bonnie and Clyde being almost the ur-example with "New Hollywood," up to and very much including everything pre-Star Wars George Lucas did, especially American Graffiti which if anything one-upped The Outsiders).
But nope, other than that not really anything. Aside from movies which, again, really were the vanguard of defining teens as a demo on their own - The Outsiders and The Chocolate War being adapted into movies, The Wave on TV and really an entire artistic movement, that aforementioned "New Hollywood" which again includes at least very early George Lucas. But most books were, well...pretty kiddie, to put it one way, and TV was dominated by family sitcoms and dramas outside of Saturday morning and afterschool. Even The Wonder Years...well, that was as much feeding off adult nostalgia as it was appealing to viewers the actual age of the characters (trust me I know a thing or two about adult nostalgia). In 1985 racist homophobic asshole Orson Scott Card (yes I will keep referring to him quite specifically as this until something comes along to show me he's changed) came out with Ender's Game - today it would be so totally a YA novel and even its movie adaptation(s) have been marketed as such, but back then it was just another pulp sci-fi book.
And then Britney and N*SYNC happened.
Really, even moreso than movies, it was the music industry that was rapidly defining the teen marketing demo. Families were now giving their children, particularly tweens and teens, enough allowance to let them make regular purchases, or even just giving into their purchasing demands outright. Now all of a sudden kids 11-17 were a group that was worth bothering to market too. And I'd be remiss to forget video games, which largely pushed tweens and teens as a demo for boys.
But I'd be equally remiss in not mentioning Nickelodeon's and Disney Channel's direct role in all this. After all, Nickelodeon started pushing kids TV "upmarket" back in the 90s and even 80s with Clarissa Explains it All, Salute Your Shorts and Hey Dude for live action and Ren and Stimpy and Rocko's Modern Life in animation. And as I mentioned, it was Disney Channel that practically invented the concept of "tween" in the first place
But the tween and teen demos really blew up last decade, and we have the rest of media and the industry trying to inevitably play catch-up with Nickelodeon and especially Disney Channel to thank for that. Well, and Twilight and Hunger Games but not quite to the degree I think people give credit for (remember, I went to graduate school for this so I'm an expert!) Those books gave greater attention to an already defined demo and showed that it wasn't all just what had been narrowly defined up to that point (although ironically coming to dominate so thoroughly it merely changed what that narrow definition was instead of expanding upon it) but from a wider cultural standpoint it really was Nickelodeon and Disney Channel that did the heavy lifting in the 2000s, and it just leaking more into the wider culture in the 2010s.
I guess this kinda contradicts my point about the 2010s being the most important decade in tween and teen entertainment, but there is a huge distinction between doing the heavy lifting and when the fruits of that heavy lifting actually bear out, especially when much of that fruit is just a lot of people playing catch-up or just trying to join in on the cashing in. Towards the very beginning of the 2010s (or the very end of the 2000s, when Twilight and Hunger Games came out) the young adult genre really exploded as a major, dominant genre - if not the major dominant book genre. YA/teen and tween movies weren't just a niche thing that existed or even pushed for but, again, was a pretty dominant genre filling the whole spectrum of budgets and studios aside from the absolute stratosphere a superhero or major franchise sci-fi movie dictates (and even then, you can argue the MCU Spider-Man movies are pretty dang YA-ish, to say nothing of Into the Spider-Verse. Hell you had what's basically a half-assed attempt at a YA Star Wars movie with Solo). You had everything from major studios to independents pumping out YA/teen movies - some being more successful than others (to put it one way, a whole bunch just come off like the directors and/or producers were listening to Nirvana desperately trying to recapture their own teen years way too hard, way too many times). And of course Nickelodeon and Disney Channel were at their height - sure, Hannah Montana hung up her mic for the last time and High School Musical may have been so 2000s but their influence was still a major presence through the 2010s.
And that is why, through volume and numbers if nothing else, the 2010s were the most important decade for teen and tween entertainment.
Other Thoughts
- I know I promised I'd talk about why stories matter and, umm...I definitely dropped the ball on that. I've just been watching a lot of Bojack Horseman (a lot of Bojack Horseman) and I'm just struck by what Princess Caroline says about people being just a collection of stories, or something more. But moreover, I think stories are important for conveying and capturing something that's hard to do in a single sentence, paragraph, or even entire conversation, and the show itself does a great job doing that.
And umm...I've got nothing beyond that. Which is why it's just being shoved into a paragraph in what's essentially the afterthought section.
- speaking of which, Bojack Horseman is pretty freakin' incredible and probably the best show on Netflix period so far. I'll be writing a review of it soon but...it's not exactly perfect either God I hate Todd but it's absolutely fantastic in the exact messages and emotions it wants to convey.
- I've also been watching Insatiable which got recently canceled and...Good God this might be the worst show on Netflix so far. Ugh. Just...wall-to-wall awful. Considering this and Sing It! I just really don't think Debby has what it takes to stay on television post-Jessie, sorry.
Wednesday, November 20, 2019
Shows of the decade: 2009-2011 (the peak)
So it’s that time where we don’t just reflect on the fact that it’s near the end of the year but that it’s 2019 which means next year three whole digits on the calendar change and people reflect their best of decade lists, even though the decade technically ends after 11:59 pm Dec 31 2020 so....
Also this is my first long post on phone, it’s the only practical way I’m gonna have the time and energy to do this anymore. But some features are gonna be limited because Blogspot/Blogger is hot garbage (like this weird bug that, if you try to apply text edits or formatting it defaults to the freakin' title bar) so...so now the like three of you know....
I’m starting the “decade” by rolling it back to 2009 since that’s a pretty important year for both networks (if you check out NickAndMore on Twitter - which I hope you do - the Google search metrics suggest 2009-2011 was the peak for both networks). This was also a good three years before I actually started watching either network so this is going to entirely be second hand info, or shows I watched as reruns after-the-fact (with the exceptions of shows still premiering when I watched of course, , but even those episodes were different from the first seasons for a few technical and creative reasons). Speaking of which, a big technical reason was HD - 2009 was when both networks more or less totally switched to 1080p.
But 2009-2011 was a huge watershed period for both networks - but let’s talk about what shows had been running up to that point first.
Disney Channel and Nickelodeon shows were very different, true, but I think more similar than people might realize. Phil of the Future, That’s So Raven and Cory in the House, along with Drake and Josh and Amanda Show has already left being solidly on the Dubya era, as great as most those shows still are today. Hannah Montana, Suite Life on Deck, Wizards of Waverly Place, and iCarly were such long-runners they started well in the era prior to HD and the latter two would even extend beyond the era covered here, albeit just barely.
I don’t think it’s easy to overstate how immensely important these shows were to the networks or even tween pop culture in general at the time, and to their credit I think few people do. But it’s important to realize how these shows changed, and how the shows that came after differed (and how those shows were influenced by newer shows of this era) but how they’re still influential today, maybe even more so.
But the fact is, these shows were solidly in the tween demo, smack dab in middle school. In fact I don’t think Hannah Montana and SLoD made any effort to grow from there at all - but we’re jumping ahead a bit. I’m not saying a 7th grade tweener show can’t be great - I’m literally talking about some now - but they’re very hard to take seriously from a “this culturally matters” standpoint. They were culturally *relevant* but relevance is fleeting. To *matter* is to be enduring, and endearing.
And HM can’t help but come off as cynical towards its tweener demo. Very much after school special plotlines, very white bread lessons on schoolyard crushes that deep down the afflicted lovers know has the permanence of a gnat - I’m sorry but while I do find the show legitimately entertaining and even good, I can’t blame people for giving this show such a cynically harsh reputation as it has. Likewise JONAS which was more or less a single cam gender swap version but...again a little ahead of ourselves.
And SLoD was...well.... It’s early episodes carried over a charm that ZaC had, particularly Monster Mash(?) and International Date Line are ones that stick out. But in the final season they went all A.N.T.Farm and doubled down on tweener lowest common denominator humor.
WoWP and iCarly on the other hand grew with their audiences and screwed real street cred in the process. I’m not saying actual *teen* shows had it any easier getting “does this culturally matter” recognition, but these two shows made it seem like it. I mean, Emma Stone at the height of Emma Stone. Just showing up randomly more or less just to claim she’s on iCarly. And just to be clear this wasn’t a stunt *Emma Stone legit just wanted to be on iCarly.* And Shakira on WoWP, along with Jeff Garlin (including not just with Shakira but as it turns out actually as Shakira), Rob Reiner, I want to say Dwayne Johnson maybe? All of this from a show apparently on the bubble right after its first season and derided as just cashing in on Harry Potter mania.
Because both those shows bothered to grow, in more ways than one. They transitioned from mid tweener at best to late tweener/early high school and even into teens and saw major success and are fondly remembered to this day a decade later. And this would be hugely influential on shows just coming out this period and into the next, although I don’t know if you can really say which had influence over what.
But it was clear Disney Channel and Nickelodeon were gonna go upmarket and up-age.
For Disney Channel it was hedging bets to still have massive middle tweener appeal and split the difference with more overall family appeal too. Sonny With a Chance (the network’s first multi cam show to be shot and aired in HD from the first episode) was still very much a tweener show at heart and because of circumstance didn’t get an opportunity to grow. Shake it Up likewise - but it *did* have a Chance (that’s intentional capitalization because I’m calling back to Sonny...oh nevermind). Plus it’s very premise - not so much the song and dance but the two stars as friends, and the diverse, hip ensemble built around them even up to Caroline “wtf that’s actually her name/wtf she actually works for Trump now” Sunshine - has massive growth potential in terms of demo age. But also not without controversy - even from Demi Lovato who had just barely left the network at that point.
Good Luck Charlie would have no trouble avoiding that controversy, practically by design. An immensely charming and endearing show, it remains to this day one of my most favorite shows period, and even most important. Arguably more of a throwback to the family programs that defined ABC’s TGIF block and Wednesday night in the 90s, the show had solid writing to appeal to all ages and compared to practically all else was well-grounded almost to the point of, again, charm. GLC was a celebration of family and just being a normal teenage girl - a multi cam Lizzie McGuire almost a decade later, or an updated Disney Channel Clarissa Knows Best some two decades later. It was almost groundbreaking for how relatable it was - and while it doesn’t have the diversity sensibilities of today it still stands true (and while we do have similar shows with better representation we’re still lacking that age and maturity Bridgit Mendler brought to her role, exuding not only that relatability but that whole, I’m Really A Cool Girl vibe - but we’re jumping *way* ahead into the decade now with Sydney to the Max and a return to going “young-market”).
Nickelodeon, on the other hand, wasn’t going to waste time with super-broad appeal. They dominated in the two decades prior by being super focused towards boys - but moreover by appealing to their inflated sense of maturity - and at the start of the 2010s they were determined to repeat history with being the go-to network for older tween and teen girls with iCarly’s Dan Schneider showing the way.
Dan Schneider - for all his faults, and not the least of which the allegations against him, something that as my long time readers (all three of you) know I insist on making a big deal of - well, you have to say, he had an insanely uncanny knack of understanding cool at this time. I mean, he outright *mastered* it. iCarly was leading the way after all - but it paled in comparison to the distaff counterpart to his own Drake and Josh, Zoey 101. Now mostly remembered for controversies specific to Jamie Lynn Spears which today are painfully unfair and unwarranted, this was Nickelodeon’s perfect answer to Good Luck Charlie even before Good Luck Charlie. Removing the parents entirely, the show concentrated on “relatability through coolness.” Zoey was relatable because despite being forced to endure through such antics not so much zany as outright insane, and even being socially disadvantaged, Zoey managed to do so while being just so damn cool.
Schneider doubled down on this with his next show as Zoey 101 bowed out near the beginning of this era, with what could arguably be considered his crown jewel - a show with its title stylized as VicTORious. Practically a John Hughes flick perfectly updated for 2010 as a multi cam comedy on basic cable, the show utterly oozed cool. Tori Vega is probably one of the most relatable characters in the history of either network for the same reasons Zoey had been, but supercharged - the plots were zanier and sometimes the whole world was against her, and rarely did she ever totally win, but even drenched in rain, trapped in a parade float or dragged by dogs she and her diverse entourage of friends always came off as the coolest teens on the planet. Schneider just got it.
Not just Schneider, it turns out. True Jackson, VP (a show I just literally started watching) - the show that launched Keke Palmer’s career - also exuded and oozed cool effortlessly. Effectively a mini-me-ized version of the late 90s/early 2000s solidly adult sitcom Just Shoot Me (incidentally a fave of mine back in the day - man I’m old) but with a diverse cast of teens, it leveraged its actors and setting to make the world seem much, much cooler than it actually is.
And of course you can't forget about animation - although Phineas and Ferb (premiered back in 2007) and SpongeBob Squarepants (which dates back to the prior millennium) had dominated Disney Channel and Nickelodeon, respectively, as far as animation goes - something that P&F would continue to do so well beyond this era and SpongeBob...well, quite possibly forever, practically. That said I cannot underemphasize their impact on both networks or the wider pop culture - there's a reason why SpongeBob has lasted so long, with at least three theatrical movies and a freakin' musical. And Phineas and Ferb ended up being a big reason why I even ended up watching either network in the first place, so I owe it quite a hefty piece of personal nostalgia. We also can't forget Nickelodeon's Avatar: The Last Airbender - arguably something that should've been more influential than it already had been. Unfortunately I ended up missing The Last Airbender boat - but don't worry, I'll have more things to say in the next era to be covered.
When examining the shows from Disney Channel and Nickelodeon from this era, there’s a lot to consider - especially since this is arguably the most influential era of either network’s entire histories, or at least in relevance to today’s live-action programming. Hannah Montana has raw popularity to be a cultural force, WoWP, SiU and GLC carried a lot of force deep into the decade and iCarly showed that these networks can be cool even to an older demo - much, much older in fact - and again we can't forget the raw popularity and brilliance of Phineas and Ferb and, yes, SpongeBob (and at least for cartoons P&F far away takes my vote for this era)...but if we’re determining the greatest of this era, and possibly the whole decade, I think it’s going to have to be VicTORious. Being a sort of middle child, and by the end of its run being seen as something of an already bygone era with some behind the scenes issues that have only now come to light, it wasn’t as influential as iCarly or the shows at the crosstown rival, but to this day it still feels the coolest, the freshest and even the most relatable. A very close second, and taking first for Disney Channel is Good Luck Charlie, but I can’t understate how huge almost any of these shows were back then - or even today.
Next time we’ll look at 2011-2014 and both networks’ extended foray into an expanded, older demographic (while still being tween-friendly, if not relapsing into focus) with A.N.T. Farm, JESSIE, Austin & Ally, Dog With a Blog, and Liv and Maddie on Disney Channel and, let's face it, the network's first real serious cartoon of the decade, Gravity Falls. And on Nickelodeon we'll be looking at the short-lived School of Rock, Sam & Cat...well, 2011-2014 ended up being a very rocky period for Nickelodeon for reasons arguably largely self-inflicted (if you're wondering why people had a problem with Cyma...). As well as their few standout huge successes, namely TMNT, Korra, Big Time Rush...umm, that's pretty much it. And we'll be looking at DisneyXD for the first time with Kickin' It, Pair of Kings and Lab Rats.
Also this is my first long post on phone, it’s the only practical way I’m gonna have the time and energy to do this anymore. But some features are gonna be limited because Blogspot/Blogger is hot garbage (like this weird bug that, if you try to apply text edits or formatting it defaults to the freakin' title bar) so...so now the like three of you know....
I’m starting the “decade” by rolling it back to 2009 since that’s a pretty important year for both networks (if you check out NickAndMore on Twitter - which I hope you do - the Google search metrics suggest 2009-2011 was the peak for both networks). This was also a good three years before I actually started watching either network so this is going to entirely be second hand info, or shows I watched as reruns after-the-fact (with the exceptions of shows still premiering when I watched of course, , but even those episodes were different from the first seasons for a few technical and creative reasons). Speaking of which, a big technical reason was HD - 2009 was when both networks more or less totally switched to 1080p.
But 2009-2011 was a huge watershed period for both networks - but let’s talk about what shows had been running up to that point first.
Disney Channel and Nickelodeon shows were very different, true, but I think more similar than people might realize. Phil of the Future, That’s So Raven and Cory in the House, along with Drake and Josh and Amanda Show has already left being solidly on the Dubya era, as great as most those shows still are today. Hannah Montana, Suite Life on Deck, Wizards of Waverly Place, and iCarly were such long-runners they started well in the era prior to HD and the latter two would even extend beyond the era covered here, albeit just barely.
I don’t think it’s easy to overstate how immensely important these shows were to the networks or even tween pop culture in general at the time, and to their credit I think few people do. But it’s important to realize how these shows changed, and how the shows that came after differed (and how those shows were influenced by newer shows of this era) but how they’re still influential today, maybe even more so.
But the fact is, these shows were solidly in the tween demo, smack dab in middle school. In fact I don’t think Hannah Montana and SLoD made any effort to grow from there at all - but we’re jumping ahead a bit. I’m not saying a 7th grade tweener show can’t be great - I’m literally talking about some now - but they’re very hard to take seriously from a “this culturally matters” standpoint. They were culturally *relevant* but relevance is fleeting. To *matter* is to be enduring, and endearing.
And HM can’t help but come off as cynical towards its tweener demo. Very much after school special plotlines, very white bread lessons on schoolyard crushes that deep down the afflicted lovers know has the permanence of a gnat - I’m sorry but while I do find the show legitimately entertaining and even good, I can’t blame people for giving this show such a cynically harsh reputation as it has. Likewise JONAS which was more or less a single cam gender swap version but...again a little ahead of ourselves.
And SLoD was...well.... It’s early episodes carried over a charm that ZaC had, particularly Monster Mash(?) and International Date Line are ones that stick out. But in the final season they went all A.N.T.Farm and doubled down on tweener lowest common denominator humor.
WoWP and iCarly on the other hand grew with their audiences and screwed real street cred in the process. I’m not saying actual *teen* shows had it any easier getting “does this culturally matter” recognition, but these two shows made it seem like it. I mean, Emma Stone at the height of Emma Stone. Just showing up randomly more or less just to claim she’s on iCarly. And just to be clear this wasn’t a stunt *Emma Stone legit just wanted to be on iCarly.* And Shakira on WoWP, along with Jeff Garlin (including not just with Shakira but as it turns out actually as Shakira), Rob Reiner, I want to say Dwayne Johnson maybe? All of this from a show apparently on the bubble right after its first season and derided as just cashing in on Harry Potter mania.
Because both those shows bothered to grow, in more ways than one. They transitioned from mid tweener at best to late tweener/early high school and even into teens and saw major success and are fondly remembered to this day a decade later. And this would be hugely influential on shows just coming out this period and into the next, although I don’t know if you can really say which had influence over what.
But it was clear Disney Channel and Nickelodeon were gonna go upmarket and up-age.
For Disney Channel it was hedging bets to still have massive middle tweener appeal and split the difference with more overall family appeal too. Sonny With a Chance (the network’s first multi cam show to be shot and aired in HD from the first episode) was still very much a tweener show at heart and because of circumstance didn’t get an opportunity to grow. Shake it Up likewise - but it *did* have a Chance (that’s intentional capitalization because I’m calling back to Sonny...oh nevermind). Plus it’s very premise - not so much the song and dance but the two stars as friends, and the diverse, hip ensemble built around them even up to Caroline “wtf that’s actually her name/wtf she actually works for Trump now” Sunshine - has massive growth potential in terms of demo age. But also not without controversy - even from Demi Lovato who had just barely left the network at that point.
Good Luck Charlie would have no trouble avoiding that controversy, practically by design. An immensely charming and endearing show, it remains to this day one of my most favorite shows period, and even most important. Arguably more of a throwback to the family programs that defined ABC’s TGIF block and Wednesday night in the 90s, the show had solid writing to appeal to all ages and compared to practically all else was well-grounded almost to the point of, again, charm. GLC was a celebration of family and just being a normal teenage girl - a multi cam Lizzie McGuire almost a decade later, or an updated Disney Channel Clarissa Knows Best some two decades later. It was almost groundbreaking for how relatable it was - and while it doesn’t have the diversity sensibilities of today it still stands true (and while we do have similar shows with better representation we’re still lacking that age and maturity Bridgit Mendler brought to her role, exuding not only that relatability but that whole, I’m Really A Cool Girl vibe - but we’re jumping *way* ahead into the decade now with Sydney to the Max and a return to going “young-market”).
Nickelodeon, on the other hand, wasn’t going to waste time with super-broad appeal. They dominated in the two decades prior by being super focused towards boys - but moreover by appealing to their inflated sense of maturity - and at the start of the 2010s they were determined to repeat history with being the go-to network for older tween and teen girls with iCarly’s Dan Schneider showing the way.
Dan Schneider - for all his faults, and not the least of which the allegations against him, something that as my long time readers (all three of you) know I insist on making a big deal of - well, you have to say, he had an insanely uncanny knack of understanding cool at this time. I mean, he outright *mastered* it. iCarly was leading the way after all - but it paled in comparison to the distaff counterpart to his own Drake and Josh, Zoey 101. Now mostly remembered for controversies specific to Jamie Lynn Spears which today are painfully unfair and unwarranted, this was Nickelodeon’s perfect answer to Good Luck Charlie even before Good Luck Charlie. Removing the parents entirely, the show concentrated on “relatability through coolness.” Zoey was relatable because despite being forced to endure through such antics not so much zany as outright insane, and even being socially disadvantaged, Zoey managed to do so while being just so damn cool.
Schneider doubled down on this with his next show as Zoey 101 bowed out near the beginning of this era, with what could arguably be considered his crown jewel - a show with its title stylized as VicTORious. Practically a John Hughes flick perfectly updated for 2010 as a multi cam comedy on basic cable, the show utterly oozed cool. Tori Vega is probably one of the most relatable characters in the history of either network for the same reasons Zoey had been, but supercharged - the plots were zanier and sometimes the whole world was against her, and rarely did she ever totally win, but even drenched in rain, trapped in a parade float or dragged by dogs she and her diverse entourage of friends always came off as the coolest teens on the planet. Schneider just got it.
Not just Schneider, it turns out. True Jackson, VP (a show I just literally started watching) - the show that launched Keke Palmer’s career - also exuded and oozed cool effortlessly. Effectively a mini-me-ized version of the late 90s/early 2000s solidly adult sitcom Just Shoot Me (incidentally a fave of mine back in the day - man I’m old) but with a diverse cast of teens, it leveraged its actors and setting to make the world seem much, much cooler than it actually is.
And of course you can't forget about animation - although Phineas and Ferb (premiered back in 2007) and SpongeBob Squarepants (which dates back to the prior millennium) had dominated Disney Channel and Nickelodeon, respectively, as far as animation goes - something that P&F would continue to do so well beyond this era and SpongeBob...well, quite possibly forever, practically. That said I cannot underemphasize their impact on both networks or the wider pop culture - there's a reason why SpongeBob has lasted so long, with at least three theatrical movies and a freakin' musical. And Phineas and Ferb ended up being a big reason why I even ended up watching either network in the first place, so I owe it quite a hefty piece of personal nostalgia. We also can't forget Nickelodeon's Avatar: The Last Airbender - arguably something that should've been more influential than it already had been. Unfortunately I ended up missing The Last Airbender boat - but don't worry, I'll have more things to say in the next era to be covered.
When examining the shows from Disney Channel and Nickelodeon from this era, there’s a lot to consider - especially since this is arguably the most influential era of either network’s entire histories, or at least in relevance to today’s live-action programming. Hannah Montana has raw popularity to be a cultural force, WoWP, SiU and GLC carried a lot of force deep into the decade and iCarly showed that these networks can be cool even to an older demo - much, much older in fact - and again we can't forget the raw popularity and brilliance of Phineas and Ferb and, yes, SpongeBob (and at least for cartoons P&F far away takes my vote for this era)...but if we’re determining the greatest of this era, and possibly the whole decade, I think it’s going to have to be VicTORious. Being a sort of middle child, and by the end of its run being seen as something of an already bygone era with some behind the scenes issues that have only now come to light, it wasn’t as influential as iCarly or the shows at the crosstown rival, but to this day it still feels the coolest, the freshest and even the most relatable. A very close second, and taking first for Disney Channel is Good Luck Charlie, but I can’t understate how huge almost any of these shows were back then - or even today.
Next time we’ll look at 2011-2014 and both networks’ extended foray into an expanded, older demographic (while still being tween-friendly, if not relapsing into focus) with A.N.T. Farm, JESSIE, Austin & Ally, Dog With a Blog, and Liv and Maddie on Disney Channel and, let's face it, the network's first real serious cartoon of the decade, Gravity Falls. And on Nickelodeon we'll be looking at the short-lived School of Rock, Sam & Cat...well, 2011-2014 ended up being a very rocky period for Nickelodeon for reasons arguably largely self-inflicted (if you're wondering why people had a problem with Cyma...). As well as their few standout huge successes, namely TMNT, Korra, Big Time Rush...umm, that's pretty much it. And we'll be looking at DisneyXD for the first time with Kickin' It, Pair of Kings and Lab Rats.
Sunday, October 6, 2019
All-In-One Roundup of Disappointing Shows Too Disappointing for Me to Watch (Big City Greens; Pup Academy; Hunter Street S3; the literal entirety of whatever Marvel shows they're showing on Disney XD but Spider-Man especially; Finding Dory)
In lieu of pulling a quote from any episode of any of these shows/movies, I think it'd be more appropriate and illustrative if I leave a certain image here instead....
It's mid-late evening in early October, on a Sunday no less; I am cold, I am bored, Disney Channel is showing endless reruns, I have a huge migraine and in a misguided effort to self-cure said migraine, I am drunk.
So it's time to do a mass run-down of shows I find disappointing!
Big City Greens
What is it? The most obnoxious show on mainline Disney Channel right now. Pretty much their version of Spongebob
Where did it air? Umm...Disney Channel.
Who stars in it? Some voice actors? I dunno I have a headache and I am drunk.
Why are we reviewing this? I dunno, I have a headache and I am drunk.
So Spongey444, the man behind the excellent blog (except when he reviews Big City Greens), apparently likes this show.
After what has to be well into its second season now...yeah I've come to the conclusion that I can't stand it.
People Watching is the only episode of the entire series I like, probably because it speaks directly to my writing instincts. Other than that...it's about a insufferable brat and some periphery of his other family (who also have a tendency to act like brats, adults included if not especially), and that's it, as far as I'm concerned.
When I say that this is Disney Channel's Spongebob, I really mean it. For starters it totally dominates the schedule; you turn on your TV, especially during daytime hours and there's a damn good chance Disney Channel will have BCG. But it also seems to have basically the same style of humor. I can't really get into Spongebob - more than anything I honestly find it extremely boring. And honestly, all the brattiness of the main characters aside, I also find BCG to be...fundamentally boring.
Yet at the same time this show is clearly popular, and there's no doubt about Spongebob's popularity. It has a Broadway musical show, for crying out loud, something I actually want to see (and just a bit of trivia, it has Thunderman's Mrs. Wong as...is it Karen? Eh I don't remember which character she plays whatever. But I feel Karen is a damn good guess. She just strikes me as the type of person you'd cast as Karen if you're gonna cast her in a Spongebob musical). But...I just can't get into it.
That isn't to say there aren't episodes I don't like. I actually really liked the Spongebob anniversary special, at least the parts above water (the party planning parts felt unnecessary and tacked on just to make the episode an extended special). In fact there's a ton of episodes I like. I don't think I watched a boat driving episode with Mrs. Pufferfish I didn't like, that's when the show shows its strengths. And Mr. Krabs-centric episodes, probably because IRL my personality has a dangerously close resemblance to Mr. Krabs (greed is a hellava sin, yo). But say...6 times out of 10, I just find myself being bored and really regretting, at the very least, not watching another network.
Fortunately for Nickelodeon, chances are Disney Channel's counter-programming is probably BCG which if you don't get it by now, I think is even worse. It's going to boil down to a personal taste thing, and clearly I am in an extreme minority here - and because of that it's hard for me to quantify any objective reasons why I don't like it - but I'm just going to have to say, I don't like it. 9 times out of 10, if I do have it on, it's just to act as background noise when I'm doing something and I just don't want a completely quiet house, and at least I can rely on Disney Channel to be inoffensive as background noise, BCG included (and during the hours when I want this, it's almost always a toss-up between this and Spongebob, and BCG usually wins if only because, only being in its second season, it does come off as fresher).
Series Grade: C-. Keep in mind this is extremely subjective and, very clearly, I'm in a slim minority here.
Series MVP: *shrug* I dunno, I don't care. H Jon Benjamin, because H Jon Benjamin (and I'm claiming this as legitimate because I swear he's in the Cricket Calls shorts, uncredited.
BTW I actually love the Cricket Calls shorts. Go figure).
Hunter Street
What is it? Single-Cam 24-minute format KidCom with some drama trappings, produced as English-language programming with largely native English speakers (either American or British, for the most part) but by a Dutch studio, on location in the Netherlands. Go figure.
Where did it air? Haha, that's actually the interesting part. But the simple answer is Nickelodeon (the Dutch studio that produces it in the first place literally is Nickelodeon Netherlands). But although it was originally scheduled to air on mainline Nickelodeon...it got booted to TeenNick (which is available in HD in select parts of Burbank near where most Nickelodeon's live-action shows are produced and...absolutely nowhere else) even before the scheduled season premiere (which means for 99.98% of all viewers it's possible to view it in HD only through Nickelodeon's super-annoying app).
And after going through this experience, I can see why.
Who stars in it? Although most of the actors are actually American citizens with a few select British ones (like Jake's actor, most notably)...well let's face it you're not going to get many recognizable names in a production like this, even by typical Nickelodeon/Disney Channel KidCom standards.S3
So yeah. Hunter Street wasn't exactly perfect to begin with but at least it was passable entertainment. I gave S1 a C+. S2 was...worse in some areas, but better than others (the addition of Jake was a pretty good plus, he's a legit good actor), evening out to the same C+ score.
S3 was...a great big A.N.T. Farm S3/Jessie S4-style crash straight into the ground leaving nothing recognizable but a giant smoking impact crater.
It starts off agonizingly slow, with the Hunters stuck in a B&B in the middle of the forest for way, way too many episodes (it's not even haunted, despite how much the show wants to fake out how it is). Way too many of these episodes are too focused on the Hunters going around in circles over the same damn clues culminating into far too few mysteries. And an ending way too freakin' pat and predictable, to the point where I haven't even seen the last two or three episodes and guess what, I'm not ever bother going to.
See above image for reference. Except instead of just not understanding WTF is going on...there's nothing going on.
As I understand it it was basically down to whether or not to renew this show or I Am Frankie for S3 - it was an either-or choice as mandated by the parent network, much like what happened pretty much exactly 6 years ago between The Thundermans and The Haunted Hathaways. And unlike that time - after seeing some S2 Hathaways episodes and...yeah I think they made the right call choosing Thundermans, they so didn't make the right call this time. I Am Frankie will be sorely missed and this was a stinker of a season.
Season Grade: A flat D. I'm pretty much obliged to give this grade if I can't even finish out the freakin' season.
Season MVP: ...so this is going to be very awkward and controversial, especially since the vast, vast majority of my professional writing outside of this blog is very specifically and explicitly pro-feminist and pro-#MeToo. Hell I go out of my way to incorporate pro-feminist and pro-#MeToo material on this freakin' blog, all the time, and not the least of which using this very blog as a means of publicly coming out as transgender.
...and yet that said I use the Episode MVP award all the time to give it to actresses for no other reason than I just find them extremely pretty. Usually because, honestly, there's nothing provided in the actual acting, or at least overall quality, of the show to award it legitimately. But I'm forced to recognize that awarding Episode MVP on the basis of who happens to be the hottest...isn't exactly the most feminist.
On the other hand I have met people who have told me that there's nothing wrong with awarding MVP along these lines. That, yes, acknowledging a woman's beauty can be feminist. I just wish I had a definitive answer or - let's face it, what I'm really looking for is a means to rationalize objectifying women while still claiming some (false) legitimacy to a feminist card. But I'd really like to know what my readership thinks.
You know, all three of you.
But anyway, Season MVP goes to Sarah Nauta (Jasmyn) because (and you can see this coming from all my rambling) OMG she's freakin' gorgeous.
She is by far the best looking of the main cast across any of the seasons. Although I might be biased because she really does look like a girl I had a major crush on back in high school (you know, because I didn't make this creepy enough as it is). Also she's 21, so yeah, legitimately, no pedo (ewww, just saying that gives me the creeps though.
And yet, I still did it.)
Honestly some mention of MVP should go to Wilson Radjou-Puljante since I think he's the most legitimately talented, or at least I enjoyed his screen presence the most (aside from creepy eye-candy factor). But it seemed like the show went out of its way to boot him off which...is definitely contributing to its D score.
Also I want to mention Thirsa van Til (Rex Legend's assistant) because...yeah she's also super-pretty. And the makeup artist that did Erik's makeup (in-show, so an actual actress not literally a makeup artist although for all I know she's the show's actual makeup artist, she didn't have any speaking lines) because she's even prettier than Sarah and Thirsa. Combined, even.
And the really pretty redhead that got beat up by Frankie, Andrew and what's her face at the very last episode of I Am Frankie because she's really pretty, and also she got beat up by three androids so I have to show some props or appreciation for putting up with that. And I miss I Am Frankie. And cute redheads.
Yeah that's enough creepiness perviness for this writeup.
Pup Academy
What is it? 24-minute live-action single-cam kidcom. With talking animals. Yup, it can only be from Air Bud productions!
Where did it air? Disney Channel
Who stars in it? Ummm, a bunch of talking dogs? Oh and some humans too. But seriously I don't know who and I'm too lazy to look it up.
This...is just too damn kiddie for me. Hard pass.
Series Grade: C-
Series MVP: Meh
Finding Dory
What is it? It's...Finding Dory, I'm pretty sure you know the particulars of this one.
...you know what, I'm just going to say it got hit with massive sequelitis.
Movie Grade: eh
It's mid-late evening in early October, on a Sunday no less; I am cold, I am bored, Disney Channel is showing endless reruns, I have a huge migraine and in a misguided effort to self-cure said migraine, I am drunk.
So it's time to do a mass run-down of shows I find disappointing!
Big City Greens
What is it? The most obnoxious show on mainline Disney Channel right now. Pretty much their version of Spongebob
Where did it air? Umm...Disney Channel.
Who stars in it? Some voice actors? I dunno I have a headache and I am drunk.
Why are we reviewing this? I dunno, I have a headache and I am drunk.
So Spongey444, the man behind the excellent blog (except when he reviews Big City Greens), apparently likes this show.
After what has to be well into its second season now...yeah I've come to the conclusion that I can't stand it.
People Watching is the only episode of the entire series I like, probably because it speaks directly to my writing instincts. Other than that...it's about a insufferable brat and some periphery of his other family (who also have a tendency to act like brats, adults included if not especially), and that's it, as far as I'm concerned.
When I say that this is Disney Channel's Spongebob, I really mean it. For starters it totally dominates the schedule; you turn on your TV, especially during daytime hours and there's a damn good chance Disney Channel will have BCG. But it also seems to have basically the same style of humor. I can't really get into Spongebob - more than anything I honestly find it extremely boring. And honestly, all the brattiness of the main characters aside, I also find BCG to be...fundamentally boring.
Yet at the same time this show is clearly popular, and there's no doubt about Spongebob's popularity. It has a Broadway musical show, for crying out loud, something I actually want to see (and just a bit of trivia, it has Thunderman's Mrs. Wong as...is it Karen? Eh I don't remember which character she plays whatever. But I feel Karen is a damn good guess. She just strikes me as the type of person you'd cast as Karen if you're gonna cast her in a Spongebob musical). But...I just can't get into it.
That isn't to say there aren't episodes I don't like. I actually really liked the Spongebob anniversary special, at least the parts above water (the party planning parts felt unnecessary and tacked on just to make the episode an extended special). In fact there's a ton of episodes I like. I don't think I watched a boat driving episode with Mrs. Pufferfish I didn't like, that's when the show shows its strengths. And Mr. Krabs-centric episodes, probably because IRL my personality has a dangerously close resemblance to Mr. Krabs (greed is a hellava sin, yo). But say...6 times out of 10, I just find myself being bored and really regretting, at the very least, not watching another network.
Fortunately for Nickelodeon, chances are Disney Channel's counter-programming is probably BCG which if you don't get it by now, I think is even worse. It's going to boil down to a personal taste thing, and clearly I am in an extreme minority here - and because of that it's hard for me to quantify any objective reasons why I don't like it - but I'm just going to have to say, I don't like it. 9 times out of 10, if I do have it on, it's just to act as background noise when I'm doing something and I just don't want a completely quiet house, and at least I can rely on Disney Channel to be inoffensive as background noise, BCG included (and during the hours when I want this, it's almost always a toss-up between this and Spongebob, and BCG usually wins if only because, only being in its second season, it does come off as fresher).
Series Grade: C-. Keep in mind this is extremely subjective and, very clearly, I'm in a slim minority here.
Series MVP: *shrug* I dunno, I don't care. H Jon Benjamin, because H Jon Benjamin (and I'm claiming this as legitimate because I swear he's in the Cricket Calls shorts, uncredited.
BTW I actually love the Cricket Calls shorts. Go figure).
Hunter Street
What is it? Single-Cam 24-minute format KidCom with some drama trappings, produced as English-language programming with largely native English speakers (either American or British, for the most part) but by a Dutch studio, on location in the Netherlands. Go figure.
Where did it air? Haha, that's actually the interesting part. But the simple answer is Nickelodeon (the Dutch studio that produces it in the first place literally is Nickelodeon Netherlands). But although it was originally scheduled to air on mainline Nickelodeon...it got booted to TeenNick (which is available in HD in select parts of Burbank near where most Nickelodeon's live-action shows are produced and...absolutely nowhere else) even before the scheduled season premiere (which means for 99.98% of all viewers it's possible to view it in HD only through Nickelodeon's super-annoying app).
And after going through this experience, I can see why.
Who stars in it? Although most of the actors are actually American citizens with a few select British ones (like Jake's actor, most notably)...well let's face it you're not going to get many recognizable names in a production like this, even by typical Nickelodeon/Disney Channel KidCom standards.S3
So yeah. Hunter Street wasn't exactly perfect to begin with but at least it was passable entertainment. I gave S1 a C+. S2 was...worse in some areas, but better than others (the addition of Jake was a pretty good plus, he's a legit good actor), evening out to the same C+ score.
S3 was...a great big A.N.T. Farm S3/Jessie S4-style crash straight into the ground leaving nothing recognizable but a giant smoking impact crater.
It starts off agonizingly slow, with the Hunters stuck in a B&B in the middle of the forest for way, way too many episodes (it's not even haunted, despite how much the show wants to fake out how it is). Way too many of these episodes are too focused on the Hunters going around in circles over the same damn clues culminating into far too few mysteries. And an ending way too freakin' pat and predictable, to the point where I haven't even seen the last two or three episodes and guess what, I'm not ever bother going to.
See above image for reference. Except instead of just not understanding WTF is going on...there's nothing going on.
As I understand it it was basically down to whether or not to renew this show or I Am Frankie for S3 - it was an either-or choice as mandated by the parent network, much like what happened pretty much exactly 6 years ago between The Thundermans and The Haunted Hathaways. And unlike that time - after seeing some S2 Hathaways episodes and...yeah I think they made the right call choosing Thundermans, they so didn't make the right call this time. I Am Frankie will be sorely missed and this was a stinker of a season.
Season Grade: A flat D. I'm pretty much obliged to give this grade if I can't even finish out the freakin' season.
Season MVP: ...so this is going to be very awkward and controversial, especially since the vast, vast majority of my professional writing outside of this blog is very specifically and explicitly pro-feminist and pro-#MeToo. Hell I go out of my way to incorporate pro-feminist and pro-#MeToo material on this freakin' blog, all the time, and not the least of which using this very blog as a means of publicly coming out as transgender.
...and yet that said I use the Episode MVP award all the time to give it to actresses for no other reason than I just find them extremely pretty. Usually because, honestly, there's nothing provided in the actual acting, or at least overall quality, of the show to award it legitimately. But I'm forced to recognize that awarding Episode MVP on the basis of who happens to be the hottest...isn't exactly the most feminist.
On the other hand I have met people who have told me that there's nothing wrong with awarding MVP along these lines. That, yes, acknowledging a woman's beauty can be feminist. I just wish I had a definitive answer or - let's face it, what I'm really looking for is a means to rationalize objectifying women while still claiming some (false) legitimacy to a feminist card. But I'd really like to know what my readership thinks.
You know, all three of you.
But anyway, Season MVP goes to Sarah Nauta (Jasmyn) because (and you can see this coming from all my rambling) OMG she's freakin' gorgeous.
She is by far the best looking of the main cast across any of the seasons. Although I might be biased because she really does look like a girl I had a major crush on back in high school (you know, because I didn't make this creepy enough as it is). Also she's 21, so yeah, legitimately, no pedo (ewww, just saying that gives me the creeps though.
And yet, I still did it.)
Honestly some mention of MVP should go to Wilson Radjou-Puljante since I think he's the most legitimately talented, or at least I enjoyed his screen presence the most (aside from creepy eye-candy factor). But it seemed like the show went out of its way to boot him off which...is definitely contributing to its D score.
Also I want to mention Thirsa van Til (Rex Legend's assistant) because...yeah she's also super-pretty. And the makeup artist that did Erik's makeup (in-show, so an actual actress not literally a makeup artist although for all I know she's the show's actual makeup artist, she didn't have any speaking lines) because she's even prettier than Sarah and Thirsa. Combined, even.
And the really pretty redhead that got beat up by Frankie, Andrew and what's her face at the very last episode of I Am Frankie because she's really pretty, and also she got beat up by three androids so I have to show some props or appreciation for putting up with that. And I miss I Am Frankie. And cute redheads.
Yeah that's enough creepiness perviness for this writeup.
Pup Academy
What is it? 24-minute live-action single-cam kidcom. With talking animals. Yup, it can only be from Air Bud productions!
Where did it air? Disney Channel
Who stars in it? Ummm, a bunch of talking dogs? Oh and some humans too. But seriously I don't know who and I'm too lazy to look it up.
This...is just too damn kiddie for me. Hard pass.
Series Grade: C-
Series MVP: Meh
Finding Dory
What is it? It's...Finding Dory, I'm pretty sure you know the particulars of this one.
...you know what, I'm just going to say it got hit with massive sequelitis.
Movie Grade: eh
Monday, September 30, 2019
Just another random essay post that I can't think of a good title for
Anyway, this is meant to be a post on Jessie's 8 year premiere anniversary (today, September 30). I was going to say some things about the show but...eh, my last post ended up stealing that thunder, oops.
But my point still stands that Jessie...sure as hell experienced some deevolution there. I've been watching the show just on Disney Channel (they...sure love their Jessie over there) and let me tell you, the difference between a good episode and a bad episode is night and day. I just wish Christian and Sean had watched a good episode, although I insist they did.
But let's look at 2013 compared to now. I won't run down every show because I've done that so many times in the past. I just want to run down some of the big tentpoles that were my favorites - of course Jessie, but Shake it Up, Austin & Ally, Good Luck Charlie and the big newcomer of that year, Liv and Maddie.
Not all these shows had the same quality of writing - yeah we won't talk about Austin & Ally. But there was a real sense of a continuing storyline with a bunch of people that really felt interconnected with each other - not necessarily as a family but at least close to it.
Sydney to the Max and to a lesser extent Coop & Cami (yes I watch that show now) do a good job of this. Just Roll With It...well it makes attempts (which are surprisingly successful) but at least it works with its premise well. Hell even Bunk'd is...a great improvement over what it was.
And then we have Raven's Home. The more I think about it, to get into that really deserves its own post. Really I have no idea what I'm doing with this one and...yeah I'm calling it a night.
But my point still stands that Jessie...sure as hell experienced some deevolution there. I've been watching the show just on Disney Channel (they...sure love their Jessie over there) and let me tell you, the difference between a good episode and a bad episode is night and day. I just wish Christian and Sean had watched a good episode, although I insist they did.
But let's look at 2013 compared to now. I won't run down every show because I've done that so many times in the past. I just want to run down some of the big tentpoles that were my favorites - of course Jessie, but Shake it Up, Austin & Ally, Good Luck Charlie and the big newcomer of that year, Liv and Maddie.
Not all these shows had the same quality of writing - yeah we won't talk about Austin & Ally. But there was a real sense of a continuing storyline with a bunch of people that really felt interconnected with each other - not necessarily as a family but at least close to it.
Sydney to the Max and to a lesser extent Coop & Cami (yes I watch that show now) do a good job of this. Just Roll With It...well it makes attempts (which are surprisingly successful) but at least it works with its premise well. Hell even Bunk'd is...a great improvement over what it was.
And then we have Raven's Home. The more I think about it, to get into that really deserves its own post. Really I have no idea what I'm doing with this one and...yeah I'm calling it a night.
Saturday, September 14, 2019
Saturday September 14 2013 - Saturday September 14 2019: Reflecting on six years
...well ok not exactly six years but it is when I technically started a blog. Namely, this one. But I feel it's an important anniversary for this blog (i.e. the one you're reading now) all the same.
For starters September 14, 2013 is the day after the premiere of G.I. Jessie which of course was the 2nd season finale of Jessie. We've done a review of that here - and umm, literally the exact same review again here (the biggest post of the year by far - and very close to being this blog's last at the time) but I also feel that was a pretty big watershed moment for myself and really, this whole KidCom deal. Not a sudden one mind you but it was a start.
As I mentioned in the aforementioned review I'm not entirely sure which season of Jessie was best: S1 or S2. S2 definitely had a tonal shift, simultaneously (and yes, contradictory) dramatic and subtle - but a big part of being both of those at the same time was that it wasn't exactly sudden.
Well, not entirely so. S1 was definitely more "grounded" like a normal(-ish) Disney Channel KidCom of the time, or at least compared to say Good Luck Charlie (and of course Liv and Maddie but we're not quite there yet, timeline-wise). But even quite a few other shows at the time with high-concept plots like say Shake it Up and even to a lesser extent Wizards of Waverly Place had a relatively "grounded" feel. Or to put it another way: it was more character-driven than plot driven. Actions (and consequences, a really big driver with KidComs) felt more driven by the actual characters and their naturalistic actions and motivations rather than to merely serve as vehicles to move the plot forward (as in say Austin & Ally and A.N.T. Farm, although A.N.T. Farm certainly had extremely character-driven episodes, to its credit. And so did Austin & Ally too, to that show's credit). I've had discussions with some of you on Twitter about this, especially around Tuber and Maile and how they were major drivers behind the scenes with S1.
S2...for the most part...was still very character-driven with, for the most part, actions and consequences in turn feeling character-driven. But that tonal shift was readily apparent with The Whining (which for some reason is the highest-rated episode on IMDB? Seriously, WTF?) where it's pretty clear that, instead of having the characters influence and drive the plot and from there, the consequences, the characters were instead effectively hijacked by the plot in order to force them along a predetermined path, and the consequences instead coming off more like the tacked-on conclusion paragraph of a 7th grade essay about how rising gas prices affect fossil emissions. In other words...it's not so much that the writers had an idea of what the ending was going to be as so much as what the actual character consequences are, and just basically wrote the rest of the episode around that.
This is pretty much how they wrote those cheesy, awful, morals-based after-school specials back in the 80s. It's writing down to your audience and while even I'll admit Jessie wasn't exactly the greatest Disney Channel KidCom ever, it certainly suffered moreso for it.
I think that's why I'm not exactly fond of Trashin' Fashion and Lizard Scales and Wrestling Tales either. In the former the A-plot was absolutely ruled by arriving at a pre-determined set of consequences, and in the latter, both plots were. And it's especially noticeable when both episodes are ostensibly extremely character-focused episodes on Emma and Luke respectively, with ostensibly big character development.
...but the writers of those particular episodes don't know how to write character-focused episodes. Or at the very least, they've confused pre-arranged consequences for actual character development.
In a lot of ways Gotcha Day - the episode that got me into this show (and at least in some part the network as a whole) is like this too - but going back watching the show, the characters actually feel more naturally-motivated. And as much as Christian and Sean over at Girl Meets World Reviewed hated Green-Eyed Monsters, that was absolutely, entirely an episode where the characters actually felt naturally self-motivated instead of being intellectually stuck on rails forced into a predetermined conclusion.
S2 would certainly see an uptick in this kind of episode - Pain in the Rear Window and Toy Con are ones that really stick in my mind especially since they were pretty close to each other in original premeire date. And of course I think this gets to Mike's points about G.I. Jessie. But S2 still had plenty of episodes that feel very character-natural including some of my most favorite episodes of the entire show - The Trouble With Tessie, Why Do Foils Fall in Love (really stupid title BTW but whatever) and Kids Don't Wanna Be Shunned (again, with the last two especially because they're so close in proximity to when they premiered) and Punch-Dumped Love despite it's incredibly stupid, inane B-plot. And of course the penultimate episode of S2, Break-Up and Shape Up which is still well-praised by the fans (at least according to my Twitter interactions) and makes for a much better finale than G.I. Jessie. But still, I think the actual character-focus vs. consequence-focus was still there.
Things started to fall apart at a slow pace still as S3 continued - Ghost Bummers, Caught Purple Handed, and so on (October and November and just the beginning of the season in general weren't good months for good Jessie episode premieres, it turned out) but you still had a ton of great actual character episodes like The Cheapskate, the Primate and the First Date being a good one in the October-November window. And Hoedown Showdown for a very Emma-focused one. And of course at the very end concluding with There Goes the Bride which makes a much better finale than Orray for Ollywood/Jessie Can't Make Up Her Mind For a Finale Title but unfortunately we still have a few episodes of S3 and a whole S4 to go. But the ratio of consequence-focused episodes was definitely creeping up - Morning Rush, Coffee Talk, Spaced Out (double points for being yet another dream fake-out) and so on.
And yeah, speaking of S4...that whole damn season was pretty much consequences-focused, from Africa is So Far...i! to Jessie Goes Submitting Multiple Episode Titles. The only episode I can think of that really even comes remotely close to feeling like a natural character episode is A Close Shave, then all the way near the end with Identity Theives, and more-or-less Dance, Dance Resolution which was a lot closer to Identity Thieves than A Close Shave, air-date wise.
But yeah, I just wanted to get that out for the six-year kindaversary so, there you go.
For starters September 14, 2013 is the day after the premiere of G.I. Jessie which of course was the 2nd season finale of Jessie. We've done a review of that here - and umm, literally the exact same review again here (the biggest post of the year by far - and very close to being this blog's last at the time) but I also feel that was a pretty big watershed moment for myself and really, this whole KidCom deal. Not a sudden one mind you but it was a start.
As I mentioned in the aforementioned review I'm not entirely sure which season of Jessie was best: S1 or S2. S2 definitely had a tonal shift, simultaneously (and yes, contradictory) dramatic and subtle - but a big part of being both of those at the same time was that it wasn't exactly sudden.
Well, not entirely so. S1 was definitely more "grounded" like a normal(-ish) Disney Channel KidCom of the time, or at least compared to say Good Luck Charlie (and of course Liv and Maddie but we're not quite there yet, timeline-wise). But even quite a few other shows at the time with high-concept plots like say Shake it Up and even to a lesser extent Wizards of Waverly Place had a relatively "grounded" feel. Or to put it another way: it was more character-driven than plot driven. Actions (and consequences, a really big driver with KidComs) felt more driven by the actual characters and their naturalistic actions and motivations rather than to merely serve as vehicles to move the plot forward (as in say Austin & Ally and A.N.T. Farm, although A.N.T. Farm certainly had extremely character-driven episodes, to its credit. And so did Austin & Ally too, to that show's credit). I've had discussions with some of you on Twitter about this, especially around Tuber and Maile and how they were major drivers behind the scenes with S1.
S2...for the most part...was still very character-driven with, for the most part, actions and consequences in turn feeling character-driven. But that tonal shift was readily apparent with The Whining (which for some reason is the highest-rated episode on IMDB? Seriously, WTF?) where it's pretty clear that, instead of having the characters influence and drive the plot and from there, the consequences, the characters were instead effectively hijacked by the plot in order to force them along a predetermined path, and the consequences instead coming off more like the tacked-on conclusion paragraph of a 7th grade essay about how rising gas prices affect fossil emissions. In other words...it's not so much that the writers had an idea of what the ending was going to be as so much as what the actual character consequences are, and just basically wrote the rest of the episode around that.
This is pretty much how they wrote those cheesy, awful, morals-based after-school specials back in the 80s. It's writing down to your audience and while even I'll admit Jessie wasn't exactly the greatest Disney Channel KidCom ever, it certainly suffered moreso for it.
I think that's why I'm not exactly fond of Trashin' Fashion and Lizard Scales and Wrestling Tales either. In the former the A-plot was absolutely ruled by arriving at a pre-determined set of consequences, and in the latter, both plots were. And it's especially noticeable when both episodes are ostensibly extremely character-focused episodes on Emma and Luke respectively, with ostensibly big character development.
...but the writers of those particular episodes don't know how to write character-focused episodes. Or at the very least, they've confused pre-arranged consequences for actual character development.
In a lot of ways Gotcha Day - the episode that got me into this show (and at least in some part the network as a whole) is like this too - but going back watching the show, the characters actually feel more naturally-motivated. And as much as Christian and Sean over at Girl Meets World Reviewed hated Green-Eyed Monsters, that was absolutely, entirely an episode where the characters actually felt naturally self-motivated instead of being intellectually stuck on rails forced into a predetermined conclusion.
S2 would certainly see an uptick in this kind of episode - Pain in the Rear Window and Toy Con are ones that really stick in my mind especially since they were pretty close to each other in original premeire date. And of course I think this gets to Mike's points about G.I. Jessie. But S2 still had plenty of episodes that feel very character-natural including some of my most favorite episodes of the entire show - The Trouble With Tessie, Why Do Foils Fall in Love (really stupid title BTW but whatever) and Kids Don't Wanna Be Shunned (again, with the last two especially because they're so close in proximity to when they premiered) and Punch-Dumped Love despite it's incredibly stupid, inane B-plot. And of course the penultimate episode of S2, Break-Up and Shape Up which is still well-praised by the fans (at least according to my Twitter interactions) and makes for a much better finale than G.I. Jessie. But still, I think the actual character-focus vs. consequence-focus was still there.
Things started to fall apart at a slow pace still as S3 continued - Ghost Bummers, Caught Purple Handed, and so on (October and November and just the beginning of the season in general weren't good months for good Jessie episode premieres, it turned out) but you still had a ton of great actual character episodes like The Cheapskate, the Primate and the First Date being a good one in the October-November window. And Hoedown Showdown for a very Emma-focused one. And of course at the very end concluding with There Goes the Bride which makes a much better finale than Orray for Ollywood/Jessie Can't Make Up Her Mind For a Finale Title but unfortunately we still have a few episodes of S3 and a whole S4 to go. But the ratio of consequence-focused episodes was definitely creeping up - Morning Rush, Coffee Talk, Spaced Out (double points for being yet another dream fake-out) and so on.
And yeah, speaking of S4...that whole damn season was pretty much consequences-focused, from Africa is So Far...i! to Jessie Goes Submitting Multiple Episode Titles. The only episode I can think of that really even comes remotely close to feeling like a natural character episode is A Close Shave, then all the way near the end with Identity Theives, and more-or-less Dance, Dance Resolution which was a lot closer to Identity Thieves than A Close Shave, air-date wise.
But yeah, I just wanted to get that out for the six-year kindaversary so, there you go.
Friday, September 13, 2019
Raven's Home Reviewed: Diss Track (S3E6)
Pump-FAKE!
...is that the only thing you say?
What is it? blah blah blah you know
...so after being so harsh on the last episode (and make no mistake: I absolutely stand by everything I said about it down to the...what did I give it? An F rating?) they went and threw in a pretty decent one.
Yeah. I actually really liked this. It had several points going for it:
- it was well-written
- Principal Kwan acted like an actual principal and not like a lunatic
- it had a good lesson behind it
- it had great interactions between the kids and they actually acted pretty natural (for a Disney multi-cam at least)
- Principal Kwan acted like an actual principal and not like a lunatic
- it had a pretty good and actually heartwarming resolution
- Principal Kwan acted like an actual principal and not like a lunatic
This is without a doubt the best episode of Season 3 so far and...really one of the best of the entire show. That said...the show's been rather lackluster so far. I hate to say it but I think Season 1 might be the best season of this show, where it occasionally got into I'd say B- territory. Season 2 was...alright in parts, especially the first arc of the season where Booker revealed he was psychic to Raven and he got introduced to the Sleevemore institute, but they definitely also did many creative decisions that sent the show into the wrong direction. And then Season 3...has been especially lackluster, feeling like a show from 15 years ago aimed at maybe 4th graders at best.
Episode Grade: B+
Episode MVP: Isaac Ryan Brown really does put the whole package together. There's serious talent in front of the camera (Raven-Symone proved that 15 years ago) it's just the talent behind the camera that's somewhat lacking.
Extra thoughts
- as of the time of this writing (9/13) it's the six year anniversary (meaning that 6 years ago 9/13 was also a Friday - lucky us I guess) of...when G.I Jessie aired. Whee!
- it also means that tomorrow is the 6 year anniversary of my blog. Well...not this blog, but this blog -> http://writingsofray.blogspot.com/
...is that the only thing you say?
What is it? blah blah blah you know
...so after being so harsh on the last episode (and make no mistake: I absolutely stand by everything I said about it down to the...what did I give it? An F rating?) they went and threw in a pretty decent one.
Yeah. I actually really liked this. It had several points going for it:
- it was well-written
- Principal Kwan acted like an actual principal and not like a lunatic
- it had a good lesson behind it
- it had great interactions between the kids and they actually acted pretty natural (for a Disney multi-cam at least)
- Principal Kwan acted like an actual principal and not like a lunatic
- it had a pretty good and actually heartwarming resolution
- Principal Kwan acted like an actual principal and not like a lunatic
This is without a doubt the best episode of Season 3 so far and...really one of the best of the entire show. That said...the show's been rather lackluster so far. I hate to say it but I think Season 1 might be the best season of this show, where it occasionally got into I'd say B- territory. Season 2 was...alright in parts, especially the first arc of the season where Booker revealed he was psychic to Raven and he got introduced to the Sleevemore institute, but they definitely also did many creative decisions that sent the show into the wrong direction. And then Season 3...has been especially lackluster, feeling like a show from 15 years ago aimed at maybe 4th graders at best.
Episode Grade: B+
Episode MVP: Isaac Ryan Brown really does put the whole package together. There's serious talent in front of the camera (Raven-Symone proved that 15 years ago) it's just the talent behind the camera that's somewhat lacking.
Extra thoughts
- as of the time of this writing (9/13) it's the six year anniversary (meaning that 6 years ago 9/13 was also a Friday - lucky us I guess) of...when G.I Jessie aired. Whee!
- it also means that tomorrow is the 6 year anniversary of my blog. Well...not this blog, but this blog -> http://writingsofray.blogspot.com/
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