From Wikipedia: The series follows cheerleader Bella whose life in Texas takes an unexpected twist when she becomes the new quarterback for her school team, the Bulldogs. At first, the rest of the team didn’t want her as quarter back, but they eventually accept her.

One thing Nick specializes in is the “fish out of water/odd group of friends” tween series and they have another one right here for us.  I watched the episode “That’s Some Gossip, Girl.”  Get it?

The series is exec produced by Jeff Bushell and written by Gabriel Garza and Jonathan Butler, who are alums of the Nick Diversity Fellowship Program.  Yay to new writers and yay to diversity.

Series need room to grow, and in the same way I gave Henry Danger time to grow, I’m willing to give B&B time to grow.  Brec Bassinger is engaging as Bella and the rest of the cast seem pretty natural as middle-school students.  Handleson is a veteran of the not-so-successful Wendell and Vinnie.  Stewart starred on Are We There Yet?  The three cheerleaders seem new to sitcom-land.

I’ll give the show credit for presenting a middle school football team as a mostly scrawny bunch of goof-ups.  In the Gossip, Girl episode, the team is frazzled by “secrets” being leaked to news reporter Ace McFumbles (Rio Mangini from Kickin’ It).  Everyone suspects everyone else as the leak, and everyone accuses everyone else as being the leak.  While the leaks aren’t overly damning, for middle school students they would be.  In the end – SPOILER ALERT – Ace has been overhearing stuff from the locker room through the combined vent.  While the team suspects Bella is the leak, in the end, her vindication brings her closer to the team.

 

Air Date: January 24, 2015

A story: In order to attend a unsupervised party at the popular Winnie Lee’s house, Max and Phoebe turn Hank and Barb into teenager versions of themselves.

B story: Billy and Nora spend the night at Cousin Blobbin’s, who is trying to adopt a dog.

I’m a big fan of the Thundermans (science rules!), but this episode was just plain odd.  Max and Phoebe want to attend a party at the popular Winnie Lee’s house, but when Hank and Barb find out that there will be no parents at the party, they refuse to let the Thundertwins attend.  Apparently, Winnie Lee’s parties are the social events of the year.

Max and Phoebe reconfigure the BrainMelt 2000 and, after aiming it at Hank and Barb, the parents are reverted back to their teenage years.  Max and Phoebe escape to the party but are surprised that the party has been moved back to their house (question: how did Hank and Barb know Winnie’s phone #?)  Of course, teen Hank and teen Barb become uber-popular at the party, much to the chagrin of Max and Phoebe.  It was nice to see Cherry and Oyster make an appearance (who knew Cherry was popular!) but since it was a party for the popular people, no appearances by Evan, Sarah or Tyler.  Max and Phoebe bring things back to normal when they recreate the “electric moment” when Hank and Barb first kissed.

In the B story, Nora and Billy visit Cousin Blobbin for the night while he tries to adopt a dog.  There’s some mumbo-jumbo about eating spazzberries and an environment not appropriate for a dog.  Don’t you usually just head down to the pound and adopt a dog?

I’ll give the episode props for giving us more backstory on Hank and Barb.

Show Description:

The series follows K.C. Cooper, a high school math genius who gets recruited by her parents after she discovers that they are actually undercover spies. Each episode centers on the family as they contend with everyday familial issues – while also performing missions to save the country. (Source: wikipedia.org).

First, its nice to see Zendaya (formerly of Shake it Up) in a new role and in a new show.  And its nice to see Kadeem Hardison back on a TV series well.  Zendaya is engaging, funny, talented but I think she has the chops to do so much more.

The premise of the show is that K.C. becomes an undercover agent/spy after her parents (surprise, they aren’t just accountants, they are spies as well!) ask her to stop the jamming of cell phone transmissions at the school dance.

K.C., being a brainiac, math whiz and black belt in karate, would end up nowhere near a school dance.  After all, she gets tongue-tied talking to boys.  Fortunately, she has the standard-issue best friend/”wacky neighbor” in Marissa, who apparently gets in trouble a lot.  Throughout most of the show, K.C.’s brother Ernie is clueless (or left out) of the underlying spy story.  His parents don’t remember his birthday, his cell phone number or even picking him up from school.  This seems to me to be a stretch.

I’ll give the pilot credit for setting the stage for what is to come.  We find out how K.C. became a spy in the first place.  The acting is fine, the writing is ok, the sets look good.  Props for some really good stuntwork, something I’ve never seen on a Disney Channel Comedy before. I’m willing to see where this goes in the future, although I’m not sure it will be appointment TV for me.

Line of the episode: “I saw it on a celebrity dance show.” (K.C.; yes Zendaya was on Dancing with the Stars)

Story: Max is visited by the Ghosts of Christmas Past,  Present and  Future on Christmas Eve, in hopes of putting him in the holiday spirit.

Well, at least its not A Wonderful Theme, but the other standard A Christmas Carol variation. We quickly learn that the #1 rule of supervillians is to hate Christmas.  Max seems pretty evil in the opening of this episode.  Max often takes one step forward into goodness and then two steps backward.

Here’s the question though: Would Max really be that evil to Nora?  His evil-ness seems misplaced.  I could see him focusing that evil on Phoebe, but Nora, no.

Max is first visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past who notes: “All your lame ideas to ruin Christmas have failed.”  This sets up an interesting premise as I hope we are going to be getting some backstory here – and we are.

Christmas Past #1: as a baby, Max barfs on Barb, who thinks she has said her name.  Her conclusion – this is the best Christmas ever.

Christmas Past #2: the last Christmas in Metroburg.  Max gives coal to everyone (now that’s evil).  Hank takes all the coal and turns it into a huge diamond, which means Hank can now retire (I wonder how he gets paid to begin with) and the family can move to Hiddenville.

As “Phoeba” notes, “Killing the Christmas spirit will always turn your bad gifts into good gifts.”

Note of hilarity: Watch Jack Griffo play the nerdy supervillian.

Christmas present soon arrives (Max: Let’s wrap this up.)  Max gives Nora an empty box (again, I doubt he’d be this cruel to Nora).  We also learn Max’s full name: Maximus Octavius Thunderman.

Max decides to ruin everyone’s Christmas.

Christmas future arrives next.  We get some good throwbacks to previous episodes.  We had the “future pump” and Max’s line: “I’m going to mind text you LOL.”

What interesting here is the role Billy assumes after the family goes bad.  He has control of the lair and hangs with Dr. Colosso/Max because “her has no one else to hang out with.”  Nice parallel to Max and Dr. Colosso’s existing relationship.

When Max sees that future Nora still forgives him for ruining their family (she even gives Doll Max her last bow), he decides to bring Christmas back.  We do get the Christmas Carol line: “Sorry, Max Thunderman, it’s too late.”

In the end, Christmas is back, but Nora still receives an empty box (nice connection to the previous Christmas present scene).  But there’s a note inside – “Look outside, love Max.” Outside its snowing.  And as Max tells Phoebe, “It is so bad being good once a year.”

Overall, I enjoyed the episode – we got some nice back story and we got some more humanizing of Max.

Story: When the twins’ sibling rivalry peaks during holiday festivities, Logan wishes that he never had a sister.  An angel grants his wish and he experiences life without Lindy.

Prediction: Everyone will be the opposite as they usually are.

I’ll give the writers credit for a cute title.

Lindy and Logan remind me of Oscar and Felix of The Odd Couple.  They are true opposites.  At the beginning of the episode, Lindy is in prime do-gooder mode.  Logan’s mad because Lindy ratted him out about putting a skateboard in the wall – as such, no ski trip for him (oddly enough, no one else seems to be going on the ski trip).

I like the writing on I Didn’t Do It.  It’s very play-on-word-y.  For example, the invites to Lindy’s Christmas Open House are called “Lind-evites.”

The first act gives us a review of each characters strengths and foibles.  Delia is unique; Jasmine is interested in a bad boy; Garrett is a germophobe.  Long term watchers of the show already know this.

Lindy completely takes over the holidays with her bossiness and controlling nature.  Then Logan utters those magic words: “I wish I didn’t have a sister.”  Thanks to Angel from Guardian Plumbing (get it?), Logan experiences life sans Lindy.

Here comes the opposites:

• Delia is now a cheerleader.
• Jasmine is a bad girl.
• Garrett is just weird.

Surprise, surprise: Lindy had a positive effect on all of them.  Surprise, surprise #2: Lindy had the biggest effect on Logan.  Surprise, surprise #3: Logan wants Lindy back (but he must recreate the exact scenario to get her back.

Question: Where’d Logan find the ugly Christmas sweater is Lindy wasn’t part of his family?

Line of the episode: Buy one, get one tree.

Overall, I’d have hoped the writers created something more unique.

 

Now that the holiday season has come and gone, it’s time to take a look back at some of the Christmas/holiday episodes of some of my favorite shows.  More often than not, they take on a similar storyline to It’s a Wonderful Life.

Here’s how things go:

• Character A has a long-standing relationship of animosity with Character B.
• Character A wishes Character B never existed.
• Through some magic, Character A sees his/her life without Character B.
• Character A realizes how much Character B means to him/her.

The problem with these episodes is that they often do not move story forward.  By the following episode, the animosity has returned.

I’ll be doing three reviews:

• I Didn’t Do It
• The Thundermans
• Girl Meets World

I give credit to GMW for some inventive storytelling that gives us some deeper understanding of the current slate of characters (except for poor Lucas).  The Thundermans gave us some key back story in their Christmas episode while I Didn’t Do It went for the standard “characters acting opposite as they usually do” route.