Premise: When two best friends are zapped with their friend’s laser, they gain the ability to time travel.

Pedigree: A single-camera sitcom developed for Disney Channel, created by Jed Elinoff and Scott Thomas and executive produced by Jed Elinoff, Scott Thomas and Michael Kaplan. The series stars Lauren Taylor as Shelby and Landry Bender (formerly of Disney XD’s Crash and Bernsterin) as Cyd. (wikipedia.org)

Yes, its another trip to the “special powers well” for Disney.  For every I Didn’t Do It and Jessie, there’s a Lab Rats, Dog with a Blog  or Mighty Med.  BFW comes across as a teen version of Groundhog Day.

Props for another sitcom set in Portland, Oregon.

You can check off all of the usual teen sitcom characters here:

• Shelby and Cyd,  “Felix and Oscar” type best friends who demonstrate “opposites attract.”
• Barry, the scientist-y best friend.  Don’t all of our friends have their own lab in an RV
• Naldo, Barry’s wacky friend (and 1/3 of Forever in Your Mind, who sing the theme song)
• Marci, Shelby and Cyd’s other friend who is just, well, weird
• Brett and Chet, Shelby’s twin brothers who have an obvious crush on Cyd, and who come across as two low rate Gibbys from iCarly.

The first episode is pretty standard issue Disney Channel fare with the standard Disney Channel theme about the importance of friendship.  Shelby is seeking a super-fun dance proposal with Cameron (played by Emery Kelly, another 1/3 of Forever in Your Mind).  Naturally, proposal #1 is a failure, and Shelby and Cyd soon discover that they have the power to travel back in time to try the dance-posal again.  (Where’s Bill Murray when you need him!)

After dance-posal #2 is a failure (when Cameron ends up asking Cyd), Shelby and Cyd jump to the future, only to find that dance-posal #2 ruined their friendship.  Understanding the importance of their friendship, Shelby and Cyd realize that it is their differences that make their friendship special.  They travel back to the present, where in an ironic twist, Marci ends up the beneficiary of the dance-posal.

Here’s the key question tho: We can fix everything that went wrong.  If you had the power to do this, would you?  But its fun to imagine.

# of best friend pair screams: 3

Line of the episode: “I can’t tell if you’re kidding or phlegmatic.”

A couple of thoughts:

• Why not have Shelby and Cyd be the scientists?
• In the future scene, wouldn’t Barry and Naldo look older?

Overall, I think BFW has potential, but its not there yet.  We’ll see what the future brings…