From the world of Dan Schneider:

The series revolves around two girls named Babe (Cree Cicchino) and Kenzie (Madisyn Shipman) who start a multi-million-dollar gaming company and take on rap superstar Double G (Kel Mitchell) as their business partner. (Source: Wikipedia)

Dan Schneider has an awesome pedigree: All That, Kenan and Kel, Drake & Josh, Victorious and my personal favorite, iCarly.  They are all iconic Nick shows, and iconic shows in general.  Schneider understands the pre-teen and teen mind and weaves reasonably believable story lines that often feature winks at the adult audience.  Big fan here for sure.  Schneider has also been very savvy in incorporating emerging media into his shows.

Sadly, though, I don’t think Game Shakers lives us to our expectations.  I applaud any show that shows both teen/tween empowerment as well as girl power.  Here we have two girls who develop their own App/game Sky Whale for their science class (which features the weirdest name textbook – Life Sciences & Technology).  Soon enough the game is the #1 game in the country (or the world) but our fearless duo have forgotten to get permission to use Double G’s song “Drop That What” (which is actually a pretty catchy song).  As such, it is soon determined that Babe and Kenzie owe Double G $1.2 million.  I’m not sure why Double G’s lawyer didn’t send a cease and desist order.

Of course, Babe and Kenzie have spent all of their money on their new Game Shakers building/company in Brooklyn so when Double G shows up asking for his money, they have none.  Can we see the partnership angle coming about a mile away?  The girls offer Double G’s son Trip (Benjamin Flores Jr from Haunted Hathaways) a job so he can stay in NYC.  Also working at Game Shakers is the girls’ friend Hudson, who fills the role of the “clueless friend.”  Hudson also nervously giggles at everything.  I’d pay someone a million dollars to have a show without the clueless friend as a character.

Overall, the acting is the standard-issue teen acting mode – overact, yell your lines, etc. We again get the Felix/Oscar oddball combination of best friends. But its good to see Kel Mitchell back on TV (he had a guest shot in The Thundermans last season).  His posse seems rather stereotypical but the man can sing and act.  We’ve seen Kardeem Hardison come back so why not Kel?  Schneider best get Kenan for a guest appearance!

Some nitpicks:

• Did we need Glozell as a guest star?
• No restaurant in NYC would survive over a subway tunnel nor do any restaurants I’ve been in shake like that when a subway train goes by … many, many feet below ground.
•  Amazing they could get that business up and running in such a short period of time.

Some pluses:

• I like attention to detail.  The signs in the subway car were legit MTA subway signs.
• Finally, a TV show classroom with a smartboard!
• And they got the physics correct. The equation for kinetic energy on the classroom wall correct – and in the correct form as Ek – not KE.  As a science teacher, that makes me happy!
• Great sets filled with odd furniture and stuff.

I’m going to give Game Shakers time to grow but right now, there’s nothing earth shaking about Game Shakers.