Series description (from imdb): Star Falls follows teen Sophia who persuades a Hollywood star, Bo Brooks, and his family to live in her house while he shoots a movie in town, hoping that he’ll fall in love with her mom.

Episode description (from imdb): When Sophia rescues the dog of Hollywood star Craig Brooks, she seizes the opportunity to set her mother up with him; when that does not work, she takes things a step further and has the star and his three children move into her home.

Its nice to see Nick debut a show that does not involve magic, superheroes and special gifts and talents.  Star Falls does fall under the “fish out of water” genre.  The show has a pretty good pedigree – the writers and exec producers have worked on a variety of shows, including iCarly and the undervalued Max and Shred.  Its also nice to see Nickelodeon feature main characters who are of color.   Diversity has been sorely lacking on Nick as of late.

The show is beautifully shot.  I’m sure Star Falls is somewhere near Toronto but its nice to see a Nick show that gets out of the studio.

The premise is straight forward, even if we have seen it before.  Mega movie star, Craig Brooks, is filming for three months and brings his spoiled, Internet-famous daughter, philosophical son and scamp of a son to live with him.  Surprise, surprise, the town’s veterinarian (who’s animal rescue business is called Happy Tails) has seen every Craig Brooks movie.  Teenage daughter Sophie seeks to pair up her mom and Brooks.

Sophie, played by Siena Agudong, looks like Miranda Cosgrove.  She’s overly earnest and overly enthusiastic and has that quirky “I’ll say this, I’ll say that, I mean this, Did I mean that” way of acting.  It gets tiresome after a while.  That’s not to say she can’t act – she can – she just needs to tone it done a little.  And of course, she has a best buddy Nate, who fills the “I can’t believe she is doing that” role.

Brooks’s daughter Diamond is the stereotyped, spoiled, “I belong in LA” type; middle bro Phoenix walks around speaking philosophical truths and youngest brother Bo (did they run out of quirky names) is the typical troublemaker.

When the Brooks’ dog shows up at Happy Trails, Sophie sees this as a way to connect her mom and Craig.  It doesn’t exactly work; neither does trying to rent their house to the Brooks family (really?)  Sophie states her mom is her best friend and she wants her to be happy – and I believe that.  In the end, Sophie tries to make Diamond feel welcome in Star Falls by creating a mini LA.  Its cute and, all of sudden, everyone is happy to be there!  The show does smack of an Andi Mack rip-off though.  But I’m willing to give it a chance.

There’s a good premise here with solid acting and visuals.  And the potential for an interracial on a tween/teen show is interesting.  Lets hope Star Falls keeps rising.

From Wikipedia: The series features children contestants competing for cash prizes as they aim to keep themselves clean while they navigate and make their way around an obstacle course which is intentionally designed to get them messy.

Take Nickelodeon’s hallmark splat and messiness, add in a voiceover that sounds like the announcer on Minute to Win It, and you have Keep It Spotless.  I’d suggest a new title: Keep It Off the Air.

The show features two teams of tweens/teens, similar to Nick’s Paradise run, in which the teams mug it up for the cameras using phrases like “You’re going down,” “Let’s do it,” and “Which way to the gym (with accompanying arm flex).”  The odd thing about the show is there is no host.  Just the voiceover/announcer.  As a result, we just see teams in competition.  We never really get to know them; they don’t interact with the other team and they don’t interact with anyone else.

The episode I watched featured two competitions.  In the first one, teams had to push their partner on a cart, through a constant spray of “paint” so that the cart landed in the sweet zone – an area between a pre-established black line and the end of the course.  If they fell short, they went again; if they hit the end of the wall, they tried again.  After being successful, the two teammates went into a chamber, where they were scanned for messiness.  This percent was converted into a score.

The second challenge featured one teammate tossing paint filled balloons to their partner through a grid.  The partner had to catch the balloon and then break the ballon to fill up a container.  Whichever team filled the container the most apparently won.  Then it was back to the chamber to be scanned again.  The winning team then got to run an obstacle course to somehow win $10,000.  That’s a big chunk of change for a Nick show.  But by the time they got to the obstacle course, I could have cared less who won and if they won the 10k.

The show has zero rooting value and zero play along value – two key elements of a good game show.  The lack of host meant there was no one there to help create empathy and rooting value as well. I would have even taken that Paradise Run host here!  Its as if the higher ups at Nick said, “Lets come up with a game show where we squirt paint at people.”

Paramount has already rebooted Beat the Clock for kids.  So why not just reboot Double Dare or Figure It Out?  I see KIS going the same way as the short-lived Web Heads.  There are too many good game shows in the Nick stable for them to waste their time on this.