Date of airing: January 19, 2001 (Disney Channel)
Okay, maybe the C-movie-like 1990s look and the style won’t go away and will always be part and the defining charm of LIZZIE McGUIRE, while the entirety of the show will also be full of cheap, yet youthful inner voice monologues and weekend-morning-cartoon-style sound effects, including zooming in and out of an image like a ten-year-old boy was behind the camera and figured he is going to be the best music video director of all time. Maybe the show should have thought a little harder about removing those annoying sound effects though, as it doesn’t suit the show well when it has to include angry cat sounds during the confrontational scene between Miranda and Kate Sanders, essentially serving all those who like to dip their head into the treasure box of television tropes and outdated TV depictions.
This episode was actually better in establishing who the audience of the show is, and that adults won’t be able to find a liking for it, but here I am, a thirtysomething who liked Hilary Duff during his teenage years, watching Disney Channel kids shows because Disney+ exists (although I watched Disney Channel shows before the studio brought its streaming network into the world), because when my computer screen is actually off and I start listening to podcasts, the world happens to be quite horrendous and dangerous. I don’t know if I will ever get to like LIZZIE McGUIRE as a whole if the look and style of the show remain like this for the entirety of it.
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| Lizzie is an artwork all to herself. |
Also, I hope the characters will move on to high school quickly because middle school doesn’t do it for me if you aren’t going to focus on lesson plans like GIRL MEETS WORLD did, which was essentially the best TV show about middle school that has ever been in existence (forget the third season that has the characters in high school). At least this episode went into some real middle school experiences and how it was defining one’s life during the early teen years. Even I can remember picture day and having to choose what to wear, and I made a dumb decision of what to wear (a shirt with a stupid fat-shaming joke printed on it), so I can get a feeling of where Lizzie was coming from and why she needed to find another sweater to wear, before always having to think back to the moment she decided to wear something craptastic, feeling the humiliation over and over. And over. And over. Oh, you think you finally got over that humiliation? Think again!
Unfortunately for the show right now, its three-story structure makes things a little less interesting for me. Granted, Matt’s efforts to stay out of school by faking an illness and then getting sick for real were solid, albeit predictably done, but the way the writers decided to go with the middle school picture day story had me scratching my forehead for a few seconds here and there. I got the feeling there was a much bigger premise behind Miranda wearing the same outfit as Kate does during picture day, which essentially means warfare in middle school, but the writers decided not to go down that route at all and just focus on Lizzie’s efforts to find another sweater or blouse. The episode could have shown that LIZZIE McGUIRE wasn’t just about the titular character all the time, but that she is part of her friends’ lives as well, and that sometimes it’s them who need her help, not the other way around. And honestly, all I wanted to see was how Kate and Miranda would be battling it out (preferably without the cat noises) or for Lizzie to get out of her egotism for a minute and help Miranda as the best friend she claims to be.
At least the picture day story also showed that the writers really want to branch out to other characters and not just have the stories told through Lizzie’s eyes. The best example would be Gordo’s little plot of being told to be smug in the picture and failing to do so since Gordo is a nice kid. Oh Gordo, you won’t have an easy life in middle school without being a smug kid.
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| Gordo can only think about the one thing. |
Meanwhile, I laughed about the MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE animations during the “climax” of the episode. First of all, the producers knew that no child watching this show would get the reference, right? Was the homage to De Palma’s 1996 movie an element for the adults that happened to be watching? Because really, LIZZIE McGUIRE doesn’t have anything for the mature audience, and as a thirtysomething, you will be unable to find something funny about the show. But here was a sequence that copied the Langley breaking-in scene from MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE and I have no clue why this scene would be here other than guaranteeing the mature viewers that yes, something will be available for them, too. And what will the grown-up children say when they watch the 1996 MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE for the first time, see the CIA vault break-in scene and scream that LIZZIE McGUIRE did it first?
