Date of airing: January 12, 2001 (Disney Channel)
Nielsen ratings information: 1.32 million viewers with Kids 6-11, 0.961 million viewers with Tweens 9-14, 1.42 million viewers with Kids 2-11
After having gone through a handful of Disney Channel family sitcoms in my life, it was only a question of time until I would begin my next comedy show targeted at kids and their parents, because for some reason, I seem to have found a pang of hunger for it the same way I have for qwhite crappy Hallmark Christmas movies every November and December. With Disney+ having found life in November of 2019, giving me an early Christmas present almost three years ago, I decided that it was the perfect time to get into the earlier work of Hilary Duff before she became of notice to me after I watched her Disney Channel Original Movie CADET KELLY on German television sometime in the early to mid-2000s. So here I am, finally diving into the show I want to tackle from beginning to end, watching its first episode that was actually not the first episode produced. And thank the heavens it’s just a comedy and not a straightforward sitcom, because comedies happen to be a bit more interesting and don’t have to play for audience laughs. Maybe it’s because of the technical nature of single-camera comedies, making things look more interesting and better than multi-camera sitcoms, which mostly rely on still and calm camera setups (as in, the cameras barely move because their positions are somewhat fixed). Maybe it’s because single-camera comedies don’t necessarily look like theater productions – multi-camera sitcoms sometimes take me out for this exact reason.
The “first” episode of LIZZIE McGUIRE was not particularly to my taste. I don’t know if the show has not been passing the test of time lately or if the acting was really that wooden and childlike, and the episode had something sleepy about it while the execution of the story made it feel like this episode came straight from a FOX direct-to-VHS kids film from 1991, shot with only $100k available to the producers to fill a two-hour TV block with. I guess I shouldn’t be blaming the production values of the show, with this being Disney Channel’s first true network hit that gave the network a chance to finally compete with Nickelodeon back in the day, but this being Disney, it was kind of fascinating to see that LIZZIE McGUIRE, which celebrated adulthood at the time of Disney+ became available (and was then being given as a present a revival show on Disney+, before things got a little out of hand between creator and studio behind the scenes), looks like it really is twice its age.
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| This is what bullying in school looked like in 2000. |
While that brought down the episode and bored me a little bit, it could also be fascinating in the long run to see how the show developed both in its writing and visuals, and how that development could tell you something about the rise of Disney Channel as a basic cable network. With the early 1990s feel of LIZZIE McGUIRE, one could confuse this comedy as a trial-and-tribulations teenage comedy from way before the millennium, and give you a sense of what childhood looked and felt like before the world came crashing down on you (thanks to real-world nightmares that give me depression these days, and 9/11). And it’s a fact that I would love to see a teenage comedy show that is set before the writers were formed by real-life events. Although LIZZIE McGUIRE shouldn’t be formed at all by what would happen eventually. 2010s Disney Channel sitcoms didn’t do that, despite the fact they became a little more conservative with each season. And Republican politicians say that Disney wants to indoctrinate children... Have they seen Disney Channel shows?
This episode didn’t make it clear what the show will be about in the long run though. Lizzie is this sort-of-wannabe cool chick at her school, having few friends she hangs out with, having a family she has solid relationships with (I envy her), having a way of going through life with inner monologues which happen to be animated, giving the show an edge that brings reason to its existence. It’s a story about a girl who isn’t popular and probably never will be and I don’t mind that at all. It’s a story about a girl who goes through her teenage years not having to deal with drama and bullcrap everyone else does in the world of drama. It’s a simple comedy about a girl that happened to air on a network dedicating its program to the youth audience. Maybe there will be some MY SO-CALLED LIFE drama in it (I don’t think so, but I can still hope), or maybe the show will continue to look like the female Disney version of all 1990s broadcast network kids’ TV movies shot for $100k and the show will have absolutely no value to me in any way.
I have no idea about any of this because this was the “first” episode after all, and since it was obviously not the actual pilot episode (as evident by the writing credit that didn’t belong to the show’s creator), chances were Disney put this episode to the very start, knowing it probably was the worst of the first batch of episodes. Hopefully, LIZZIE McGUIRE turns out to be similar and I will have fun with it, reminding myself of what my t(w)teenage life could have looked like as a boy if I would have had a family that cared about me as much as Lizzie’s parents and a couple of friends cared about her. Also, the show must have had something that made Hilary Duff this big a star back then, and it can’t just be the idea of the show using its t(w)eenage presence to a tee: A show in which teenagers and kids behave the way people their age are supposed to behave – which is the one good thing about this episode.
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| We're all just teenage dirtbags listening to Iron Maiden, maybe. |
So, did this half hour of television have anything useful regarding its stories? Maybe don’t mess with someone’s best friend or you get some color in your hair. It was a bit of a boring message, even if it goes directly at bullying in school, although that morale was not properly delivered by the writers. Plus, maybe figure out how to take care of lizards before you bury them alive? That was a bit crude, but at least there was some science and National Geographics-type stuff in it, just in case you were thinking about getting a pet lizard yourself. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if I have forgotten everything that happened here after a week, because nothing stuck with me and there wasn’t an intriguing moral of the week to fish out of this episode. Let’s hope it was the worst of the first batch, which is why the Disney Channel aired it in front before the real pilot episode.
