Date of airing: May 4, 2001 (Disney Channel)
This episode kind of said that being a bad girl is a bad thing, did I get that correctly? Every adolescent teenage girl who has watched this episode in 2001 has now been told that putting a ring in your nose, drawing fake tattoos on your body, and planning to go out on a Friday night and not return until all the boys at the party have been flirted with is a teenage-ish criminal offense, which the parental units need to punish them for. It does fit with the conservative narrative the Disney Channel wanted to promote, and it wanted to tell the parents who happen to be watching the show that if their children display this kind of behavior, something must be off in their lives. So check for drugs in their rooms! This episode promotes the notion that when women are trying to break out of their minority and oppressed lives by showcasing bad behavior, they are out. Forget the “three strikes” rule.
But before this episode review turns political, I should say that it was a solid-enough half hour of television, simply because Lizzie was going through a bit of a change, and going through changes is easy t(w)eenage business to write down on paper or put it into a script for people to film and make television out of. Not that this episode was important or special because of its premise or how the McGuire parents handled their kids acting out, nor had any meaning for any of the characters, but depicting Lizzie in a look she wasn’t ready yet was a good idea, just for the character alone. What a shame she didn’t learn anything out of her experience as the quickly growing bad girl, let alone did the writers make use of the intervention scene for something more than just rebuilding broken friendships and showing some of Hilary Duff’s pictures from before her career took off.
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| Miranda is the witness of two t(w)eenagers planning to do evil. |
But yeah, the way the “bad girl” cliche was handled during this episode made it feel like the Disney Channel planned to give the watching audience mother “moral of the story” lesson, and the parents some signs to watch out for, in case your child comes home with an attitude one day and you are wondering why. Coming home from school late? There is a sudden bling ring on their bodies? A different hairstyle that kind of looks like one hasn’t combed their hair in some time? Yes, something evil must be at play here, and it must be dealt with immediately because bad children can’t be reasoned with and do not have a say in fashion. Gordo and Miranda were able to reason with Lizzie in the end (even if it all looked like Lizzie knew what was happening, and put a stop to it all by herself), but it does beg the question of why Lizzie’s parents weren’t ready to do the same.
Granted, they may have been too busy teaching Matt a lesson about (night) life, but damn, if there is one failure in this episode, it’s how Jo and Sam didn’t do a single thing about Lizzie’s behavior – although probably because one time she came home with a fake nose ring, which probably let them breathe a little easier, thinking this was just a joke. Plus, the school may not have even called them about her, which means they didn’t even get notified when one of their children sat in detention class. Back in my day, I needed to get the signature of one of my parents for something my teachers thought wrong about what I did, so I could never get away with anything (except faking the signature, which of course was a thing every child learned how to do in such cases).
Putting Matt’s crazy lifestyle over Lizzie’s change was somewhat a good idea. it’s not the first time Matt was let loose into the world for the purpose of him learning a lesson, and I do kind of like the parental decision-making here (after I forgot all about Jo and Sam not being involved in their daughter’s shenanigans). Instead of hammering morale into the boy like a jackhammer, lessons are learned a lot better when said kid gets to the conclusion yourself and the parents just accept the kid’s destructive behavior.
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| Down that chocolate syrup! |
The same happened a few episodes ago when Matt wanted to be called by a different name, and Jo and Sam played along for as long as they could for Matt to get to the episode-closing lesson all by himself. It’s a lesson he learned again here when he got to realize that staying up late and partying all by yourself is getting tiring quite quickly and may even ruin your cool-kid status at school. Sam and Jo were probably lucky that Matt was still young and didn’t have friends, otherwise, he would have found himself at another house during a Friday night party, drinking his first beer and getting locked in the upstairs bathroom with a girl he doesn’t know and falls in love with her, while police clear out the party downstairs. GOOD BOYS, but a little more R-rated than the film already is.
While this episode didn’t know how to properly and realistically handle the “bad girl” premise, I do see some parental values in this half hour. In the case that I will ever have kids, and that chance is pretty much zero (good thing my sisters have kids, or the family genes would have died with me), I should watch LIZZIE McGUIRE again, just to learn how to properly parent. At least when it comes to giving life lessons by playing along and tiring out the child.
