Warp Speed to Nonsense

Warp Speed to Nonsense

Friday, April 1, 2016

"Jessie" Season One, Episode One "New York, New Nanny"

"Jessie" Season One, Episode One, "New York, New Nanny"
Original Air Date: September 30, 211
Obnoxious children: 4




We open... in a cab. Jessie is in the backseat, eagerly telling an IDGAF cab driver her life story while spilling a skinny latte all over the inside of his vehicle. She tells him that she came to New York after telling her father that she has a great job, but then reveals that she is unemployed and asks if he knows where she can get one. He responds by slamming the window shut on her.
Why can't I do that? Why am I not allowed to shut her off?
The cab driver has no lines, and while I'm sure that's because it was cheaper to hire a burly actor who would just brood in the front seat rather than pay a guy to say some lines, it works. She's annoying, he's fucking over it, and his body language toward her is better acting than her spouting lines behind him. I bet his motivation for this scene was his inner monologue reminding him that he's been acting longer than she has, yet this little twit has her own sitcom.
Of course Jessie discovers that her wallet is gone. She surmises that maybe it was stolen, because that's what happens when you go to Television New York: your wallet gets stolen. Just like when you go to Television LA and you run into some starlet on the sidewalk, or when you sip coffee in a drizzle while watching guys throw fish to one another in Television Seattle.



The hapless Jessie asks the cab driver if he'll accept lip gloss and breath mints as payment, and he throws her ass out on the pavement. This is a crappy slapstick sitcom, so when the suitcase gets tossed out next to her, it springs open. I almost expected it to make a boi-oi-oing sound effect when the suitcase flopped open.

You know that Jessie is from Texas because everyone from Television Texas wears
cowboy boots. 

It's a good thing that that cab driver ditched her outside of a fancy high-rise apartment building! The doorman comes to her rescue. He's cute and young and you know he wants to bang her. 
Quiz time! What accent does the doorman have?
A) Italian immigrant
B) Italian New Yawker
If you said B, you're correct! Though from the looks of him, A is imaginable, because everyone in New York who isn't a WASP is Italian.

His name is Tony (of course it is) and he helps her up. But because this is Disney Channel Original Programming, you can't go more than a few seconds before a precocious kid shouts their lines in the middle of a scene, focusing everything in on them. In this case, it's Token Sassy Little Black Girl, who hands Jessie the bra that's fallen out of her suitcase. Jessie, embarrassed, tries to pretend it's a slingshot, because I guess this is The Brady Bunch, and no one is supposed to know what those are outside of a Judy Blume novel.
"SHE DOESN'T KNOW IT'S A BRA!" laughs the Sassy Black Girl. I'm shocked that she didn't double over with laughter at her own joke, or slap her knee. That's what you do when you're hilarious, right?


Is this show almost over?
WHAT DO YOU MEAN, I'M ONLY ONE MINUTE IN?
Some woman comes screaming out of the building, dragging her rolling suitcase behind her. Sassy Black Girl waves and calls out, "Bye, Nanny... Whatever Your Name Was." She then follows it with, "Hey Jessie, wanna be my new nanny?"
Yes, kid. After watching a woman run screaming from the building (conveniently packed to boot!), I want a job watching your disrespectful ass.
This is Jessie's next speech: "Oh, thank you, sweetie. But I didn't come all the way from Fort Hood in Texas to be a babysitter. I came to New York to follow my dreams, because this is where dreams come true!"
"Yeah, right," replies Sassy Black Girl.
I actually agree with SBG here. Firstly, as someone who has been a nanny before, fuck you, Jessie. Also, are you expecting to go to one audition, dazzle the producers, and get a dream part? Not gonna happen. You need to actually pay your bills, and no landlord I know of accepts dreams as currency. There's a reason why every actor in LA is also a waiter.
SBG grabs her by the hand and drags her inside.
Hopefully to her death, if I'm lucky.


Apparently, I am not that lucky.
Now, there are two kinds of opening credits: the kind where they show clips of the cast from various episodes, or the one where they just have the cast do "we're friends/family" shit and record it. This one uses the first type, but because it's the pilot, all of the clips have been pulled from the first two or three episodes. Then we can have three kinds of music: type one is just instrumental; type two is a general feel-good song that can be paired with any sitcom; type three is situation-specific, where the theme song tells you the story of how this crappy sitcom came to be. This one has type three music:
"It feels like a party ev-er-ree day
(Hey, Jess-ay! Hey, Jess-ay!)
But they keep on pulling me ev'ry which way
(Hey, Jess-ay! Hey, Jess-ay!)"

As an artist, that reverse-shadow pisses me off. How does that science?


Really? It feels like a party, but they're pulling you in different directions? What the hell kind of parties are you attending? Do they include mosh pits? And what makes it a party? The annoying main character? Her irritating charges?
Then they toss in the cliched "they took a chance on the new girl in town/ and I don't want to let them down, down, down."
They didn't take a chance. The last nanny ran screaming into the street and some little bitch plucked you off the sidewalk and shoved you into the elevator. You were kidnapped.
By the way, the elevator opens onto their apartment.
Jessie compares it to the Astrodome. Because again, she's from Texas. Just in case you forgot while dancing to the catchy theme song. (No, really. It's catchy enough to get stuck in your head, so I walk around singing "Hey, Jess-AY!" in the nastiest tone ever.)


Notice the Executive Producer? She's known for such saccharine hits as "Family Matters," "The Nanny," The Suite Life shows... and "Married... With Children." One of these things is not like the others. One of these things is actually fun.

Sassy Black Girl tells the butler, Bertram, that she found a new nanny downstairs. Remember this guy. He is the shining beacon in this swampy, muddy mess of a sitcom. He is the only thing that doesn't suck in this show. Unfortunately, he still has to work with the shitty lines they give him.


She objects to his instant approval of her without asking for qualifications. While that's a good point, I'd like to remind you that you have none, Jessie.
She cheerfully reflects on the fact that she can have this great job and a nice place to live, and all she has to do is watch one little girl.
Bitch, did you not watch the credits? Or did you get up to go pee, too? It's four children and one butler. All kids, no parents. Probably a fancy orphanage.
Right on cue, three other kids run screaming into the house and tackle one another on the couch.


There's a moon (planet)/moon (naked ass) joke that fails to land, but they flip the switch for the laugh track, anyway. It's during this fight that we get a bit of barely-passable character development of Ravi, the Indian boy. You almost don't notice it because it's disguised as racial stereotypes. Firstly, he's wearing a shirt with a nehru collar. Now, I really like nehru collars. But they wouldn't put that shirt on Luke, the kid in the orange hoodie, and that's the problem. Ravi also has a thick accent, as he's supposed to have been adopted from India a month earlier. Too bad the kid playing him is from Washington state, and his accent is faker than a spray-on tan. Because the shirt and accent weren't enough, he first advocates non-violence to the others, then when he gets smacked in the face with a pillow, tells Emma that he's going to be all over her "like stripes on a tiger!" Later, he's going to gather them around to read some Just-So Stories before heading for his job at a call center.



Sassy Black Girl tells Jessie that she's the good child, then attempts to demand brownies in some kind of threatening or scary way, but she fails to muster up the enthusiasm for the line, and it falls flat. Jessie yells at the grappling kids to "release!" because it works on her dogs back home.
Cue the parents, who are making out in the elevator as it opens. The kids run to them to get hugs and financial compensations for missed parental supervision.
Jessie is star struck.
"Their parents are Morgan and Christina Ross? The famous movie director and supermodel turned business mogul?" she demands of the butler.
"No, they're sheep farmers," deadpans Bertram.
Bertram, you are a gem. I wish you were on a better show.
Then the dad announces presents and Jessie, along with the kids, jumps up and down and kiddie claps.
"Not for you. This isn't Oprah," Bertram tells her.
Damn, dude. This guy almost makes this crap watchable.
Sassy Black Girl (nope, we still haven't learned her name) announces to her parents that she found a new nanny on the street. 



They're briefly surprised that the old nanny is gone, but not enough to spend more than a moment on it or even talk to Jessie before the dad announces that he has a working lightsaber.


What, you thought I was joking? Because I was not. That is the literal progression of the conversation here: found a new nanny, old nanny quit - I have a lightsaber!
Interspersed in all of this are the creepy interjections of 12-year-old Luke, who clearly wants to bang Jessie just as much as Tony the doorman does.
In a grab for cheap laughs, Dad slices a chair in half by accident. Laugh track is added. Then he takes SBG and the boys to play with toys so that Mom has a chance to chat with Emma (the blonde) while Jessie eavesdrops from the sidelines, hoping someone might acknowledge her.
The point of this conversation is to both establish a loving mother-daughter relationship, and to build some character development for Emma. (No need to build any for Mom - she's a secondary character at best in a show about a nanny and some douchey kids.)
Sadly, that first goal of relationship status is not met. Frankly, not only do I not believe they're mother and daughter (Emma is the only biological Ross child), I'm not even sure that these actors like one another.


And while they certainly provide character traits for Emma, they're as horribly stereotyped as Ravi and Sassy Black Girl. (For the record, Luke is not a stereotype, but a trope: he's the oversexed little man-child who hits on much older women. It's been done before, and always badly.) 
Emma is the dumb, blonde teenage girl of this family. While she isn't bitching about her science project (and is actually kind of excited about it), she comes off as ditsy. Her previous year's project was a "glitter volcano" named "Mount Fabulous." And, omigod, she got like, a clipboard and everything! Super science-y! Yes, that's a direct quote. And even though she doesn't say so, I bet her favorite season ever is fall? Because cute boots and Pumpkin Spice Lattes? And tiny dogs in purses and also Sephora? I KNOW, RIGHT?
Ugh. Why can they not have given this girl some brains? There's nothing wrong with her being blonde, girly, and enthusiastic, but my little niece is all of those things, and she's smart as fuck.


Mom says she and Dad will be back in time for the science fair tomorrow, then she oddly name-drops the shitty movie that they're currently working on, "Batman vs Superman." Naw, just kidding, it's "Galactopus 2." This is an awkward thing to say to your kid. Presumably, Emma knows what movie her parents are working on, so there's no need to not only say it, but do a physical flourish as well. Maybe that was for Jessie's benefit. The nanny-come-lately uses this cue to interrupt the conversation to say that she LOVED the original, and that it was the best giant radioactive space octopus movie EVAR.
...and that's the end of the scene.

In the kitchen, Mom gets texts from her private security company saying that Jessie is a shining example of a human being. It's a pleasant twist that she actually did some background checking on the stranger her daughter selected to watch the children, but I wonder how that happened, as Jessie clearly stated at the very beginning of this episode that she lost her wallet. Bitch does not have any ID. There's a joke about Jessie shitting her pants after eating armadillo (LOL, Texas), then Mom invades her personal space to "get a read" on her.
And Jessie officially has a job, presumably one that pays well enough that she can buy health insurance.
Creeper Luke rushes in to demand to date the new nanny.


So now Jessie has to get down to some nannying. I have no idea where the parents are in this scene, so they may have taken off again. Whatever. The show has decided that they're not important, so I guess I have as well. 
Luke knocks on Jessie's bedroom door. He's wearing a tuxedo and greets her with a bouquet of roses. Then he announces that they have a date.

Dear Luke,
That's not cute when you're twelve, and it's not going to be cute when you're still trying to do that at forty. No girl has ever owed you a date. Fuck off.
Sincerely,
51% of the population

Jessie tells him to shove it and announces that they will all be having dinner together as a family. Emma, passing in the hallway, thinks this is an awful idea. Sassy Black Girl finally gets a name when Jessie knocks on her bedroom door and calls her "Zuri." And now it's time to collect Ravi. Jessie opens his bedroom door to find a monitor lizard. Because Jessie is a female, she screams and pulls the door shut.


Emma informs Jessie that the lizard's name is Mr Kipling. You know, like that white British guy that wrote all of those stories about India? At this point, I'm convinced that whoever wrote this garbage made a list titled "Shit We Know About India," and everything on that list was included part of Ravi's character development. "So Rudyard Kipling wrote stories about India. We'll give Ravi an exotic pet and name it Mr Kipling. That'll make us seem clever, because there's a connection. Much better than naming the pet Spot or Fluffy."
I hate you, show.

Downstairs at the dinner table, Ravi bitches about his lizard being excluded from the family dinner. Luke explains that Mr Kipling was the one thing Ravi brought with him from India when they adopted him a month earlier.
"Oh, I can't carry four ounces of shampoo with me on the plane, but he gets to bring a velociraptor," Jessie complains.
Dammit. That was actually a pretty good joke.
The kids pick at their food for half a second, then Emma wants to know if she can go upstairs and work on her science project. Ravi follows suit, citing some crap about his lizard. 
When Luke gets up, he complains that "this date was a waste of clean underwear." I think they're setting this up to be foreshadowing for when he gets his first restraining order. He tries to pull some playa bullshit on Jessie as he's heading out of the kitchen, and then he does this sort of dance move. That dance move is the only credit I'm giving him. He appears to be a good dancer. But instead of focusing on that, they made him a tiny douche-bro.


We end this scene with Jessie saying something about mermaids not being real. Zuri, whose best friend is her imaginary mermaid, tries to pull a crumpled face, but it's the worst acting ever. It falls into the same category as the demon-child who demanded brownies - she can't manage an emotional response that isn't Sassy Black Girl. On her way out, Zuri turns and affects this ghetto way of speaking. "Last time I pick a nanny up outta the guttuh."

Sometime later, Jessie enters the living room and announces that she made cookies. Frankly, if I was Bertram, I would beat her down for dicking around in my kitchen. But Bertram gives no fucks. He's reading a magazine whose cover features awful design, but it's mostly because they want you to notice the title: Gentleman's Gentleman Quarterly. 



Dammit. That's kind of funny, too. I imagine Woodhouse from "Archer" reading that.
Anyway, neither of them knows where the kids are, but Bertram doesn't give a shit because that's not his job. He produces a note that says that the kids are running away because they hate her. She panics and runs downstairs to ask Tony the doorman if he's seen the kids. Tony points to his camera screens and says they're on the roof playing with their dad's helicopter.


That's right - not only are the Rosses rich enough to have a beautiful apartment in a city where a closet with a toilet is unaffordable, but they also have a personal helicopter parked on the roof. I fucking hate this show.
In the next scene, she pushes the giggling kids through the elevator doors and yells at them for taking off in the helicopter, which is why her hair is teased like a mid-80's rock band. She then makes them drop and do push-ups. For some fucking reason, they do it. I don't know why. The people who write for this show have never actually interacted with kids, have they? 

Does it feel like a party now, bitch?

And that's it. Two whopping minutes was spent on the "kids run away" plot. Come to think of it, that's about how long was spent on the plot for "the kids won't eat dinner together." Is this show a series of plots that are immediately solved? So far, it feels like a sketch show where the actors are a nanny and some kids, and they get together on Saturday nights, and act out scenes for a show about a nanny and some kids.
Also, this is the end of this part. Like, zero consequences for writing her a nasty note and "running away." Zero consequences for stealing a helicopter and trying to take off.

We switch scenes again. This time, we're in Ravi's room, which features something that looks like it was stolen from a Ronald McDonald-land area. THAT is the lizard cage. Ravi is playing a video game, and sucking badly, so Jessie shows him how to beat the game. Then she says she feels bad about startling his lizard, so she made Mr Kipling chicken-fried crickets.
*sigh* Did you know that there are a lot of good shows out there, friends? Shows where a girl doesn't chicken-fry crickets to apologize to a lizard? 
You know what happens next? Jessie gets stuck in the lizard cage, crawling through those tunnels like a wussy version of Harry Potter battling the basilisk, and that a-hole Ravi plays the video game with his headphones on. And because this show isn't racist enough, the stuffed dog on the end of Ravi's bed is wearing a turban like Punjab from Little Orphan Annie.


Anyway, the lizard fucks her up, and she manages to escape out the other end of the tunnel just as Ravi finishes playing his game.
Actual fucking line spoken by this kid: "This is much more fun than playing Duck, Duck, Mongoose!" 
I wonder if the kid who plays Ravi watches old episodes and thinks, "I can't believe I said that shit."
Jessie excuses herself to change out of the clothes she just shit in.
Oh, hey. Was that another plot begun and completed in two minutes? Think it was, friends. For those of you playing the Plot Drinking Game while watching this show, please make sure you have a designated driver lined up.

Now we get another one-on-one plot, this time with Emma. She's building her solar system model in the living room. I think the thing that's supposed to be tying these plots together is that Jessie keeps trying to distribute those damn cookies. The kids ran away, now they're being rewarded with treats. And what the hell time is it? Did they eat dinner at 4:30?
Jessie asks if she can help Emma, and Emma replies, "You can pack your bags and move to this planet."
Emma points to fucking Earth.
"That's fucking Earth," replies Jessie.
Thanks for reminding us that Emma is a dumbfuck, show. Oh noes, what if I had forgotten?!
Emma gets a Skype from her parents. They want to talk about the science fair.
"We're sorry, honey. We can't make it."
"Of course not!" says Emma cheerfully. "That would be cheating!"
Dammit, is that supposed to be funny? Endearing? Because when everyone but Emma knows her parents are talking about the fair, that means that the audience is laughing at her stupidity.


Emma is crushed and ends the call. She runs out of the room.
Jessie stupidly picks up the project, calling out that she'll help Emma finish her project, and of course she trips over an ottoman and the destroys the solar system. Zuri comes down the stairs at that moment and advises her to blame it on Luke.
The next morning, Jessie sees the kids down to the street to catch their bus. Really? They're that fucking rich, and they ride the bus to school like normal children?
Emma thanks Jessie for helping her rebuild the project "that Luke destroyed" and Jessie beans the kids with their own lunch bags.
She and Tony the doorman talk about how she can't get a hold of the Rosses to convince them to leave work early for Emma's thing, and he replies that it's too bad she can't fly the helicopter to the set of the movie.
"No, wait - I can! My dad taught me how!"
No, fuck you, show.
You want me to believe that Brangelina magically needed a nanny at the same time that this bumpkin shows up in New York with no job and no place to live, fine. You want me to believe that that kid is actually from India and that he owns a fucking Gila monster, fine. I'll even buy it when she yells at them to drop and give her twenty, and they do it. But you don't get to fucking fly a helicopter.

And why does Tony have the keys? Is he also the valet? Does he bring the chopper around for Mr Ross?
Jessie shows up at the Galactopus set, and a dude tells her the set is closed. Instead of having security escort her out, he shoves her into wardrobe. How convenient. Now dressed as an extra, she's ushered on-set and directed to lie there. A mechanical tentacle scoops her off the stage, and the Rosses are loving her performance... until she breaks the tentacle, and surprise! It's your new nanny!


She tells Morgan and Christina that Emma is really bummed about their missing her science fair, and that, even if she gets fired for saying so, they need to spend more time with their kids. So the Rosses fire her.
Instead of walking away like any sane fired person would, Jessie shows up at the science fair. She tells Emma that her parents are there in spirit, and blah, blah, blah. Something about gravitational pull being like love and holding everything together.
So Emma gets up to give her presentation, and the Rosses sneak into the room behind Jessie.
Emma switches on her solar system, which lights up and spins, and she tells the judges that everything is held together by gravy. (Don't forget that Emma is dumb!) Wait, she means gravity! Right!
Christina Ross touches the ex-nanny's shoulder and says "Also known as Jessie."


Awww, how cute! This shitty sitcom tried to give me the feels!
*patronizingly pats show on the head* That's a good try, show! Good try!
The science fair judge announces that the students are a disgrace and the reason why the US is 28th in the world for science. Except for Emma and a stereotypically-nerdy dude in Coke-bottle glasses.
They go to announce the winner, and Pluto falls off of Emma's project. There's a pause. The judges huddle up.
Then they announce Emma as the winner because her project "addressed Pluto being removed from the solar system as a planet."
Dude, fuck you, show.
Also, fuck you, IAU. Your decision was based on shitty science, and you know it.
The Rosses hug Emma and tell her that they came because it was important for them to be there for her, blah, blah, blah. It's all crap. Mom shows up for a whopping seven episodes... for the run of the show. Seven out of ninety-eight. And dad is only listed on four episodes of the first season... then he disappears completely. So much for "being there" for your kids.

Mom hugs Dad, Emma hugs Mom's arm... no reciprocation from Mom. And
Luke just kind of exists.

I guess this show isn't about the parents, though. It's about the nanny and the kids, and how the nanny has to make up for the fact that the parents frequently abandon the kids to go do something else, then attempt to buy their love back with souvenirs. Though from what I've seen on the various episodes I've been subjected to over the years, the nanny isn't really there, either. She has her own hijinks to get up to in New York, and four kids would just weigh her down. So the kids are either looked after by Bertram, who doesn't get paid enough to do that shit on top of everything else, or they just fend for themselves.

During the end credits, we see the family, the nanny, and the lizard enjoying ice cream in the kitchen. Bertram is nowhere to be found, either because he has better shit to do, or because he is simply considered to be "the help."
Luke asks Ravi what his favorite kind of ice cream is, and Ravi replies, "All of them. In India, we only had one kind of ice cream: melted."
The family laughs while I groan. Mr Kipling steals Jessie's ice cream, and she grounds him, sending him to his cage.



And I finally got to the end of this bullshit.

I think my final plot count reached four: Jessie tries to get the family to eat a meal together; the kids run away; Jessie tries to bond with Ravi but ends up being half-eaten by his lizard; and the Rosses ditch Emma's science fair. All of these could be stretched out into a full episode each, but instead they ended up being laced together without cohesion. A plate of cookies was not good enough to connect these disparate plots. What's more, there's a specific way to write a plot that's compelling, and which includes build-up. None of these plots had much, which the exception of maybe the last one, because it spanned several hours and included Jessie visiting the set of the movie where the Rosses were working. My question is, why did the writers not just stick with the science fair plot and ditch the others? Was there not enough material? Frankly, I expected it to be more like "girl moves to New York, gets a job as a nanny, chaos ensues because she doesn't know what she's doing, and the kids fuck with her." Instead it ran like, "girls moves to New York and works her way through four unrelated plots."
Let's talk about these kids, shall we? So yeah, we get it: the Rosses are the Jolie-Pitts. Okay. Whatever. And they have one biological daughter and three more adopted children. Fine. One kid was adopted from Detroit, one from Uganda shortly after birth, and one from India, a month prior. That's fine. There are a lot of ways we could deal with this. We could talk about cultural differences, or how everyone is the same inside no matter where they come from. Nope. Instead, we get racial stereotypes and tropes (the ditsy blonde and the oversexed boy). Zuri is irritating as hell. Her lines are rarely funny, and shouting them at other characters doesn't make them funnier. Her mannerisms and way of talking make a person go, "Ohh, she sassy!" Hand on hip, snap snap snap. Is this it? Is this all we have to say about what it means to be Black? That if you're female, then you must be sassy? Especially if you're a kid with pigtails? Vomit. We're better than this, and our entertainment should reflect that.
Speaking of entertainment and race, let's talk about Ravi. That kid is American, and probably went into those auditions and was told "more like Apu from the Kwik-E Mart." That's pretty lousy. Now, it makes sense that if he came from India four weeks earlier, he'd have an accent. But then, why was it necessary that he just come from there? Zuri came from Uganda, but was adopted at birth. Could Ravi not have been also? Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against people with accents. But it seems like anytime a character is Indian, he needs to have an accent... no  matter what the circumstances. There's actually a really interesting episode of Master of None, Aziz Ansari's new show, that deals with Indians and Hollywood. I recommend it. It's a bit eye-opening, and once you see the examples they give, you start to realize that they're right: every Indian gets the same treatment. They're cab drivers. They work in call centers.They all have accents.
This terrible show kind of tricks you into thinking that these characters have some depth to them, but they don't. After spending 24 minutes with Zuri and Ravi, what do we know about them? Where Ravi came from and how long ago; that he likes video games. And I guess that Zuri likes brownies?
Emma and Luke are not so much racial stereotypes as they are annoying acting tropes. Luke, the flirty man-child, has no other characteristics beyond a knowledge of dance and some rhythm. Emma is a cardboard cutout. Sure, she's perfectly willing to do her science project, but she isn't allowed to do it intelligently. For some reason, it's important that she come off as air-headed.

I hate this show, you guys. Disney used to be about making quality entertainment that didn't have to pander to either kids or adults. It was just good in general. Now, they make garbage like this. Watered-down, "wholesome" crappola that the Helen Lovejoys of the world can plop their Special Snowflakes in front of, and not having to worry about swear words or content. Why would they possibly want to talk to their children about things they saw on TV? Seriously, Disney. Take some fucking risks already. I'm not talking about Very Special Episodes of Full House, where someone is caught holding cigarettes for someone else. I mean, real life shit. I mean scenes of bullies where the solution to the problem is not a concert that includes the characters involved. Someone bursts into song, and suddenly, the problems evaporate? What is that? It's just mindless crap. It's safe. But safe doesn't get you anywhere. Lots of shows where cute and endearing and tackled the harder stuff as well. When the actor who played Mr Hooper on Sesame Street died, they didn't hire some look-alike to replace him. They straight-up told the audience, through Big Bird, that he died. Punky Brewster did an episode when the Challenger shuttle blew up. And Mister Rogers talked about freaking everything. By contrast, a group of rich kids took a joyride in their father's helicopter, and are given the harsh consequence of three push-ups before their nanny is joking with them again. Then she bakes them cookies, because it's real important that they like her.
I've grown to hate Disney Channel Original Programming. It's all versions of this, so formulaic that I want to scream. One of these days, I'm going to sit down and make a chart proving that they're all the same show. All variations of Outrageous Redhead, Sassy Black Girl, Foreigner With Accent, Absentee Parents, Unusual Pet, Family Secret, and my least favorite, Surprisingly Successful Music Career. While "Jessie" doesn't have this last one, it seems to hit all of the other sour notes involved in DCOP shows, and the overt racism involved more than makes up for it.
Screw you, "Jessie." You're the worst of the worst.

*******

Maybe it's because I bought an off-brand, but this milk tastes weird. Sort of chalky. Not good with Oreos. Avoid this one.












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