Villains of Valley View

There's a rule in television that if you take a successful show, and reverse the basic concept of it, the new show you created will also be a success. For example, "American Idol," a show about judges helping to discover unknown singers. And "The Masked Singer," a show about well known celebrities trying to stay unknown.

Here, Disney takes the Nickelodeon show "The Thundermans," about a family of superheroes hiding out in a suburban setting and flips it with "Villains of Valley View."

The concept actually works pretty well, as the early scripts are pretty cute and seem to follow a logic that makes them fit the reality of the series. And the performances by the main cast are at least as good as their heroic Nick counterparts, with. James Patrick Stuart as the Dad, occasionally showing some of the humor of Robbie Rotten from "Lazy Town" (remember him?), Lucy Davis as Mom, both sweet and savage, The two teen sibs - Isabella Pappas as Amy and Reed Horstmann as Jake, constantly at each other's throats (just like Phoebe and Max Thunderman were) and the kid sib, Colby, played by Malachi Barton.

Of course there has to be someone who is in on the secret, and that's their neighbor and Amy's good-hearted classmate, Hartley, as portrayed by Kayden Muller-Janssen.

The fun of the series is in the fact that the family is used to being overtly nasty, and now has to give it all up just to fit into society! The potential for fun and mayhem is as high as any for this kind of series, and promises some of the wildest concepts of any live action Disney comedy. So far, so bad!

The show is kinda eh but the concept is good, and i think little kids would enjoy it. It's definitely better than most things coming out on disney channel at the moment.

I am so totally not the audience for this show, I'm not a kid and haven't watched any of the precedents. I'm just watching it because I subscribe to Disney Plus, it isn't about punching people and I thought the premise sounded cute. The humor is predictable and snarky but what strikes me most is the art direction -- both costuming and set decoration are just weird. Do kids really dress like that? Why would villains bring abstract art sculptures to Texas? I watch people on sitcoms behave incomprehensibly badly to one another all the time but in this one the writing gives them an excuse to be a-holes, they're villains. Overcoming their villainy could offer a very powerful message to the right group of youngsters but can't they do it without the horribly ugly presentation?

It's on par with shows like Henry Dranger and the Thundermans. They all have similar ratings which should be no surprise.

Like them, this show has quirky ideas and potentially fun scenes and stories. The only thing in the way is the profound lack of nuance that all these shows have.

Comedy is best paired with a little bit of seriousness. These characters need to be fleshed out more and in ways logical to the story. For example, "the overly friendly do gooder becomes best friends with the punk rock villain next door" is extremely intriguing. But they don't do it well. Its rushed over and forced. This could've been something that develops over the course of the show but they rush it in favor of easily forgettable gag plots.

I want that intriguing situation.

Like all of the post 2000 Nickelodeon and Disney Situation Comedies, it has a few different layers to it. The layer I enjoy is the dry-sarcastic language humor which has nothing to do with the storyline. All of these shows could (and are) about anything, but its the dry-sarcastic responses between characters that conveys the humor. The storylines are just generic vehicles for the language humor. People don't realize these shows are all written by people generally in their mid to late 40's and they write stuff that makes them laugh. I know I would have never found the humor in these shows as a kid, you have to be over 40 to catch the humor. It's humorous to me when people think just because a show is on one of these networks, it must be a stupid kids show. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I know its hard to get over that hump at first to accept that these shows are every bit as adult as the shows on other networks. The plots are not the draw here, all sitcoms have been using the same 30 storylines since the 1960's. Its all in the sarcasm that has absolutely nothing to do with plots.