ggreenbaum

Reasonably good kid-dumbdown of Ally McBeal. Interesting (if somewhat stereotyped) cast--Lizzie as normal kid, Gordo as smart kid with just a touch of obsessive/compulsive in his personality, Miranda as excitable Hispanic best friend, so forth).

The attraction, I believe, is, that we know all these kids are stereotypes, they are never presented as anything else (is there anyone really as dumb and (to girls) cute as Ethan Craft? As dorky as Larry, although he's starting to show another side of himself, who wears the same shirt EVERY school day?, any brattly little brother like Matt? They are stereotypes, and we like to laugh at them, which makes the program enjoyable.

Perhaps the only three dimensional character is Gordo, the super smart kid who has the ability to see things in just a bit of perspective. By no means the most popular kid in school, he knows that someday he will be a wild success and the popular kids will be secretaries and janitors. His sardonic comments about the girls' enthusiasms are quite delightful. The episode where he gets himself Bar Mitzvahed a year late (although the writers made more mistakes about Judaism than I care to mention, was also quite good. He is the only character with enough depths to have self-doubts.

This series is quite watchable for adults, and the writers seem to cater for parents watching with their kids, or even without their kids. Now and then, there will be a line or a schtick that will most likely get by the kids, but which the adults may well get (example: When Gordo is assigned the job of garbageman for the episode about the mock marriages, he states that he'll start out with one garbage truck, then two, then a fleet of garbage trucks, more or less quoting from the musical "Carousel" (where it is "little boats" rather than "garbage trucks."

A pleasant way to spend a half hour, watching Lizzie and her friends go through cardboard rites of passage (first job, first kiss, etc.) but don't take it too seriously.

Good cast and heartwarming ideas about outcast teenage bowlers being called upon to win for the sake of their school and to prove they "belong".

Spotty on plot. You mean to tell me that during the (presumably) weeks leading up to the basketball game that would tie the battle for the Mighty Apple, no one checked to see what would happen in case of a tie? Not even Sweet Lou, who lived and breathed Appleton sports? By the way, why all the stress on junior high school sports? They don't have a high school to care about?

I can't imagine that my town, when growing up, would have cared much about a competition against the next town on the jr. high level. Still, it's for kids.

This was a very good show when Shia could pass for a twelve year old and the other cast members looked the ages they are supposed to be. The idea of Louis as misfit (Mom a State Senator, Dad a high-powered lawyer, brother a super athlete, sister a brain with a multi-page resume) was fabulous. It is starting to get stale. Really, the things Louis is doing (sort of like Malcolm in the Middle) are cute when you're twelve, at fourteen, they're juvenile delinquency.

Except for Louis, the cast members don't have much depth. Mom and Dad are stereotypical parents juggling high powered careers and kids, older brother Donnie is seen now and then, but seems to lack IQ for a personality. Ren is such a predictable straight man for Louis's antics, that it really isn't funny to watch her try to do a slow burn.

Shia leBouf is brilliant. But this idea has about run its course, and the kids are too old for the middle school target audience. Maybe wrap it up with a couple of episodes developing Mom as a Vice Presidential Candidate, end it on election night, and bring it back as a TV Movie in a year or so with Louis raising heck in DC.