La Vie selon Annie

Many people felt that the first season was unworthy of their time and patience and this was well true, NOW however they have fixed it up and made it more teen and less animal planet. Give it ANOTHER chance, PLEASE, you will NOT be sorry!! It is much easier to watch and there's a new romance. GIVE it another shot you WON'T regret it! They have all had a makeover. Sadie still loves her animals, but she has mellowed down, gotten more girly and has a new crush. Margaret has straightened her hair and Rain has gotten his braces taken off. This has made is appeal to wider audiences. I too felt like most of you during the first season but it's like the first season never happened. Give it a fresh start!

Many in America have unfairly criticized this new Disney Channel TV-series as being yet another "Lizzie McGuire," simply because the show is for and about a girl in her early teens. For the record, I'd like to point out that this is a Canadian TV-show, and that shows like "American Dragon; Jake Long," and "The Suite Life of Zack & Cody" don't have preteen girls as main characters at all, even if Brenda Song & Ashley Tisdale outshine the Sprouse Twins.

Charlotte Arnold, who looks more like Emma Taylor-Isherwood of "Strange Days at Blake Holsey High," plays Sadie Hawthore, an aspiring animal, insect, and reptile biologist in her freshman year at R.B. Bennett High School, who thinks the laws that apply to nature apply to the ways of mankind as well. Her best friends, Margaret Browning-Lesveque(Jasmine Richards) and Rain Papadakis(Michael D'Ascenzo) are a fashion queen and an unlucky guy respectively. Her older brother Hal(Justin Bradley), is a standard goof-ball, jerky-idiot sibling with a fledgling rock band. She also has a crush on a boy on the school football team named Owen Anthony(Kyle Kassadjian, who shortened his name), but unlike Lizzie McGuire's Ethan Kraft, and Daria's Kevin Thompson, he actually has a brain under that helmet(Also, Daria didn't have a crush on Kevin).

No, Charlotte Arnold is no Hilary Duff, and while that's not a condemnation of Duff, it's still fine with me. It's also what makes her such a likable character. The show itself was written by those who wrote the Canadian kid's show "Our Hero," but you can easily figure that out by the narration between the scenes. Perhaps fewer Americans have seen those shows and that's why they make a false comparison to Lizzie. And while other children's programming that's shown on both cable television and network affiliates get the "Educational/Informative" label in order to fend off the wrath of anti-media zealots, this one deserves such a label.

When I originally wrote this comment, the show was focused on Sadie's love of nature. In the second season, that primary feature, which is what made both the main character and the show so unique, is slowly being whittled away. Not that this is enough to make me turn away from the show, but I can only hope the natural aspect of it isn't completely forgotten.

I was skeptical about this show when it premiered on the Disney Channel, but in just a few months, I think it is finally starting to catch on. The show centers around Sadie Hawthorne, a high school science buff who specializes in life sciences. The show follows her observations of the unique species of wildlife known commonly as "teenagers."

I love the idea that Sadie compares teenage behavior to animal behavior. It really gives us an interesting view of teenage life that would probably have gone unnoticed.

The show is not as funny as other Disney Channel shows, like Even Stevens, Lizzie McGuire, or That's So Raven, but it's still funny in its own unique way, thanks in part to Sadie's friends, like Hal, Rain and Mallory.

All in all, I hope this show is around for a long time.

When I first saw Naturally Sadie I was naturally bored, but I slowly got into it. The show is not Disney's normal real-life-but-exaggerated-which-is-mainly-gags. The show is not centered around a teenage girl who is obsessed with looks, boys, and shopping. The main character, Sadie Harthorn, is quite the opposite. Sadie is into nature and science. In each episode she tries to figure out the strange ways of teenage life by comparing it to animals. Like most Disney Channel shows, this one has two stories going on. One with the main character and one with someone close to the main character, in this show it's usually one of Sadie's two friends. The show does tend to drag on and get boring at parts, but you need to remember that it is not much of a humor show like That's So Raven and Phil of the Future. It certainly is a naturally unique show.

Now, if we all realize that there are a finite number of plots a Teen show can have, it is easy to see that Naturally Sadie (NS) is one of the better shows out there right now. Early teens who "grew up" with Lizzie Macguire will only recognize the similar plots, but viewers who take the long view will see that NS has a fresh take on the teen show. The title character is interested in things other than how she looks or what boys think of her (though there is a boy involved). It took me a few episodes top "get into" NS, but now I recognize it as being the best thing out there in the Jr high category. It is much better than the gimmick-reliant "That is so Raven," and "Phil of the Future." I place it slightly ahead of "Drake and Josh," which is the second best show in this age range.