Villains of Valley View

The Villains of Valley View has a lot of flat jokes and exaggerated acting that remind me of bad sitcoms from the 80s-90s. It feels like Disney saw Lab Rats and The Thundermans and decided to mix them, but they made the main characters evil.

I'm very confused as to what Disney is trying to get across with this show. For example, The Thundermans and Lab Rats taught kids about making good decisions and that you should cherise your family. But since the characters in this show are villains, those positive messages aren't showing. These characters are extremely unlikable. They barely make good decisions and they never suffer the consequences of their actions. Not to mention the family acts like they hate eachother majority of the time, the only episode where it seemed like they genuinely cared for one another was episode four: "Belt, Bulls & Superfans." This entire show just looks like a jumble of The Thundermans and Lab Rats but with bad guys. This show is just Disney attemtping to recreate shows from the early 2010s. Specifically shows that centered around superheroes living in the the suburbs. The whole reason those shows worked were because the main characters were good people. When you turn them bad, it throws the entire show off balance.

I still find the show relatively endearing though. If you turn it on in the background and don't pay too much attention, you might find it good. But if you want to be genuinely entertained, go watch something else.

From the first sound and first sentence it's a carbon copy of every other show. Same "jokes", same way of speaking, same stuff. Don't waste your time, no matter what.

Let me just say that I was definitely one of the skeptics when it came to this show. I thought it would be bad considering how Disney Channel (at least in the last 7-10 years) has had a track record of releasing really bad shows that last no longer than 2 seasons. For example Coop and Cami Ask The World, Shake It Up, So Random, etc. Villains Of Valley View seriously surprised me. The jokes were funny, the characters were interesting, and the costuming was a major step up for Disney Channel. People say this show is a shameless rip-off of The Thundermans (which wasn't that good of a show to begin with) but as someone who's watched both, they certainly have similar premises but VERY different executions. Villains Of Valley View, to me, just seems like a nice callback to older shows people have loved before and repurposing it for the newer generation. Give Villains Of Valley View a try if you want a feel of old Disney Channel, it may surprise you.

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.

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!