Shake It Up/Good Luck
Charlie
Episode 6: Age It
Up/The Curious Case of Mr. Dabney
By: Carlos Uribe
Shake
It Up is about two best friends who are on a local dance show. Good
Luck Charlie is a show about the Duncan family. They both air on
Disney Channel.
Spoilers
Ahoy!
This
episode, Shake It Up decided to explore the controversial world of
pop stardom. This is an episode that is a bit of a surprise on what
it covered. It features a famous pop star, named Justin Starr, coming
to Shake It Up Chicago. He's similar to Justin Bieber, in that he
rose from obscurity from the web. He claims to be a normal sixteen
year old, which should set off any alarms for us adults. He comes to
the show and his manager picks our two main characters to dance with
them. This delights Cece and Rocky, but for different reasons. Cece
sees this as an opportunity to get rich and famous while Rocky
believes that this will lead to her marrying her pop idol. It should
come as no surprise that neither of these came to be. I don't think
there's ever been a case of a one-time background dancer rising to
fame and Rocky's dream will never happen. That's largely because of
the large “twist” that the episode has at the end.
I'm
pretty sure that kids were shocked by that ending. It's one of the
few “twists” that they would encounter on Disney Channel. It is
one that adults should have been able to pick up on and predict. That
twist being that the sixteen-year old pop star is actually
twenty-four years old and is married to his manager. While the twist
itself might have been predictable, it's surprising to see that
Disney Channel allowed it to happen. While the actors and actresses
on this show are generally the age of their characters, it's
surprising to see Disney Channel tackling the tactic of casting young
adults to play young teenagers. It's even more surprising since
Disney Channel is presenting this cynical (if true) take on Hollywood
to such a young audience. While the sub-plot is more tradition
sit-com fare, the main plot is surprisingly more mature than
expected.
The
Good Luck Charlie episode also had a plot that isn't expected from a
Disney Channel series, although it remains within the boundaries of
traditional sit-coms. That plot being that some characters think that
their neighbor killed someone, only to realize that it was all a big
misunderstanding at the end. This neighbor being Mrs. Dabney, a
character that the series has already established as a villain. In
this episode, she's presented less as a two-dimensional villain to
someone who is merely misunderstood by a few characters. The main
plot concludes with one of those endings where Mrs. Dabney explains
everything away and the young viewers are left assured that our
heroes don't live next to a murderer. It's still pretty surprising to
see the series tackle murder, even if it's a fake one. The happy
ending isn't a surprise but predictable. There is simply no way that
Mrs. Dabney would have actually turned out to be a killer.
The
main plot of the episode had to do with texting. Texting is a
relative new form of communication and many sit-coms haven't really
tackled it. If this show is any indication, then that's probably a
good sign. We have the experienced texters, which are Teddy and her
best friend. This episode has the best friend teaching Amy how to
text, which has Amy doing the most predictable jokes one could come
up with. This action makes Teddy annoyed because she keeps seeing her
best friend text Amy. The show seems to hint that Teddy might even be
a little bit jealous, but this doesn't really work. There is no way
that Teddy would feel threatened by her best friend. The main plot is
a sign of this very traditional comedy trying to adapt into a more
modern world, but failing to actually be clever or funny about these
new situations. Modern Family or The Middle this is not.
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