Okay, let me take a great big breath
*GREAT BIG BREATH*
Fish Hooks.
I'm not the biggest fan of Disney Channel. It's all sitcoms for kids.
But I decided at random "Okay...what is this"
And was hit with a train of "wtf" and mild bemusement.
Now, one of the things I hated about Suite Life was that Agnes girl who always pined after one of the boys. But Clamantha. Holy mother of pearl, she was different! Her level of creepy-girl-with-crush delivered, and her voice alone helped add to that. She sounds like someone making fun of a network censor sponsor...or at least how I would parody them sounding. And she did more than just pine...she had more personality than that, albeit a bit of a jerk. Right down to laughing when everyone else was shocked when Mr. Baldwin (who seems to be turning out to be my favorite character) revealed he was pregnant. "You didn't know male seahorses could get pregnant, and neither did I! But nature happens!"
Okay, how did he NOT know?
He was another thing I liked. He's the the middle-aged, balding teacher who hated his job...but pregnant with four girls. I would liked to have been in the boardroom when they came up with that. Though, I imagine an episode from his point of view would be a bit on the comically dark side. He's all of what I said earlier and seems to live alone. Isn't there a Mrs. Baldwin somewhere?
It would be cool to see another side of him than the exhausted grump than he usually is. There are bits of his softer side here and there, like agreeing to help the main characters when they finally tell him that he has a double life as a super-hero so Bea can get a journalism report done (of which the course is taught by a frog voiced by none other than Pleakly!), and seems to have internal excitement about his babies...he already has a bassinet for them.
I figured there would be a lot more jokes regarding seahorse pregnancy, but really, only two or three.
And the episode with the school musical, Potatoes for Winter! Who knew Fiddler on the Roof and Beauty and the Beast could be meshed so well by fish...with potatoes as a central part. Oh, the first song parodying "Tradition" had me giggling!
Now, one of the things that does annoy me are two of the characters, Milo and Bea. Milo is the cookie-cutter trouble maker, who threatens his and everyone else's lives every other episode, and Bea seems a lot like that...one chick from Glee. The hyper-aspiring actress who MUST. DO. EVERYTHING in order to become a star...and is Jewish, but I haven't seen that touched on much. And then you had the cookie-cutter jock/bully...pretty bland. And his girlfriend.
I could do without the rare "gross out" bits.
Also, why a pet store? Is it really so unpopular that the animals make whole civilizations that interact with each other? I think a city aquarium would have made a lot more sense, like the one in Dallas, and that would greatly expand their world. But a pet store? Really?
But yeah, for all the bad rep Disney Channel is getting, this is kind of okay. It's weird, but it's harmless...and I've already developed fan character concepts, and one of them is based of my Junior AP English teacher...thanks a lot, Mr. Heape...you are now a tigerfish named Mr. Lyons (and THAT is an interesting story itself!)
