After the first round, Harley notices that she hasn't won any awards. In an episode called "Stuck In The Diaz Awards", the family has an Oscar-type event awarding the best moments of the past year together. "I'm the middle child, but that brings us together." However, before you go "aww", note something else. By the end of the episode, she realizes that she is what brings the family together, and even though she misses her speech, she appreciates her family, and they eat donuts on a table that she invents. This is shown when she wants to give a speech at the park and her siblings have other events that same day. In the opener episode, she says that she feels left out and overlooked since she is the middle kid. The first example is with Harley herself. But there are many elements the show has that, as a maturing adult, I can't stand for. She's an inventor and she always helps her family get through tough situations. The show focuses on Harley Diaz, the 4th of 7 kids in a Latino family. Stuck In The Middle used to be my favorite TV show, but it has come to a point where I just can't like it anymore. The character of Harley is legitimately breaking it all down. Too often intelligence is shown as being done the "right" way by the "right" people, and too many "be different" messages are really "be different in the same way as everyone else". The parts where Harley breaks the fourth wall seem too frequent and often repeat what's already known, but maybe younger viewers need the extra exposition. And it's getting funnier by the episode, and of course the lack of a laugh track is so refreshing. The show tries hard at realism sometimes and lapses inexplicably at other times, which is fine since being too real would shut out the humor. Many of the problems that are supposedly the result of being in a big family are also experienced by smaller families with less money. These characters don't, and, importantly, it's depicted as _normal_ and goes by as a part of life, without undue angst. On most other shows, even characters who supposedly aren't rich seem to have everything they want all the time. The family isn't strictly poor, but it is limited in a way that rarely gets on TV. Cerina Vincent is good too in what needs to remain the second most important role. Jenna Ortega isn't perfect, but she more than carries the show and pours her heart into every moment. She's just 13 after all, and wouldn't have any lessons to learn if she started out as an angel. The fact that she's a conniving liar no longer bothers me but adds to the fun, especially since she frequently loses at the end. It's this above all that the writers need to sustain throughout the life of the series. Harley's brain blazes white-hot energy throughout in a wide variety of ways, and it's such an inspiration. After the fourth episode i'm finally all in on this show.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |