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Surprisingly high-quality sitcom

I remember watching this show when I was rather young. At first, this seems like the typical ridiculous unfunny Nickelodeon sitcom. However, watching some episodes of the show again, I realized this show was a surprisingly clever and hilarious show with some interesting characters and an overarching plot not usually seen in most children’s sitcoms.

Ned Bigby was currently entering middle school, along with his two best friends: the athletic and tomboyish Moze and the black and nerdy Cookie. Due to an incident in kindergarten class where Ned went to the girl’s bathroom, Ned has been haunted and reminded of this event to this day. To help prepare for middle school and help students survive and avoid the embarrassment he had to face, Ned decided to make the ultimate survival guide to surviving middle school with various tips, tricks, and subjects to help face the cruel systems of bullies, teachers, tests, and the cafeteria sludge they call “food”.



One of the great things about this show is how establish the environment of this middle school. James K. Polk Middle School isn’t just a typical middle school, but rather a more exaggerated cartoonish look at the school system based on cliches. An examples of this wonderful ridiculous situations based on exaggerated high school stereotypes are episodes like “Guide To: Class Clowns” (where the class clown moving away causes the sky to turn grey, everyone gets instantly depressed, and the teachers are now giving more tests and pop quizzes) and Guide To: Dodgeball” (where a game of dodgeball is turned into a Star Wars-inspired battlefield of pain and suffering). I believe it works in presenting extreme and ridiculous situations while still dealing with the real issues of going through middle or high school, best exemplified in episodes like “Guide To: Pressure” and “Guide To: Getting Organized”. Seriously, the advice is genuinely good and applicable. They could have set this in high school and the tips presented from the guide would still have helped. There is the occasional joke tip but most of it was genuinely useful.

Overall, the show blurred the line between a ridiculous and actually hilarious sitcom based in a ridiculous show and an actually well-done drama based on dealing with relationships and the pressures of school life. Another great aspect of this show is the insane-amount of continuity spliced between each episode. Mostly this focused on relationships between characters but most of the time when an episode ended, they wouldn’t just set everything back to normal or forget about events from the previous episodes. They would continue the stories through the main plot or subplot of the episode. Not only does it provide storylines and character arcs better than most children’s (or sometimes even regular) sitcoms do. It also allows the characters to develop and grow throughout the series.



Most of the characters in this show are based on cliches like the mean teacher, the talkative kid, the tomboy tough chick, etc. Most of the main characters and even some of the supporting characters develop throughout the series in interesting ways. For example, Suzie Crabgrass started as a rival for Moze. Then, a few episodes later, Ned develops romantic interest for her but shows difficulty expressing it, especially when she goes out for other guys like the dumb jock and bully with a sensitive side of the series. However, Ned and Suzie eventually go out but Suzie has to move to another school and the two develop a long-distance relationship. Suzie and Moze even manage to develop to becoming good friends. Eventually, cultivating in the finale where conflict arises from Ned, Moze, Suzie, and Billy (the bully character) all having romantic feelings for them forming a weird romantic rectangle. Ned Bigby works as a main character as he is mediocre with his grades and constantly getting in trouble. Despite trying to make a guide to help people survive through school, Ned makes a lot of mistakes and tries to take the easy route. However, this works in making him relatable to the average teen reluctant to work and Ned does eventually grow to be a more responsible character with nobility to him. Moze is an interesting female character who is one with the guys. Most of her plots focus on her athletic career but there are the occasional episodes like “Guide To: Fashion” and “Guide To: Dares” that plays with the feminine aspect of her character. Although she does eventually become Ned’s boyfriend at the end of the series, I felt the relationships were gradual and evolved throughout the series. The weakest of the main characters is definitely Cookie. Aside from the exaggerated nerd stereotype whose almost half-cyborg, Cookie takes the role of comic relief. Aside from the usually one-side relationship between Cookie and Lisa (the homely geek who was beautiful the entire time) which changes from Lisa loving Cookie in the first two seasons and switching in the third, most of Cookie’s storylines are comedic subplots rather than any real development.

While some might say the characters are too cooker-cutter and stereotypical, I say this helps add to details to this unique cartoonish environment for a sitcom. I can say similar things about another show created by Scott Fellows, Big Time Rush. This is rather ironic considering how good Scott Fellows is great at making live-action sitcoms with fun, cartoon-like world but his attempt at making a cartoon in Johnny Test is one of the most boring, lifeless, unoriginal, stupid, annoying, and downright awful animated series ever made. However, I think Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide works because it is a genuinely hilarious sitcom that manages to paint ridiculous situations based on school cliches along with well-written storylines and some great continuity. Some people will write this show off immediately for being a lame Nickelodeon sitcom but I say you give this show a chance as the quality of the humor, writing, and characters is surprisingly well-made.



Also, the theme song is just awesome:
Why’d you make it so complicated, WOOOOOH!!! (Guitar riff)

8/10
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Added by Ricky49er
9 years ago on 10 January 2015 18:11

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kathy