Season 1: Episode 1 – Rumors

I don’t know if this episode originally served as a pilot, but it definitely sold the series for me, even as an adult.  The main conflict in this episode begins when Lizzie doesn’t make the cheerleading squad and claims that the only reason the mean girl, Kate, made it is because she stuffs her bra. Through a malfunction of  Miranda’s jenky dial-up internet, the message ends up being sent to the ENTIRE student body.  Lizzie fails to admit she said it and it causes a prank war between Kate and Miranda. It finally ends when, after a sleepless night, Lizzie admits that she said it which then leads to the cheer team doing the good old: “U-G-L-Y you ain’t got no alibi, you ugly” cheer directed to Lizzie at a pep rally. 

The main lesson of this episode is honesty. I think the writers did a good job of making this accessible to the target audience. The innocence and absurdity of middle school is the perfect backdrop for this lesson. Would it have worked in a high school setting? Yes, but it wouldn’t have been as dramatic, spanning multiple days. 

This episode, and I’m sure the whole series, gave me serious nostalgia. Obviously, not for the show, but for growing up in the early 2000’s. The tech, clothes, and language were all far too familiar. I do not regret starting with this show.

Season 1: Episode 4 – Pool Party

The next episode that stuck out to me was the 4th episode. Danny Kessler is having a pool party and invites Lizzie and Miranda. Kate (the arch-nemesis from Rumors) decides that Miranda is cool and invites her to her cheerleading clique. Lizzie’s mother believes that this pool party is an integral part of her adolescent development and pushes for her to go until she finds out that it is the same day as Nana’s birthday (who is turning 80, even though in the picture day episode she was 61 and a windsurfing instructor). 

The big word for this episode is HORMONES. Mrs. McGuire brings it up far too many times which causes a dichotomy in her and Lizzie’s relationship. This is what I want to talk about more than the silly pre-teen drama of Danny Kessler’s pool party. Perhaps it’s because I’m a 23 year old, married, home-owning, adult, but there is a short scene that really hit it out of the park for me. Mrs. McGuire sends her husband to try to figure out why Lizzie is upset and tells him to use one of her tricks where she goes in looking for a hairbrush. Mr. McGuire ignores these instructions and goes straight in to talk. The pair end up outside. Through the window Mrs. McGuire watches her husband and daughter talk about the drama she’s going through. He’s intently listening to her and gives her a loving hug. The camera pans out and shows a shot of Mrs. McGuire’s wedding ring. This spoke leaps and bounds to me. As a married person, I can attest to the fact that I cannot always do everything myself, try though I might. Here she releases the reigns into her husband’s hands and he in turn is able to have a response that she would not have gotten. The McGuire’s are a team and they try to be the best parents to Lizzie and Matt that they can. It wasn’t a scene of the husband’s incompetence, which is how the beginning of the scene is set up, but rather a testament to the different strengths that each married couple holds.

Season 1: Episode 5 – Jack of All Trades

Gordo is convinced that his science teacher hates him because he can’t get higher than a B in his class and he’s always has straight A’s. He decides to switch assignments with Lizzie to see if his suspicions are correct. As he suspected, Lizzie receives an A+ on the project and Gordo gets a C. Gordo has a mental breakdown which causes his project, a model of the human brain, to explode. (much like his actual brain) The science teacher tells Gordo that the reason he’s been giving him B’s is because he knows that he can do better.

I want to pause here and talk about this for a minute. As an educator, I don’t necessarily agree with the science teacher. Can Gordo perform better? Yes. But does this mean that he doesn’t deserve an A for an “A project”. No. 100% No. There is so much pressure put on kids to perform well and get good grades. This was present even in the 2000’s. This teacher, while he meant well, was causing so much undue stress to Gordo without even realizing it. Perhaps Gordo had a different background and didn’t have two successful psychologist parents. What if Gordo’s parents were going through a divorce (an unfortunate, all too common reality) and that was causing his lack of effort on the previous projects. As a teacher, it’s hard to judge when a student is “performing to their potential”. If I was Gordo’s teacher and I had a suspicion that he was coasting by in the class and wasn’t challenging himself enough, I wouldn’t wait for a gelatin brain to explode in the middle of class to talk about it, and I certainly wouldn’t have taken it out on his grades, especially when he is still the top performer in the class. Sometimes we forget that these kinds of situations can be easily resolved by a simple conversation.

I think that education has grown so much since the 90’s and early 2000’s. It’s not just about the “3 R’s” anymore. It’s about social and emotional wellbeing, forming young minds to be ready to combat the complexities of our modern world.