My New Favorite TV Show: Melissa & Joey

I’m giddy with excitement right now! 3:04 minutes into the Pilot of Melissa & Joey and I’m thrilled to have this opportunity. Thank you ABC Family. First and foremost let it be said now that Melissa Joan Hart looks goddamn AWESOME. She looked awesome in Clarissa, she looked weird and 90s in Sabrina, but Ms. Hart has really grown up to be a very nice looking woman! Yay for her! Melissa plays a City Councilwoman, um, also awesome. I can’t think of another example of a female politician as the main character of a show, and you know I’m all about that.

Basic premise is this: Melissa’s sister and brother-in-law did a whole bunch of money stealing and the sister is in jail and the bro-in-law is missing. So Melissa is watching her niece and nephew and needs a nanny. Joey is a commodities broker who lost his job after aforementioned bro in law stole all this money and sort of assumes the nanny position. Holy hell these kids are awful. They’re painful to watch and listen to, but they’re just kids doing their craft, and by the second episode they’re much better.

Joey Lawrence is like 5 feet tall – this is the only note I managed to write while presumably taking notes for this blog post during the two episodes that I watched, but I was engrossed!

Clarissa Explains It All

Katie | MySpace Video

Oh hello style icon. Welcome back. There was a time in my life that I would have done anything in the whole entire world to be Clarissa. I dressed like her, I tried to act like her, my room was crazy. All I could ever want in my whole life would be an alligator named Elvis. For a young girl who basically monologues the entire episode, MJH really brought it. Here we are 20 years later and all I want to BE HER yet again! Cute businessy dresses and braided up dos? Yes please.

Clarissa Explains It All – 1×02 – School Picture

Brandon | MySpace Video

(The above episode of Clarissa is actually really good. It’s about Clarissa wanting to dress different for her school picture, she wants to be a non-conformist and express herself. Plus one of her hobbies is computer programming, she makes her own video games, how cool is that for a teenage role model? I think I made a pretty solid decision in my Clarissa worship, I actually remember the day I made the commitment. I was at the mall and I was wearing this awesome flower blouse and matching skirt and there were these two girls wearing sweat shirts and turtle necks and they laughed at me. I remember thinking, I’m not even a little mad, I look awesome, you guys look exactly the same. I totally win.)

Back to Melissa & Joey, I’m legit excited about the City Council thing. This deserves a longer post, and this is something that I’ve been thinking about for a while but I’m really concerned about women in film and tv. I don’t think that we should have the same roles as men, but I think we should have better roles. I think we should be talking about careers and goals and not be pigeonholed into always talking about men. Even though we do, we do talk about relationships a lot, and they’re really important to who we are, but they’re not ALL that we’re about. I think the balance is off. So I appreciate that MJH’s character is talking about public arts funding and how the city budget is forcing them to cut down on garbage pickup.

Clearly there’s a strong Who’s the Boss* component here, another great show with really strong female characters (Joey may or may not have said that “what you only think a woman can be a nanny? Only vagino-Americans need apply!!?” I feel like that should offend me, but it makes me giggle, so here we are.)

Here’s the pilot for your viewing pleasure, highly recommended by this modern American woman and wanna-be style icon:

*Angela.