Andre's Horrible Girl

Andre's Horrible Girl

    You know I think Dan Schneider doesn't like interracial relationships. I really do. Andre has had like 4 girlfriends/dates and three of them were black and one was Latin American. It's 2012 Dan, comon.

Anyway, remember that slightly racist Asian character from Wok Star? She got promoted to being a recurring character I guess. Except now she owns a far more trendy looking restaurant called Nozu that apparently caters specifically to 17 year olds. Personally I'm just not into that. I like shows where the characters have these little hang out spots that feel realistic and average- but for some reason the trend in teen shows is increasingly making settings that appeal strictly to preteens.

  Whatever. So Andrew has a new girlfriend and she's just the worst. But she has money so who cares. No one really likes her, and while Andre says he has feelings for her he later reveals to Tori that he's only dating her because her father is some big music producer and he hopes to do a song and dance for him. Tori momentarily tries to do the right thing for once in her god damn life but is immediately tempted into just hoping on board and doing a song and dance for the producer- so she does that instead.

  Andre breaks up with this girl on her birthday and he and Tori do a song and dance, which the producer enjoys. There's more to this but let me get the B-plot first.

 The B-plot is really the strong part of this episode, which is fitting because it takes up about 40% of the episodes runtime.  Jade helps Cat dogsit, but breaks a guitar worth legitimately hundreds of thousands of dollars like an idiot. Luckily Cat calls Robbie over, who also brings Beck (oo see because Beck and Jade just broke up you know. How spicy) and together they just... fix the guitar? It was broken into like 5 pieces. The wood had splintered apart you can't just take a fucking screwdriver and like screw the frets bac

So they finish fixing everything. But then Robbie breaks everything again like an idiot. Why is Robbie an idiot now? He has been for the last like 3 episodes. The rich guy who Cat is dogsitting for is coming right to the door when a very convenient earthquake hits, breaking more things and giving the gang a convenient alibi. 

Hey, we're back to the A-plot now. So during Tori and Andre's song and dance the earthquake hits, causing a massive sign to donk Andre's (ex) girlfriend in the head in a way that would make you legitimately concerned she was dead in real life. Thankfully she's just concussed- basically anyone who is annoying in a Dan Schneider show ends up wounded at the end. The producer (who is also this girls father) neglects seeing his daughter in the hospital and instead says "Or... lets hear Tori and Andre's song again!" in a manner that is absolutely baffling for a grown man to be saying about a song composed for 11 year olds. Props to the actor though, he seems to be having fun with it.

  That's about it. It's a good episode, with the B-plot shining through as particularly good and the A-plot being fairly standard. It just feels like it's missing a feeling that came with the first season though. It's not really a show about going to this new crazy prestigious high school anymore, so what is it? The show seems to have lost a bit of it's identity and attempts to make up for it by increasingly making the characters more and more volatile and eccentric. It's still a good episode, but it doesn't really provide that sense of escapism I originally watched this children's show for.

8/10

Side Notes:

•  Jade and Cat are best friends, with Cat being one of if not the only people Jade is casual and polite around. But for some reason Jade acts pretty antagonistically to her during the entire episode.

• Beck does a lot of like.. holding Cat during this episode? It kind of makes sense during the earthquake but not really. I like to imagine that Avan Jogia  was like "Yeah no I REALLY think that Beck should be holding Cat from behind in this scene. Maybe he takes a whiff of her hair what do you think Dan"