Now that summer has begun
and pretty much all of the shows that I watch on network television have either
ended for the season, or they are about to end for the season, I’ll be blogging
about TV shows that air on cable. I also hope to write a review of Dallas’ (TNT
series) second season, a review of the first season of Revolution and get
started on my project of reviewing all five seasons of 90210. Although, I’ll be
moving into a house in a few weeks and the whole moving process might not leave
me with very much time to actually work on those projects. I’m going to try my
absolute best to get them done over the summer though, or in the case of my
90210 project, at least get started, but I digress. Melissa & Joey is one
of my favorite shows to watch during the summer, so I might try to review at
least some of the episodes this summer.
With that said, I have to
say that I thoroughly enjoyed the season three premiere. It mostly revolved
around the fact that Joe was feeling like Ryder and Lennox no longer needed him
since they’ve grown up so much, which led to him trying to get a job in finance
since that’s what he did for a living before he worked for Mel. Joe was offered
a job by a guy who works in finance, so he initially believed that the job was
working in finance; however it turned out that he wanted to hire Joe to be
their baby’s nanny. Apparently, they were willing to pay Joe a lot of money to
be their nanny, so he accepted the job offer and immediately started the new
job by babysitting the baby.
One of the reasons why I
loved this episode is because it finally touched upon something that I’ve
thought a lot about ever since the show began. Personally, I always felt like
Ryder and Lennox were old enough to take of themselves for the most part even
when the show began. One of the reasons why I felt this way is because when I
was their age at the start of the series, my parents were okay with me staying
home alone by that point. Sure, I wasn’t old enough to drive, but I never
really had all that much going on after school that would require somebody to
drive me around. I suppose that might be one of the reasons why Mel initially
wanted to hire Joe in the first place though. Plus, she also has Joe cook dinner
for them, which is probably due to the fact that she’s often very busy with her
work as a city councilwoman. Although, I cooked for myself a lot when I was
Ryder and Lennox’s age so that doesn’t make that much sense to me either, but I
digress.
Mel was desperate to try and
find a way to convince Joe to stay and continue to work for him by finding
something for him to do. At first she was saying that she wanted him to stay so
he could cook for them, but Joe didn’t like that idea, especially after she
likened him to being a fire extinguisher, saying that she doesn’t always need
to use it, but it’s nice to have around when she finds herself in a situation
that requires a fire extinguisher. In an attempt to get Joe to agree to continue
working for her, she decided to ask him to install solar panels on the roof
since he had apparently suggested it at one point in the past. Mel figured he
would be happy if she told him that it was a good idea to put the solar panels
in, but she was also worried about how he would act since she knows how much he
loves to be right about things. Despite being afraid of how annoying he might
be about the solar panels, she decided to ask him to do it anyway. However, Joe
quickly saw through Mel’s request and said that it was a “pity solarization”
and told Mel that he was still going to take the job offer working as a nanny
for the other family.
One of my favorite things
about the character Joe is the fact that he acts like a bit of a know it all
and is mildly narcissistic. This has always surprised me considering the fact
that the character Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory acts like a total know
it all, acts incredibly narcissistic and has become increasingly so throughout
the show’s run to the point where I can’t stand him now. I think that’s really sad
considering the fact that the character Sheldon was initially what got me hooked
on the show when I started watching it around the time the show was its third
season.
Narcissism and acting like a
know it all aren’t just qualities that annoy me when it comes to characters on
TV shows, it annoys me even more when I encounter people like that in real life
and people being like that is one of my biggest pet peeves. It’s definitely
much easier for me to handle watching Joe act like that though since the
writers have done a pretty good job of not going too overboard with it and have
had enough moments on the show where Joe admits that he can be wrong at times
and apologizes for his behavior to balance things out, while Sheldon is too
oblivious to ever realize how annoying he’s being. As long as the writers for
Melissa & Joey maintain a nice balance between Joe’s narcissistic and know
it all behavior in combination with his good qualities, I don’t see it becoming
too annoying for me to watch like it has with Sheldon on The Big Bang Theory.
This episode also had a few
moments that kind of hinted at the sexual and romantic tension that exists
between Mel and Joe. The first being that Joe’s new girlfriend called him at
the beginning of the episode while he and Mel were alone in the house together
and were awkwardly trying to decide what to do since Ryder and Lennox weren’t
around, and the ringtone that he was using for her sounded a lot like the
stereotypical music that people frequently reference being used in old
pornographic movies. Plus, a few moments before that Mel was watching a news
program that was talking about famous celebrities that have hooked up with
their nannies. I also interpreted Mel’s reaction to the prospect of Joe not
working for them stemming from subconsciously knowing on some level that she
has feelings for Joe.
One of my favorite things
about this episode is the fact that the writers referenced the recurring joke
that Joe doesn’t think of working for Mel as being his career quite a bit in
this episode. However, instead of referring to himself as a “freelance nanny”
like he has in the past, he referred to himself as “an executive in transition
who took a temporary job to tide him over”, which I thought was pretty funny. After
all, Joe has been working for Mel for what I’m guessing has been about two or
three years in the show’s timespan. Honestly, it’s frequently been very hard
for me to figure out how much time passes on most of ABC Family’s shows since
they typically break the shows’ seasons into two separate halves, but they take
fairly long breaks between each half of the seasons to the point where they
each feel like their own separate seasons, but I digress.
I hate to break it to you,
Joe, but working for the same employer for two years isn’t what I would call a
temporary job. It’s what I would consider a fairly permanent job. I’m guessing
that Joe is still in denial about his career in finance being ruined thanks to
his involvement with the Ponzi scheme that Ryder and Lennox’s parents
concocted.
Joe ended up getting a call
from somebody who works in finance, saying that they wanted to hire him for a
job. Joe was initially excited about the prospect of being able to get a job in
finance again after working for Mel for about three years, but he didn’t want
to tell Mel about the job offer at first. When she asked where he was going, he
lied and said that the mailman had died and that he was going to the funeral
when he was really going to meet with the guy for a job interview.
Unfortunately for Joe, the job he was being offered wasn’t in finance, the guy
wanted to hire Joe to be the nanny for his baby boy. Joe initially didn’t want
to take the job, because he thought it would mean that being a nanny would
officially be his new career if he took the job. After fighting with Mel, he
decided to take the job after all and started taking care of the baby.
Lennox apparently has a new
boyfriend named Zander who likes to draw, and from the way Lennox, Mel and Joe
were talking, Zander had apparently pretty much only been drawing pictures of
Lennox. Lennox thought it was sweet and loved that he did that, but if you ask
me, that’s just…creepy. She ended up finding drawings of another girl in his
sketchbook that she referred to as “Strange Burnet”, which prompted her to
become obsessed with figuring out who the mystery girl was. Her strategy of
trying to figure out the identity of the mystery girl was to go through
Zander’s lists of Facebook friends, as well as the lists of people that
Zander’s Facebook friends were friends with. To me it’s rather ridiculous to
spend hours doing that, but then again Lennox is just a teenager and sometimes
teenagers can get very jealous and obsessive like that.
Lennox finally confronted
Zander about the drawings of the girl, and Zander explained that he didn’t even
really know the girl beyond the fact that she works at coffee shop he frequently
goes to. Zander explained to Lennox that drawing her is very easy for him since
he knows her and he had only been drawing the girl from the coffee shop in
order to challenge himself artistically. Zander promised not to do any more
drawings of the girl, and Lennox forgave him for the whole thing. Honestly, I
thought this storyline was rather stupid, but it had a few moments that I found
amusing.
Ryder went on a school
camping trip, so he wasn’t in the episode all that much. Towards the end of the
episode, Mel got a call from the school, informing her that Ryder and several
other guys had gotten caught smoking pot on the camping trip. Ryder ended up
getting suspended from school for the rest of the year, so Mel asked Joe to
homeschool him. Joe agreed to do that, saying that homeschooling Ryder every
day would be better than changing a baby’s diapers every day.
One thing that I’ve always
liked about the relationship between Mel and Joe is that they have great
chemistry, which I’ve always thought was especially obvious whenever they are
arguing with each other. I had never really thought about this before, but the
relationship between Mel and Joe is very similar to the dynamic between Jess
and Nick on the show New Girl in some ways. Like Jess and Nick, Mel and Joe are
very different from each other in a lot of ways, but at the end of the day, you
know they are friends and that they genuinely care about each other. They’ve
hinted at the possibility of Mel and Joe becoming a couple at some point, which
is something that the writers for New Girl have frequently been doing with Jess
and Nick. I’ve always enjoyed watching Mel and Joe argue with each other,
because I feel like that’s when their chemistry becomes the most obvious, which
is also how I feel about Jess and Nick on New Girl. Plus, their arguments are
almost always pretty funny. If you ask me, one of the show’s greatest strengths
is definitely the chemistry between Melissa Joan Hart and Joey Lawrence.
With that in mind, I feel
like this episode had the perfect ending. Joe was giving Ryder a history lesson
as a part of his homeschooling when Mel soon butted in saying that he should be
teaching Ryder about government and politics, which soon led to them arguing
about homeschooling Ryder and installing the solar panels on the roof. They immediately
became oblivious to the fact that Ryder left the room as they continued to
argue as the episode ended. Their argument was something that I’ve come to
expect whenever I’m watching scenes between Jess and Nick on New Girl. At the
same time, the entire scene felt very true to Mel and Joe’s relationship and
the show as a whole, and it didn’t feel like they were trying to copy New Girl
or any other show for that matter. That scene simply reminded me of New Girl to
a certain extent, and it was just a great scene.
This will probably make me
seem incredibly shallow, but I found myself thinking about it so much as I was
watching episode that I feel the need to comment on it. I’ve always thought
that Joey Lawrence was an incredibly attractive man, especially when he had his
head shaved at the beginning of the series. However, I absolutely hated Joey’s
hair in this episode. It looked like it had been unevenly cut in certain
places, and his hair now looks like he’s sprayed orange spray paint on it. I’m
not sure how Joey’s hair started to look kind of orange, but I pray to God that
it doesn’t continue to look like that for long. It’s always kind of hard for me
to see someone that I’m typically attracted to do something to change their
appearance that’s not very flattering and makes them look less attractive, at
least in my eyes. The way Joey Lawrence’s hair looked in this episode was
definitely one of those situations.
All things considered, I
loved this episode for the most part. I’m really glad that the writers finally
acknowledged that Ryder and Lennox are both at an age where they don’t necessarily
need to have Joe around 24/7. That’s definitely something that’s always kind of
bothered me about the show. This episode definitely had quite a few funny momemts,
especially between Mel and Joe. The only thing about this episode that I didn’t
really care for was Lennox’s storyline. It was more idiotic than it was funny,
but otherwise this was a fantastic episode.
That being said, I give this
episode a rating of an A-.
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