Come on, settle down...what's the problem? I haven't seen this allergic a reaction to a kids' series since "Scrappy Doo" debuted! So, Sharon Spitz is a tad self-absorbed in her own problems; so? What adolescent ISN'T self-absorbed to some degree? I think what Flaming Pig and co. forget is that just about all fictional young teens, from Holden Caulfield to our hero in "A Christmas Story"; from Luann DeGroot to Veronica Ganz ( a six-foot tall thirteen-year-old: try THAT on for size), from the young narrator in "April Morning" to the ever-so-sensitive Daria Morgendorffer, young teens are always going to impress their worldview with their own not-so original growing pains. The only time that youth grows up quickly is through forced change, such as "April Morning", or Barbara Tuchman's "A Distant Mirror". Should Sharon Spitz emulate Claire Danes' character in the darkly comic, all-too-brief show "My So-Called Life"? Hey, how about letting Sharon and her pals emulate the sociopathic little no-neck amateur vivisectionists of Yukio Mishima's "The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea"? Or even better: let's dispense with the intellectual approach and let Sharon and Maria shoot up the school a la Columbine? Okay, okay, maybe I'm reading too much into this. It couldn't be that it's too...Canadian? Naah, Flaming P. is a Canuck, so that can't be it. Because it's from Nelvana? I HAVE observed, many times, a negative reaction to any thing "Nelvana" among certain people. Or maybe it's the not-so-subtle "Afterschool Special" feel of many episodes. But, is this realy a bad thing? It's a show about teens, so why not teen problems?Besides, the title is, after all, "Braceface"! What happens once the braces come off for good? Think about it...
Review of Braceface
