#clair gripling
As much as I do like the show, As Told by Ginger, it is not above criticism and for me, the episodes revolving around her high school years are the weakest episodes to me.
They aren’t bad but they seemed to be lacking in something the other episodes had. To be fair, this does happen a lot when you take your characters into a different setting, especially if you’ve been at the same setting for a good number of episodes. I think there was a difficulty in translating the characters into a high school setting and taking elementary kids to a jr. high setting. I think with Carl’s gang, they could have made a few adjustments like making them taller or wearing different outfits to signify that they are older now.
There’s also the issue of how Courtney Gripling was written in this arc. We went from the popular, top of the social chain girl to a girl who gets embarrassed, shoved into lockers, doesn’t get shown, and eventually lose her wealthy lifestyle. You could say its comeuppance but that would only work if Courtney acted like Miranda and Mipsy. If they wanted to show how a big fish in a small pond adapts to being with same sized or bigger fish, they should have spent more time on it. Instead it felt like the writers wanted to torture Courtney for funsies.
Lastly, came the problem of Ginger and Darren’s relationship. The way the break up went started to go into a territory of annoying teenage angst with the break up happening around Ginger having appendicitis and Darren leaving her for the popular cheerleader. Actually, Darren transitioning into a football star just seemed off. While it’s true that people do change interests, we didn’t really get a reason why or even being shown him gradually liking it.
Like I said earlier, these episodes aren’t the worse but did seem to be lacking in the charm the episodes had. Also, The Wedding Frame was a good sendoff despite Noelle Sussman.
I think they did the shitty transition for Courtney bcuz she insulted the popular girls at the high school on the phone with her mother. They even flushed her phone down a toilet! She literally bought a fancy porta potty! Darren playing football was off, but I believe he joined for the fact that his older brother was in football and his dad most likely was as well. He probably wanted to follow the “winning streak”, which would also explain why he would like Simone as she was a cheerleader, and of course he wouldn’t opt for Dodie, even if she was a cheerleader too. That wouldn’t make sense, anyway. The episodes definitely lacked in charm. Actually, in just about everything, and I don’t know why they changed it. I mean, it started off good with Ging’s near addiction to coffee and her trouble with her teacher, so..what happened? I can’t help but wonder….
