NICKELODEON’S new animated show, “As Told By Ginger,” could just be the most unintentionally scary show this Halloween season.
That’s because it takes you into the mind and maelstrom of an average middle-schooler.
To me, that world of hall passes and wedgies and orthodontic headgear is one of the most horrific places on Earth. (I never want to be that insecure again!)
I was a little taken aback when the show – which airs on Wednesday at 8 p.m. – opened with a scene of Internet savvy ‘tweens giving each other pedicures and declaring “friends paint their friends’ toenails.”
You’d never see pedicures on public TV! But, perhaps, like toenails, the show will grow on me.
Created by Emily Kapnek, a “Rocket Power” writer, and produced by Klasky-Csupo, the creators behind “Rats” and “The Wild Thornberrys,” “Ginger” is the future – as if Angelica ruled the malls and junior high school halls, having already corrupted the gentler Tommy and Chuckie.
Twelve-year-old Ginger (voiced by Melissa Disney) lives on the border between cool and uncool, the daughter of a struggling single mom (“SNL” alum Laraine Newman) who works as a nurse and drives a VW bug.
Ginger’s little brother Carl is the usual dispensable fiend, a spying 9-year-old intended to attract boys to this female-skewed show.
Popularity was the big issue in the opener, entitled “Ginger the Juvey.”
The school’s most popular girl, Courtney, invites Ginger to her birthday. While Ginger deals with the elation and anxiety of this invitation, her nemesis, the clarinet-playing Miranda, plots to engineer the curly redhead’s social downfall by getting her to steal a bank sign as a birthday gift.
The show becomes a pitched battle between insiders and wannabes as Ginger calculates the cost of popularity.
As a parent, it was hard to find any of the kids likeable in the way that Chuckie and Tommy are.
Of course, I am the mother of pre-schoolers and babies and I have not yet to tackled the horror of raising teens.
Watching “As Told By Ginger,” a perfectly accomplished ‘toon with a female heroine, I felt this was a show I should want to like. That I should identify with Ginger and her desire to befriend the vapid Courtney without sacrificing her integrity.
But I didn’t.
Instead, I felt like an awkward ‘tween in a training bra transferred to a new and alien junior high.
I did not want to enter this world – or, more accurately, re-enter it.
Perhaps, your ‘tween girls will feel differently.