MovieBob Explains Clarissa Explains It All

[MovieBob]

MovieBob Explains Clarissa Explains It All

A 90s sitcom starring a female gamer? Sounds like a myth.

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[Thunderous Cacophony]

And this week's round-up of editorial errors:

For those occasions, the show 1turned to video games.

But it went beyond just the frequent "meet me at Camera 2" with the audience

This is possibly one; if it's directly copying Jon Stewart, the line is, "Meet me at Camera 3."

Heck, in an era where romantic attachment, or the lack thereof, was the entirety of a female character's existence (teenaged girls were either vestigial limbs of their boyfriends or wholly asexual); men in her life were regarded (in a G-rated sense) about the same as her other hobbies: At one point she and her male best-friend decided to give dating a try, realized it wasn't going to work and went right back to friend-status with no ill-effects.

I don't believe you should have a semicolon breaking a sentence, then a colon in the second half of the sentence. I might be wrong about the grammar, but it definitely looks awkward to me.

OT: I had never heard of this show before. Nice to see that some show at some point had a character who played video games that didn't have their personality dominated by that. Shame the trend didn't catch oon.

 

[Scars Unseen]

And this week's round-up of editorial errors:

For those occasions, the show 1turned to video games.

To be fair, that makes a lot more sense than if the show had 2turned. And 3turned? That would just be silly.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

Ah, this was my generation's goto network and this (along with Salute Your Shorts, Pete and Pete, and Hey, Dude!) was probably my favorite show. Honestly I have so many good memories of the Nickelodeon of the 90's that when compared to today's Nick it just was soooooooooooooooooooooooooooo much better. Of course nostalgia and all that, but the 90's ruled. Fuck's sake they had a game show devoted to video games (which I swear they picked the worst players imaginable).

 

[Alterego-X]

Hey, how comes that Bob can link to obviously unofficial youtube first episodes of copyrighted TV shows? Does that not count as piracy?

 

[sageoftruth]

That's what Clarissa looked like back then? I've gotten old.

 

[Steve the Pocket]

It's interesting that both of Melissa Joan Hart's shows had attempted spinoffs where her character was in college interning at a periodical. Coincidence or shameless ripoff?

Hey, how comes that Bob can link to obviously unofficial youtube first episodes of copyrighted TV shows? Does that not count as piracy?

More importantly, professional bloggers probably shouldn't link to or embed such things in their columns because the videos almost invariably disappear within a year, leaving you with a broken link. If not because the videos themselves get removed for copyright claims, then because the person who posted them will get banned for something else they posted, taking all of their videos with them.

 

[V4Viewtiful]

That's what Clarissa looked like back then? I've gotten old.

We all have :;(

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I loved Clarissa but I think this article's trying too hard to develop a gaming theme from a show that treated it as a purely cosmetic thing.

 

[Sofox]

"even though kids all over America were choosing up sides over Sega and Nintendo in the early 90s, their supposed fictitious peers on TV mostly lived in a world without either of them (unless the show was about games, of course)"

Except of course the surreal teen comedy Parker Lewis Can't Loose, one of my favourites. That show was steeped in the 90s, in so many ways. The show wasn't about video games, but they popped up in multiple episodes, with real game and company names referenced (such as Altered Beast, and of course Sega and Nintendo). One episode even dealt with game addiction, but was pretty measured and sympathetic and ended on a pretty interesting note.

As for Clarissa, I enjoyed it. Obviously her games had a golden path/demo system to them (ie. If you play them any other way than intended, they don't hold up as well), but I loved how games were imaginative, took on different scenarios, and paid homage to point and click adventure games that I loved at the time.

 

[Rad Party God]

I did watched Clarissa, I'm a 90's kid, I loved videogames ever since I have memory and I didn't regard her truly as a "gamer", even I recognized it was a simple parody of whatever she had going at the moment, I never thought she was a gamer or *gasp!* one of the first mainstream indie developers.

Nah, I think you might be overthinking this stuff. Interesting article though.

 

[Falseprophet]

I don't believe you should have a semicolon breaking a sentence, then a colon in the second half of the sentence. I might be wrong about the grammar, but it definitely looks awkward to me.

I feel the semicolon is unnecessary in that situation: the clause that precedes it is not independent of the clause that follows it; the second clause answers the implied setup of the first clause (i.e., "At a time when X was the norm, Clarissa was Y.") and thus the first clause is dependent on it. A comma makes more sense. (I'd add a "the" after the comma, but I'm not sure it's strictly necessary--it just flows better to me.)

I think the colon is okay. The clauses before the colon establish the usual modus operandi of the show, and the clause after the colon is a specific example of it. I might have just used a period, though. Since the following sentence is another supporting example--that also contains a (properly used) colon--it makes more sense to treat them the same.

So my version of the paragraph would be:

Heck, in an era where romantic attachment, or the lack thereof, was the entirety of a female character's existence (teenaged girls were either vestigial limbs of their boyfriends or wholly asexual), the men in her life were regarded (in a G-rated sense) about the same as her other hobbies. At one point she and her male best-friend decided to give dating a try, realized it wasn't going to work and went right back to friend-status with no ill-effects. Another episode turned a one-off joke (she stood up to her younger brother's bully, who subsequently developed a crush on her) into a running B-story: They actually dated, with the relationship becoming for a time just another part of her background life.

***

Except of course the surreal teen comedy Parker Lewis Can't Loose, one of my favourites. That show was steeped in the 90s, in so many ways. The show wasn't about video games, but they popped up in multiple episodes, with real game and company names referenced (such as Altered Beast, and of course Sega and Nintendo). One episode even dealt with game addiction, but was pretty measured and sympathetic and ended on a pretty interesting note.

Man, what a great show. I remember when it started thinking it was the lame off-brand competitor to the Ferris Bueller TV series (itself co-starring a young Jennifer Aniston). Then the Bueller series got only 13 episodes while Parker Lewis distinguished itself from it on every level. At a time when every other bit of teen fiction was fixated on Breakfast Club-style cliques, Parker Lewis centred around the friendship between a preppy, a "bad boy", and a nerd. And even the simplistic bully, the bratty younger sister, the tyrannical principal, and the crypto-fascist sycophant had rare touching moments of empathy. I rewatched a bit of the first season recently, and was pleasantly surprised how well it held up.

 

[KazeAizen]

I loved Clarissa but I think this article's trying too hard to develop a gaming theme from a show that treated it as a purely cosmetic thing.

I think that is the idea though. I should just be a cosmetic thing and this was the show that actually did it. Instead of making it a defining trait.

 

[The Deadpool]

You missed out. Clarissa was REALLY ahead of her time... She wasn't just a female game making lead. She was the original member of the PC Master Race...

Remember, she was the cool PC gamer. Her brother was the nerdy console gamer...

 

[Shjade]

I loved Clarissa but I think this article's trying too hard to develop a gaming theme from a show that treated it as a purely cosmetic thing.

That's actually sort of the point: the gaming theme in the show was definitely an important trait of the character, but it was also just a background detail, where usually if that aspect existed in a character it was the core of and only interesting thing about said character.

Sidenote: Clarissa was also pretty interesting just for the whole 'independent female lead' thing, which still isn't really super-common.

 

[CrazyGirl17]

Oh wow I remember that show! ...And boy do I feel old now. Anyone remember then Tween sitcoms weren't lame? Those were good times, weren't they?