BW Media Spotlight

I wasn’t planning on this being a two-part article, but when you go past 3000 words you kind of have to stop for the good of the readers. Luckily I noticed the word count at a good break count.

In part one of this look at the leaked pitch for Recess: Next Bell, a “next generation” sequel to the Saturday morning favorite Recess, which spawned a movie and at least one video game, we looked at that next generation of kids trying to make recess fun. The only red flags really came from what Disney does these days, with forced stereotype “representation” and “mary sue girlbosses” being the norm. For the most part, though, it’s only that history that made made the red flags stand out. The new kids had potential to reach a new audience as well as the old audience who followed the adventures of their forbearers, with only minor bit of the “modern audience” nonsense.

That changes this half of the pitch.

In that first part’s intro, I mentioned that ” everything wrong with modern Disney kids shows and writing in general even among acquired properties like Star Wars and Marvel is on display in this pitch” but the only hints were the mean girls getting mean boys and mean non-binaries as part of their group and mentions of #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, and the modern LGBT+ activists being influences on the stories they planned to tell. How #MeToo works into a show for kids about a bunch of fourth graders at recess I probably don’t want to know, but the other two have been on display in other Disney works. It’s the treatment of the original cast that confuses me.

In this next section we’ll see a fallen hero, because they love doing that, two comings out, and a dead body. Remember, Paul Germain and Joe Ansolabehere have their names on this pitch, so this is what they planned to do to characters they created, fans loved as kids, and you have to wonder if this show would have been all that well received by those parents they wanted to introduce their kids to this show.

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Full disclosure before we start. I didn’t really get into Disney’s Recess. I’ve seen a few episodes and I know the basic premise: a group of kids try to have fun despite the strict rules of the principal and one of the teachers. Both sides at times have a good point. The playground at recess, where most of the show takes place, has a silly assortment of cliques from the supposed king, to the kids who like to dig, to the “feral” kindergarteners. The show aired on ABC for six seasons, as part of both Disney’s “One Saturday Morning” block (as well as UPN’s “One Two” block) and ABC Kids. I thought it was okay, but not really my thing.

Still, the adventures of TJ, Spinelli, Vince, Gus, Gretchen, and Mikey were quite popular. Six is a lot of seasons for Saturday morning shows, and it had fans internationally. So it’s not surprising that series creators Paul Germain and Joe Ansolabehere (apparently that IS his last name) would want to do a “next generation” type show. It worked for Star Trek and Saved By The Bell, so why not? Lost Media Busters on X-Twitter apparently found the pitch bible for Recess: Next Bell, and while the original post appears to be taken down for whatever reason, I don’t see any notations that they learned it was fake, so at least for now we’re going on the assumption that this was a real attempt to go back to Third Street School for new adventures with new kids. Even if it isn’t, everything wrong with modern Disney kids shows and writing in general even among acquired properties like Star Wars and Marvel is on display in this pitch, and I’m kind of surprised the same creators worked on it, because my limited exposure says this doesn’t make any sense. I’m hoping any big Recess fans in the readership can explain some of this since this does not look like a good showing for these characters or their replacements.

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