And now I can tell them apart!

I just watched a bunch of episodes of JONAS, the Jonas Brothers' Disney TV show. (I was going to watch the episodes of Gossip Girl I had on my DVR, but it turns out I either erased the second or it never recorded, and I was too lazy to get up to see what happened that episode. Anyway. I'm not sure that story helped your opinion of (a) my taste in television or (b) my lifestyle in general.) Anyway, I found myself analyzing the show and comparing the brothers to the Monkees, which is a bit tricky, because there are only three Jonas Brothers and four Monkees. Then I was like, "I should watch a bunch of episodes of The Partridge Family and find other sitcoms about 'famous' musicians and compare!" What can I say? It's Friday night. My brain is fried. But my laziness prevailed. Yet I'm going to share my impressions of the show with you anyway. Sorry!

I wasn't terribly impressed with their music. It was OK, I guess. I kept getting the songs mixed up, to the point that I was convinced that the first two episodes I watched kept using the same song over and over--like, it was the title song, and the songs in the episode. I will say, though, that compared with the Monkees, they have way fewer songs in their show. I mean, some of the episodes didn't have any. That may be because the Jonas Brothers were already a hit before the show started; they don't need to promote their music on their show. Plus, it seems that bands today put out music a lot less than they did in the 1960s. So I don't know. I can't imagine going to see these boys in concert, but they weren't, you know, bad.

They are, however, charming, and act fairly well. I've decided that Kevin, whom I think is the oldest (...yes, Wikipedia confirms this), is the Peter Tork of the group. Frequent jokes are made at his expense, though he is, of course, good-hearted and sweet. Nick, the youngest, appears to be the Michael Nesmith--he has the understated humor and from what I can tell, is the brains of the group. Joe is the Davy Jones; he's the heartthrob and seems to be the lead and has the romantic storylines.

Which makes no sense to me. Nick is way cuter, and is the smart one and the one who writes the songs (...in the show at least) and is the one who actually got them started. Plus, again, cutest. And by that, I mean he has, by far, the best hair. Joe really just needs to get his out of his face.

I will give the show credit for its writing. The plots are actually somewhat interesting, if not incredibly unconventional, but there are a lot of little jokes in the show that I liked. (For example, someone mentioned manatees, and Kevin started to sing about manatees. Also, to show that Joe wasn't a jerk, Nick said he'd show that Joe was "panda-loving.") (These were possibly funnier on the show than as written here.) So, credit for that.

Also, credit for the fact that the show isn't on the Disney Channel all the time. I think it comes on maybe once a week; at least, that's what a cursory look at my DVR listings showed me. I happened to catch a marathon. (Which I DVR'd. Don't judge me!) I get the feeling that even though Disney helped propel them, they've managed to retain some control--and good for them.

What I would like to compare with other shows is the handling of the group's fans. In the Monkees, it wasn't an issue, because they were portrayed as being a struggling band--they didn't have fans. But what did the Partridge Family do? In JONAS, there are screaming fans all over the place...when it suits them. They're not horrible about it, but it does jar a person to watch an episode about how the boys are all crushing on the pizza delivery girl, and so going to the door all the time without any noticeable screaming, then to see an episode in which in they can't take out the trash because the screaming girls will take them down.

But that sounds all efforty. And I really don't need to devote any more time or energy into comparing teenybopper rock band sitcoms.