Talk:A Christmas Tori/@comment-4818278-20120206032913

Well, this episode was the final nail in the coffin for me with Cat. I'm not sure if it was Dan or Ariana's doing, but they are simply trying way too hard with Cat. It's gotten so bad that she doesn't even have a normal speaking voice, instead sounding like this weird mix between yelling and sounding confused. Her intelligence has dropped to that of a newborn and is slowly becoming incapable of doing anything besides sitting there and looking pretty and her dialogue being comprised of nonsensical "This one time my brother" stories or just saying whatever the dumbest person in the world would say at that moment. And it really sucks because Cat was one of my original favorites back in Season 1. She was cute, aloof, and just had this enigma about her that you wanted to learn more about. Just looking at her just made me go "She's so cute, I wonder what goes on in her mind". Apparently we are supposed to believe it's"Hmm, I wonder how dumb I can possibly sound right now?"

I had hoped Dan would avoid this cliche, but I guess I was expecting too much. Every show that introduces a character as an oddball, but having the right idea is in time devolved into a moron incapable of common sense. Look at Patrick from Spongebob Squarepants. Initially he was Spongebob's odd yet somehow worldly neighbor who had answers to questions Spongebob couldn't answer himself. Now he is portrayed as a slight notch above mental retardation with simple thought being so complicated that it is compared to have an aneurism. And I'm afraid that is what Dan will eventually do with Cat. Have her so stupid that simply thinking would cause her brain to short out.

All I'm saying is scale it back and stop having her portrayed as a moron when she never was.

As for the episode. A few good things. I liked the idea of the main plot with them exchanging gifts to each other for Christmas. If I had to write a Victorious Christmas episode, I'd go with this route. But it's execution fell a bit flat though. I'll get into that soon though.

As for the subplots, I liked some but not others. In particular, I LOVED Beck's. Watching him hopped up on caffeine was hilarious and it was nice seeing him out of his comfort zone with him being erratic instead of chilled.

I didn't like Trina's, and most of that can be it attributed to lazy writing. It doesn't go anywhere in the episode and they might as well have cut it out. It mostly served as an excuse for Trina to be mean to Robbie and browbeat the "She may be mean to me, but she is so pretty and she may give me human contact" trope which is just really lame. It really seems they are trying to force the fact that Robbie is a loser there is barely anything separating him from the likes of Sinjin.

Jade was really nice in this episode, and I think I would have to attribute that to her playing off of Beck's role in this episode, being an ineffective calming agent for him. I liked the frisking scene in particular because it was oddly reminiscent of Carly frisking Sam in iSaved Your Life. I half-expected Tori to give Jade a swat on the butt as Carly did to Sam.

Now on to the plot, which is where my main distaste comes from. I felt it was particularly lame that Andre's song got an A simply because Tori put his teacher on the spot by singing it in front of the entire school. If Andre's song got a D, then it deserved a D. It doesn't simply become better just because Tori sang it and it was wrong of her to put his teacher on blast like that. We know Andre is a great singer, but not every song he writes is going to be hit and I expected Andre and everyone else to show some humility and maturity by accepting that. Instead he acts like a petulant child that didn't get what he wanted so he whines to his parents. And what Tori did is one of the many reasons I am starting to dislike her because it is slowly becoming "If you don't agree with me, I'm going to make you look like a jerk because I'm the main character" which is like another show Dan has written in the past *coughZoey101cough*

Summation: The main plot was lame and some of the subplots were really nice. Cat is slowly descending into idiocy and Tori is becoming a Queen Bee.