Much like the rest of the world, when Disney+ dropped, I immediately cashed in my free one year subscription using my Verizon account and dove into the nostalgic adventure that awaited. My generation had been begging Disney for years to give us access to all the movies and series of our past, and we finally got it.
I was overwhelmed by all the possibilities. The first few months of my subscription, I went back and forth between all of my favorite shows like “The Suite Life of Zack & Cody,” “The Suite Life on Deck,” “That’s So Raven,” “Hannah Montana,” “Lizzie McGuire” and “Wizards of Waverly Place.” I even watched a few of my favorite Disney Channel Original Movies and peeked at a few of their new series on the platform as well. But nothing was hitting like I thought it would.
I’m a big binge watcher. I love to binge a series and watch every season start to finish in a month or two, and I’ve even powered through some of my favorites more than once, like “The Vampire Diaries” and “One Tree Hill” (are you cringing yet). However, I was disappointed in the lack of binge-worthiness my old favorite childhood shows provided. Perhaps these shows were not intended for a 22-year-old college senior, but my nostalgic and melancholy self did not want that to be the answer.
I still wanted to enjoy these shows, but binging was not working out. My solution was to figure out which episodes and plot lines in these series were the most important and impactful for me, and I would watch only those instead of the entire series. This scenario has worked out well and most recently I stumbled upon the greatest television collaboration of all time – “That’s So Suite Life of Hannah Montana.”
As I was reflecting on what I wanted to watch next, I remembered an event in my childhood that really impacted the way my generation viewed the entertainment industry as a whole. This was the merging together of every 2006 fourth grader’s favorite shows into a three part miniseries featuring “That So Raven,” “The Suite Life of Zack & Cody” and “Hannah Montana.”
Remembering this transcendent collaboration brought back that giddiness I felt when it was first announced in 2006. And this time, I didn’t have to wait a week to see it! Or watch any commercials! All I had to do was find the corresponding episode from each series and watch.
So for the next couple of hours, I went back to fourth grade and watched my favorite stars interact with one another on TV. Unlike when I was actually in fourth grade, I have a better understanding now of how Hollywood and life works.
As a fourth grader, seeing my favorite characters on the same show was embarrassingly the most exciting event to happen in my life. I really believed that these people were my best friends and they were all finally going to meet and hopefully also become best friends. This was my fourth grade dream.
Now watching, I see Dylan and Cole Sprouse acting on set with Raven Symone and Miley Cyrus, who’ve all probably met on multiple occasions before filming this collab and have most certainly met many times since. Not only that, but these people are totally opposite of who they were when this was filmed. Cyrus is not even close to being Hannah anymore, Symone makes some outrageous claims on occasion and Cole Sprouse ditched his blonde Bieber locks for jet black hair and a Jughead Jones Beanie.
This forces me to realize that perhaps the problem is that I am a 22-year-old college senior, and I know too much about the real world to see the magic in a basic plot-line that is wrapped up within 20 minutes of dialogue. As much as it pains me to say it, the old Disney Channel shows I so dearly loved and wanted back in my life aren’t fulfilling anymore.
Which begs the question, did my generation waste our time begging Disney to release these series that have no shot at impacting us the way they did when we were kids?
I guess the answer to that question really depends on the person. Despite not getting the same experience watching those shows as I did when I was 10, watching them from a new perspective brings a whole new meaning.
Watching these stars at the beginning of their career, who since have gone through many transitions and different phases, puts life into perspective a little bit. Just like Cyrus, Symone and Sprouse, I am not the same as I was nearly 15 years ago, but reflecting on these parts of my youth reminds me of my growth.
Graphic by Maggie Exum
