"Sonny With a Chance" [Marmel, 2009] Season 1 [Feb.- Aug. '09]

No, not your typical 21st-century Disney Channel sitcom-- this one is about two TV shows, one sketch-comedy, one drama, both immensely popular, both being filmed in the same studio. New D.C. creature Demi Lovato, having followed first Hannah Montana, then Miley Cyrus' footsteps by becoming a pop musician, stars in the show as a character on the sketch-comedy, "So Random." Obviously enough, her character's name is Sonny [Munroe]. This show still has some obvious appeal beyond most of its D.C. sitcom kin, and I think that that would be that it is much more conceptually exuberant and self-reflexive in its aura (or whatever) than SLofZ&C, Hannah Montana [the TV show], or, I don't know, Wizards of Waverly Place. It is also a little bit less uncomfortably humorless, which helps too. Otherwise, though, besides the fact that it is new, it's pretty much an ordinary member of its aforementioned category, which is most definitely a bad thing. Grade: B MINUS