So thanks to one of my best friends, I have Disney+ access and decided to go back and rewatch all the classics show I watched as a kid. First up was That’s So Raven. I wrote before on her new show, Raven’s Home, that stars her kids, Booker and Nia (no Raven-Symone’s kids because she doesn’t have kids but Raven Baxter’s kids), alongside Chelsea’s son Levi and their next door neighbor Tess. I watch this show with my goddaughter all the time. That’s So Raven is where the madness all started.
Even as a child, I can say that I’ve watched Raven-Symone since she was a child because she was in all the things I watched as a child. The Cosby Show, Hangin’ with Mr. Cooper, Dr. Dolittle, Zenon, Kim Possible and the list goes ON. So it’s fair to say that Raven has been a stable in the lives of all 90’s kids. She had everything but her own show and that’s when Disney stepped in and said, “We got you.”
That’s So Raven puts us in the chaos that is Raven Baxter. You see, Raven is a loving daughter and friend who loves making fun of or tormenting her little brother. Did I mention her psychic ability? That she can see the future and that usually is the catalyst for her troubles throughout this show? No? My bad.
I remember watching this show and imagining having psychic powers that would work effectively. All I had was a case of overactive deja vu, which is weird enough. What I could never understand is how she was never able to have a handle on reacting to what she saw. You would think after a time that she would think more before she reacted to her visions but then we wouldn’t have a show.
Rondell Sheridan and T’keyah Crystal Keymah play her parents, one of which I shouldn’t have been able to identify because of my age. If you recall, Rondell Sheridan also played a father in one of my favorite shows, Cousin Skeeter. Keymah was one of the original cast members of In Living Color. Her best friends and partners in crime were played by Orlando Brown and Anneliese van der Pol as Eddie and Chelsea respectively. You know what I love about this show? They played to the strengths of the person who played the character instead of making them fit a character they created. In one of the episodes, Keymah’s character got to sub for one of Raven’s classes and she did her own version of Romeo and Juliet where she did new-age, early 2000’s voices for these centuries old characters. Brown and van der Pol are great performers, like Raven, and they incorporate that into the show and their characters a lot. Brown plays basketball in school, there is an episode where he fights his bullies with a rap with a line for each of them and I believe there is a musical episode where van der Pol gets to sing.
Everyone in this show seem like they weren’t casted to be together but they were already a family and someone decided to make a show around that. Kyle Massey played her brother and he was genuinely the most annoying little brother who, naturally, had a crush on Chelsea. We had fun with this show but we also got some life lessons about being yourself, never giving up and making decisions. Decisions were the hardest thing for Ray. One of the episodes dealt with Raven accepting a date from two different men, one that smelled and one she thought was the man of her dreams. She thought she was doing Ben, the one that smelled, a favor by going out with him because he was a nice guy, just not for her, but it turns out the guy of her dreams only went out with her out of pity. Sound familiar?
Sometimes she didn’t always make the right decision but she always tried her best to either make the best of her decision or to fix it. Catch That’s So Raven now on Disney+ because I know you haven’t seen it in forever!
BLACK WATCH 