Braceface

My brother and I really enjoyed Braceface for a lot of reasons. One reason was that we were at the perfect age to appreciate the embarrassing, yet normal life of Sharon Spitz. Maybe we related to Sharon because her mom, like our mom, was a therapist. Maybe we liked the fact that Sharon’s brother was abnormally tall, and my brother was abnormally tall. It all just made so much sense for us. Oh and it had a really catchy theme song which never hurts.

In the first episode of the first season Sharon finds out that she has to get braces. She’s in middle school which is kind of a late time to get braces, but at least she won’t have adult braces which we all know is disgusting (no offense to those of you who have braces as adults, but seriously yikes). Anyway, Sharon’s life is pretty much over because the guy that she likes, Alden, asked her to the dance and then she had to get metal put on her teeth. Also, her name is Sharon…sooo she already had a strike against her.

The thing is, her teeth were perfectly straight. Like, her dentist, Dr. Hurtz, should be dis-barred or dis-dentisted or whatever. He shouldn’t be able to practice dentistry is what I’m trying to say. Why give people braces when they don’t need them? At least offer them Invisaline or a night time retainer for simple correction. WHY AM I A BETTER DENTIST THAN HE IS?

Luckily, Sharon has a great support group of two friends (which is 2 more friends than anyone reading this post has) Maria Wong, and Connor Something. I don’t know Connor’s last name ( actually I do, I just Wikipedia’d it.) and it’s not important. Okay fine, it’s MacKenzie. Connor is the nerdy, allergic type. He’s a smart, nice, reliable friend. He’s also really pale which is kind of alarming. Maria Wong is Asian and outgoing and sporty and kind of annoying.

Sharon’s rival at school is Nina Harper. She has long red hair and she’s actually really mean and horrible to Sharon which made her an excellent character. I hate when bullies aren’t mean enough, ya know? Who wants a wimpy bully?

Sharon, voiced by Alicia Silverstone, has a never ending love for Alden Jones. He’s nice, kind of boring, and really cute. Eventually he and Sharon start dating but then I think they break up in one of the later seasons. Nina also likes Alden and tries to steal him away from Sharon a lot of the time. Which is annoying and it gets old.

One of the best things about Sharon is that her family has 5 pets. Awesome right? She also has two brothers. Adam, the older brother is technically a giant, I think. And her younger brother Josh is some kind of piano genius. I think he’s voiced by Michael Cera which is really weird and random. This was definitely pre-Arrested Development.

The theme of the show is basically that Sharon’s life becomes harder because of her braces. I think her braces have some sort of electric energy running through them, which sounds super painful. Sometimes she can pick up radio signals and cell phone signals through the metal and hear people talking about her. Of course she only picks up convos that have to do with her. Convenient. 

It’s a good show but Alicia Silverstone stopped doing the voice for Sharon after the first two seasons which is lame. Remember when Disney took over Doug and changed the voices? Scarring. So I basically stopped watching once things changed. Also, every episode is pretty much the same. The show does teach us, however, that braces are the worst and you’re automatically gross once you have them.

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