What I Like About You – The Complete First Season

What I Like About You
The Complete First Season
Amanda Byrnes, Jennie Garth, Wesley Jonathan
Originally Aired WB Network 2002-2003
3 DVDs 22 Shows
Warner Home Video 2007

What I Like About You is a tailor made for a target audience situation comedy that works. It is easy to imagine a bunch of WB network ties having a meeting to create a sitcom that would attract teen girls and young women in their twenties to get that particular demographic. Fortunately, though What I Like About You The Complete First Season is not a television classic and did not reach the magic 100^th episode needed for syndication, this is a light, bubbly, cute in a nice way little show. This is your basic chick flick as a situation comedy.

The premise of What I Like About You is sixteen year old Holly, Amanda Bynes, moves into her big sister’s apartment when dad gets transferred to Japan. This creates many situations for girl talk, sibling rivalry, family squabbles, and goofy situations. Jennie Garth plays big sister Val and she is quite good at playing the young urban professional in her early twenties big sister. Rounding out the cast are Simon Rex who plays Val’s beau Jeff in the first few episodes of The Complete First Season, and Wesley Jonathan as Holly’s guy best friend.

What I liked best about this situation comedy in its first season is that it doesn’t go for dumb. Both Val and Holly are interesting women with a brain. The guys are goofy but TV guys are always goofy, especially in sitcoms where women rule. If you are a guy watching What I Like About You with your girlfriend (and even if this is a fun little sitcom it’s kind of hard to figure out why you would otherwise) the advantage is they do not get into too many situations where you have to explain, err, apologize for, the male gender.

As a matter of fact, the guys in this situation comedy are pretty nice guys who do what is right for their girlfriend. So What I Like About You The Complete First Season is a safe bet for couple’s night in front of the TV.

Particularly enjoyable in The Complete First Season 4 DVD 22 episode set of What I Like About You are the Thanksgiving episode where the girls decide to have their own celebration and the guys go shopping for the ultimate turkey and the episode where Jeff’s ex reappears. I especially enjoyed Holly’s First Job where Holly works at Jeff’s restaurant; it was funny and original in its disaster gags.

What I Like About You The Complete First Season is a pleasant, light and fluffy sitcom that manages to be cute without insulting the viewer’s intelligence. For a cookie cutter show, this is quite rare.

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