Lizzie McGuire

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Lizzie McGuire was a popular American children's television series aired on the Disney Channel from 2001 to 2004. Its target demographic was preteens and teenagers. The TV show was created by Terri Minsky. The show's creatively offbeat, mixed media format stood out from the rest of the Disney Channel's programming - and in essence, became the channel's flagship show of its time, and a definitive show of the early 2000s. The show's producer Stan Rogow says the visual look of the show was partly inspired by Run Lola Run.

Contents

1 Characters

1.1 Animated Lizzie

2 Synopsis
3 Spin-offs
4 Trivia
5 Merchandising
6 Fan fiction
7 References to this show elsewhere
8 The Lizzie McGuire Movie
9 Episodes
10 Music
11 External links

Characters

[Spoiler warningSpoiler warning]: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Elizabeth Brooke "Lizzie" McGuire (Hilary Duff) is a fashion-conscious seventh grader, and an eighth grader in the second season. She deals with everyday issues, such as what to wear to make Ethan Craft notice her, or how to deal with enemies like Kate.
Animated Lizzie (voiced by Duff) — also known as Toon Lizzie or Cartoon Lizzie — represents Lizzie's psyche.
David Zephyr "Gordo" Gordon (Adam Lamberg) is Lizzie's best friend since she was one day old. Usually, he offers sarcasm and good advice. He is very intelligent and always gets good grades. He is also revealed to be of the Jewish faith as shown in one episode where he has a Bar Mitzvah.
Miranda Isabella Sanchez (Lalaine) is Lizzie's other best friend who rounds out the main triumvirate. She's also the rebel of the three. But in the end, Lizzie's always there to have her back. She does not appear in the last six episodes of the show, or in the Lizzie McGuire Movie.
Matt McGuire (Jake Thomas) is Lizzie's younger brother. As a stock character, he often is destroying something, and has a best friend named Lanny, who doesn't talk (on screen). Matt is clever and wily, and has a bad reputation for getting into trouble.
Sam McGuire (Robert Carradine) is Lizzie's father. He's goofy and tries to make everyone feel better.
Jo McGuire (Hallie Todd) is Lizzie's mother. She's always trying to make Lizzie's life better but the results come out as trying to make Lizzie's life worse (to her) and far more embarrassing.
Kate Sanders (Ashlie Brillault), the most popular girl in Lizzie's school. Once one of Lizzie's best friends, Kate became Lizzie's enemy after she became popular because she got a bra after summer camp was over. Kate likes trying to make Lizzie's life impossible to live, but Lizzie always manages to outsmart Kate and always comes out on top.
Ethan Craft (Clayton Snyder) is the guy that Lizzie, Miranda, and the rest of the girls at school have a huge crush on. He's not so bright but he's kind and friendly to everyone. In Season 1, he was portrayed as more of The Bad Boy. For example, he used to force Gordo do things against his will.

Animated Lizzie

Animated Lizzie holding a globe

Animated Lizzie is an animated character in the show. It represents the title character's inner thoughts, addressing the audience directly in the manner of a Greek chorus. The show wasn't the first series to use animation to reflect a live-action character's innermost thoughts, however; Student Bodies, a syndicated program about the struggles of a cartoonist for a school newspaper, often used the artist's surrealistic caricatures of himself and his friends to visually illustrate his interior monologues. Animated Lizzie is also voiced by series star Hilary Duff.

Synopsis

As the title would suggest, the show is about Lizzie McGuire and her middle school adventures with her two best friends, Miranda and Gordo. Their adventures range from light humor topics such as dealing with crazy teachers to serious issues such as anorexia. While the show usually depicts a rather equal relationship between the threesome, Lizzie and Gordo have always felt a certain attraction towards each other. However, since they have known each other for their entire lives (since Lizzie was one day old, according to her voiceover in the pilot episode), they prefer to keep their relationship at a friendship level. However in the last season Gordo finally admits to liking Lizzie, in which Lizzie responds with a kiss.

The show often has a subplot involving Matt, and his friends Lanny Onasis (Christian Copelin), and Melina Bianco (Carly Schroeder). Lanny is something of Matt's sidekick, and is never heard to speak as part of a running gag. Melina is less of a friend, and is constantly critical of Matt. Towards the end of the season, however, she became Matt's girlfriend.

The show has had many special guest appearances, among them Aaron Carter, Frankie Muniz, David Carradine, Doris Roberts, Shelley Berman, Steven Tyler, Erik Estrada and Haylie Duff, Hilary 's sister.

At the end of the show (or during the squeeze credits in the US), there is always a bloopers section, where even Cartoon Lizzie's bloopers are shown. (There are two episodes without a blooper ending: "Pool Party" and "Between a Rock and a Bra Place".)

Spin-offs

A movie based on the show, The Lizzie McGuire Movie, was released on May 3, 2003. It was second at the box office in its opening week.

The show was cancelled after 65 episodes, which is reportedly Disney policy for all of its series (though there have been exceptions). Re-runs of Lizzie McGuire in the following season interestingly received higher ratings than any of the new shows that season. Also, Duff's representatives have said she wasn't getting paid enough for a proposed spin-off taking Lizzie into High School on ABC. It is said that Duff's mother was impossible to deal with, demanding huge increases in pay from the original episodes. Reruns will air starting in Fall 2006 on syndication, usually twice a day depending on the station.

There have also reportedly been proposed plans to launch a cartoon series based on Lizzie's animated alter ego, but no such thing appears to be under development at the present time.

It was announced in Late May that Superstation WGN will carry Lizzie McGuire and Even Stevens in Syndication beginning in fall that is a superstation in most cable or satellite services

Trivia

Adam Lamberg, the actor that plays Gordo, is three years older than Duff and Lalaine, though his character on the show is the same age as the two of them.
Lalaine, the actress who played Miranda, stopped appearing on the show towards the end of the final series. Rumor has it that she began concentrating on her music career and left the show. Miranda, however, was still mentioned in the show storylines as being on vacation in Mexico or "out sick" even though she never was on the screen.
In the episode When Moms Attack, the teams are Tagi and Pagong. These are the same team names as the tribes in .
There is a montage in every episode.
Danny Kessler, whose family owns a water park, plays an Ethan Kraft type character in the first several episodes but is never seen again, although he was mentioned later in the episode "My Fair Larry".

Merchandising

The character of Lizzie continues to be merchandised by Disney (see Lizzie McGuire books), especially through a large set of books, which include novelizations of the episodes, original Nancy Drew-style mystery stories in the Lizzie McGuire Mysteries series, and "Cine-manga" pictorial adaptations (published by TOKYOPOP) with still shots from the show presented in manga style. A Lizzie McGuire doll was even released in 2002 by Dakin Toys. The 10" doll featured many of Lizzie's outfits for the doll. A plush doll of the Cartoon Lizzie was also made by Dakin in 2002. Fortune magazine estimated in 2003 that "Lizzie McGuire" merchandise had earned the Walt Disney Co. nearly $100 million. Radio Disney continually promotes Lizzie McGuire and regularly (although not as often as when the show was still running) gives away the show's CD in giveaways.

Several home video and DVD versions of the show have been released in various countries. In the United States, some thematic episode collections were first released, and later a DVD box set consisting of 22 episodes from the first season (mostly, but not entirely, corresponding to the first 22 episodes in production order). This is designated as "Volume 1", but no current plans are known for the release of volumes 2 and 3 of the series, and poor sales of the first box set may prevent further releases. As of (April 2006), a box set of 12 DVDs with all the 65 episodes of the show is available in Spain, and box sets (grouped into three 22-episode "seasons") are available in Australia and the UK.

Lizzie-themed toys were included in a 2004 McDonald's Happy Meal series, which included CD-ROM discs containing Lizzie-related games and graphics and audio versions of "Lizzie" (not voiced by Duff) reading stories based on episode plots of her show.

There is also a Lizzie McGuire bedroom set offered by some furniture stores as one of several Disney-themed children's bedrooms, and a What Would Lizzie Do? board game where players must judge Lizzie's likely response to various situations. Three Lizzie McGuire video games have been released for the Game Boy Advance: Lizzie McGuire: On the Go (2003), Lizzie McGuire 2: Lizzie Diaries (2004), and Lizzie McGuire 3: Homecoming Havoc (2005).

Fan fiction

Lizzie McGuire has been the subject of many fan fiction stories which can be found on FanFiction.Net [link] and other sites. Most Lizzie fan fiction stories center on the relationships between the characters. The Lizzie-Gordo romance is a common fanfic topic, but other pairings of the major and minor characters can be found, including Lizzie-Ethan, Miranda-Gordo, Miranda-Matt, Miranda-Larry, Kate-Ethan, etc, and even some more taboo ones, such as Lizzie-Miranda, Gordo-Ethan and Lizzie-Matt. Some stories continue right where the show left off, taking Lizzie and her friends into high school, while others take place far enough in the future that they center on the marriages, children, and careers of adult versions of the characters.

References to this show elsewhere

In an episode of The Simpsons ("Milhouse of Sand and Fog", 2005), Milhouse uses the exclamation "Sweet Lizzie McGuire!"

In an earlier episode, "Co-Dependent's Day", Homer and Marge watch The Lizzie McGuire Movie while on a drunken toot and come away from the theater looking quite disturbed.

In an episode of Will and Grace, Will makes a reference to Grace having wanted to see The Lizzie McGuire Movie.

In Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog's song "I Keed, I Keed", there's a reference to Fred Durst checking out the cast of Lizzie McGuire. ("And yet you're too old for Fred Durst to desire, He's checking out the cast of 'Lizzie McGuire' ")

The Animated Lizzie was spoofed in an episode of Robot Chicken.

The Lizzie McGuire Movie

See separate article on The Lizzie McGuire Movie.

Episodes

Music

See Lizzie McGuire discography.

External links

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