Knight Squad
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Knight Squad is an American comedy television series created by Sean Cunningham and Marc Dworkin. The series first aired on Nickelodeon as a sneak peek on February 19, 2018, before its official premiere on February 24, 2018. The series stars Owen Joyner, Daniella Perkins, Lilimar, Lexi DiBenedetto, Amarr M. Wooten, Savannah May, and Kelly Perine. This show aired its series finale on April 20, 2019.
Plot
The young and fearless of Astoria have only one place to go so that they can train to become elite warriors - Knight School. Ciara is a fierce star student who is hiding a colossal secret: she is paired with cocky new kid Arc, who seems to be hiding a secret of his own. They pair up to become legendary knights. Their team wants to outshine the other schools' squads, hoping to represent the magical land of Astoria in battle. The way is fraught with powerful beasts and magic spells that might just make the task harder than originally thought.
Why It Isn't Knighting (No Pun Intended)
- The characters are all just one-note, cliché stock sitcom characters that you've probably seen a million times before:
- Arc is of course, the worst character. He cheated and lied his way into knight school, and the only person he knows is Ciara, which makes him very unlikable.
- Ciara is "strong female character" who's rarely portrayed as being in the wrong.
- In addition to that, it's also made clear that she's actually the princess of Astoria, and "Ciara" is an alter-ego/disguise she created to sneak off into knight school against her father's wishes due to feeling overwhelmed with princess duties... except we barely spend any time with her as the princess specifically (as she's usually in her Ciara form), to the point where we never even learn her real name: Princess ???. These tidbits likely would have aided her character and made her a bit more relatable.
- Warwick is your typical "loser" character that everyone likes to tease and bully for no explainable reason.
- Sage is yet another mean popular girl character who wants to beat the protagonists.
- Buttercup is incredibly annoying and she is yet another dumb blonde assistant to the mean girl.
- Similar to Cat Valentine from seasons 3 and 4 of Victorious her voice can get very grating to hear.
- The King of Astoria (aka the Princess/Ciara's father) is portrayed as little more than an immature man-child, who despite ultimately wanting to protect his daughter, doesn't get portrayed realistically enough to be relatable to teens or adults.
- The acting for some of the characters isn't that good, especially Buttercup, who is very annoying, obnoxious, and severely overacts.
- It uses the same formula as That's So Raven, Hannah Montana, Wizards of Waverly Place, Dog with a Blog, The Thundermans, and Henry Danger, which are other shows about teens who have big secrets to hide (except Dog with a Blog is with a dog). Here, Arc is hiding the secret that he cheated his way into knight school and Ciara is hiding the secret that she is a princess, which is completely generic and clichéd, just like a lot of kids shows and movies.
- Wasted characters: There are three squads for Knight School, each with four members: Phoenix Squad, Kraken Squad, and Unicorn Squad. And yet despite this, only Phoenix and Kraken Squad ever get significant focus, with Unicorn Squad basically being background characters, and never getting any episodes focusing on them. Even within Kraken Squad, only Sage and Buttercup play noteworthy roles on the show, whereas the other two members (Kraipan, Lucky) mostly just follow them around and rarely even speak.
- It even had a crossover with Henry Danger, which took place after the 1-hour season 1 finale, "End of the Knight".
- In fact it wasn't even a crossover with the original idea being a 2-parter that was scrapped.
- Terrible soundtrack that doesn't even sound medieval. A prime example is the theme song, which is an incredibly bland pop song. Luckily, it got shortened a bit later to an introduction of Arc and Ciara later in the second season.
- The humor is extremely cheap, with toilet humor and uncalled for mean-spiritedness.
- As with many of the modern Disney and Nickelodeon sitcoms, the laugh track plays after almost every line.
- Laughable and/or disturbing dialogue, such as "My butt's gonna love that!"
- Terrible morals. For example, if you lie and cheat, you can easily get into prestigious academies.
- Arc and Ciara have very bland "belligerent sexual tension" with each other.
- One episode has a stereotypical "two people who hate each other get stuck together" plot.
- The stage set-up and some of its props are cheap and unbelieving. While this is excusable if it was used for an occasional episode, it's used all the time in this show.
- Prudence and her special effects are awful.
- Warwick's spells are very generic.
Redeeming Qualities
- The concept is great, but it was executed poorly.
- The two-part season one finale "End of The Knight" is decent.
- Above average writing.
- There are some decent characters, like Sir Gareth.
- Ciara can be pretty relatable. If you had an overprotective father, wouldn't you try and sneak out?
- The season 2 opening displays an opening by Arc and Ciara's point of view, which is a better way to open the show.
- In "Two Wrongs Don't Make A Knight", it's finally revealed that Sage isn't as mean as people say she is, and the Phoenix Squad actually learns their lesson instead of rubbing it off like they usually do.
- The theme song, in spite of being bland, is somewhat decent.
- Some good episodes like "Closing Knight" (which was a very touching episode and an excellent way to close the series).
Reception
Knight Squad, despite having a 5.4 on IMDb, was critically panned by viewers and audiences alike.
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