Still Proud After All These Years: 'The Proud Family' Reboot Recaptures The Magic of The Original Series
We know, we know, everybody's sick of hearing about new reboots. "This one didn't live up to the original," "This one went totally off the rails," "This one featured an actor that we quickly realized should have stayed in the past," et cetera.
But guys, the reboot of The Proud Family - titled The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder - is really, really good.
I will admit: I was only a casual watcher of the original show. I knew the characters well enough, and I loved to laugh at the antics of the twins and Suga Mama, but I couldn't tell you the personal histories of the characters. I remember liking it every time it came on, though, because Penny's situations always felt like they were somehow a little Realer than the ones I'd see on other shows where adults tried to relate to kids - the actual circumstances were usually insane, but despite that, all the conclusions felt like real lessons that weren't just adult writers talking down to me.
Now, being a grown-up myself (unfortunately), I can't know whether the tweens this show is trying to talk to will feel pandered to - but having seen just one episode, it doesn't seem like they will.
The episode was even about tricky subject matter: social media and influence, a topic that, historically, adults have struggled to keep up with enough to get right in a kids' show. But we may be at a point now where we have actually learned enough about the power of social media to understand the real dangers ourselves and explain them to kids (rather than what those older than us did, which was, for the most part, to just kinda blindly freak out). It might just be a rehashing of what we learned in Mean Girls, but given the way that phones and Facebook have become integral to those dynamics, it was definitely a rehash worth doing.
In this first episode, Penny - who, though not technically aged-up at all from the original series (in fact, aged DOWN from where we last saw her, turning 16 in The Proud Family Movie in 2005), kind of looks aged-up a little - gets annoyed with the financial hoops that her friends are jumping through to meet some new influencer named Makeup Boy at the mall.
Finally fed up, Penny decides to show her friends that anyone can become famous for anything by making a funny viral video herself - but when it works and she gets a taste of that power, she finds herself transformed into an influencer herself, with the power to cancel anything just by saying she doesn't like it.
Eventually, Penny gets a taste of her own medicine - from a new character, at that, and a really cool one. Maya Lebowitz-Jenkins, voiced by Keke Palmer, is the stoic, straight-talking girl who makes low-effort look as cool as can be, and I love the way she makes her entrance in this episode: Calm and sure of herself, she holds up a mirror to Penny as if to say "do better" by making herself Cancel Queen and having Penny canceled for being a sell-out.
The show also feels like a good reboot because they've returned to their classic tropes. Suga Mama gets thrown out and comes back to whoop Oscar's butt for it; Oscar has one of those dreamlike self-indulgent flashbacks when trying to teach Penny something; BeBe and CeCe (despite being a little older) still don't say a word. They kept pretty much everything that made it good - they just sorta put it all in a time machine and brought it into the year 2022.
The Proud Family reboot has somehow managed to recapture the same magic as the original series. Adults who grew up with it shouldn't expect it to be a show for them now - it's definitely still for the kids, and is trying to teach lessons that would be relevant to them now - but any parent watching with their kid is going to have a great time, and anyone watching for the nostalgia will definitely feel right at home again - just aware that they've aged.
