Andi Mack

***Andi Mack*** is an American comedy-drama television series created by Terri Minsky that premiered on Disney Channel on April 7, 2017. The series stars Peyton Elizabeth Lee, Joshua Rush, Sofia Wylie, Asher Angel, Lilan Bowden, and Lauren Tom.

## Plot

Andi Mack is turning 13 when her older sister Bex returns home. Andi works through her teenage life, with the help of her family and her friends Cyrus and Buffy, including coping with the revelation that Bex is actually her mother and that her mother Celia is actually her grandmother, and managing her crush on classmate Jonah Beck.

## Why Tomorrow Starts Today!

1. It was one of the best Live-Action Disney Channel sitcoms during the late 2010s.
2. It is one of the only Disney Channel shows that doesn't have a laugh track.
3. It has quite mature plotlines for a Disney show:
	* In the first episode, it was revealed that Andi's sister is actually her mother, as she got pregnant as a teenager.
	* In season 2, it was revealed that Cyrus Goodman is gay, and he has a crush on Jonah Beck.
	* Buffy's basketball teammate, TJ, has a learning disability and that is why he acts like a jerk.
4. Besides the fact that the show's premiere is about the effects of a past Teen Pregnancy affecting a family's life, the show also shows more mature themes then one would normally expect from Disney Channel, such as strained family relationships, LGBT themes, toxic/abusive relationships, learning disabilities, anxiety, panic attacks, having a parent in the military, guns, and possibly even mental illness. Yet it still manages to keep a "G" rating despite that.
5. The child actors are impeccable actors despite their age, as they portray their characters with tons of emotion and realism.
6. Realistic and relatable chemistry between the characters.
7. The theme song, "Tomorrow Starts Today" by Sabrina Carpenter is pretty catchy.
8. It has a diverse cast of characters: Andi has a Chinese mother and a Caucasian father, her best friend Buffy is black, and her other friend Cyrus is Jewish.
9. Plenty of heartwarming moments, such as when Cyrus comes out to Buffy, and she tells him that he's no different despite his sexual orientation.
10. It is the first Disney Channel show to have an LGBT protagonist: Cyrus Goodman. And the show accurately depicts it.
11. All of the characters are deep, flawed, and relatable and have their own personal struggles and arcs, such as Andi discovering that her sister is her mother, Cyrus coming out as gay, and Buffy dealing with a mom in the military.
12. It has some funny jokes, such as the running gag line: "hey, who wants pizza?"
13. Even mean characters like TJ and Amber are likable because they both have personal struggles: TJ has a learning disability and Amber's dad lost her job.
14. Ended Disney's dork age (along with Raven's Home, and DuckTales (2017 TV series)
15. *Mack Chat*, a series of segments where children discuss the events of the last episode, is very enjoyable and informative.
16. The final episode "We Were Here", where Andi got her family together fully, had a fun party with them, told her friends about her getting into SAVA, and had an emotional goodbye with all of them, and hangs two of her pictures with her friends inside the shack, which was heartwarming and was a good way to end the series.

## Bad Qualities

1. It can be boring occasionally.
2. It started to decline in season 2B and season 3 due to its storytelling it received mixed reception from audiences.
	* These seasons tackles too many plotlines at once, and even handles some of them poorly, including:
		+ Buffy moving away, but then she (spoilers) moves back to Shadyside.
		+ Cyrus telling Buffy that he doesn't have a crush on Jonah Beck, without telling him how he feels about him which many fans we're disappointed.
		+ Andi and Jonah's relationship.
		+ Walker feeling nothing more than a background character.
3. There are some occasional bad episodes.
4. Andi's personality started to become very shallow to the point of being an uninteresting character mostly during season 3.
5. Miranda, Morgan, and Kira are very unlikable.
6. Jonah never told Andi about his panic attacks *onscreen* which felt like a loose end that deserved to be tied up since that's the reason the two got back together in Season 2 and Andi chose him over Walker.
	* There was a text conversation where he tells her, but many felt this wasn't satisfying as not everyone is even aware of Andi's Texts.
7. Disney decided not renewed this show for a 4th season which is pretty disappointing because it had potential for extra storylines.
	* Conversely, fans of this series loathe *Gabby Duran & the Unsittables* for the exact same reasons. They're also resenting *Bunk'd* and *Raven's Home* for getting a season 4, later more because their show only got three seasons by comparison.

## Reception

The series has been praised for accurately representing the lives of young teenagers, with examples including a learning disability, panic attacks, a bar mitzvah, and the unplanned pregnancy of the mother of the title character. It has also been praised for normalizing the Asian-American experience as being diverse and multi-dimensional, and therefore normalizing diversity. It is the first series on Disney Channel to feature a gay main character, Cyrus Goodman, a distinction which has drawn considerable media attention and was reported in the news as being historic and groundbreaking. *Andi Mack* became the first series on Disney Channel in which a character has used the phrase "I'm gay", which occurs when Cyrus comes out to Jonah in "One in a Minyan".

Andi Mack Received a 7.4/10 on IMDB.