I am a long time fan of Miranda and her actress, Colleen Ballinger. She's an incredibly funny, talented woman and I've supported everything she's done wholeheartedly. However, if I'm going to be completely honest, this is probably one of the lowest quality shows I've ever seen. While the concept of the show is great, it fails terribly overall. The first episode opens with the main character, Miranda, creating her first YouTube video. It was familiar, just another Miranda Sings video like I've been watching for years. However, this moment of charm and nostalgia faded quickly. One of the biggest issues that this series has is that it is painfully unfunny. It has some rare humorous moments, but these are all too few and brief, such as one scene where Miranda tanks a Popsicle in about 20 seconds and then drops the remaining stick on the ground, all the while her best friend Patrick wistfully gazes at her supposed beauty. The series continued to be boring, over the top in the worst way, annoying, and illogically stupid. None of the characters possess any depth, the acting is okay to way too extreme, and it appeared that both the actors and script writers were trying way too hard. As Colleen has come from a YouTube background, the transition to television was one I believe she was not fully ready for. To my knowledge she was the primary writer, consultant, and actress on this series as well as her brother, Chris Ballinger. Possibly, her sibling caused some form of disruption in the writing process because he himself is not inside the head of Miranda. Colleen is truly the only person who knows how Miranda acts as well as her family members and friends. An alternative explanation could be that Colleen was incredibly overworked and was dealing with running three channels to which she consistently uploaded during this time, the TV show itself, moving to Canada away from her family, and her issues with her shoulder, which I know caused a lot of stress for her. Maybe all of these stressors were not helpful in the creation of "Haters Back Off," and impacted the script and production negatively. The only good performance in this entire series is from Colleen, although I have heard that some people are unhappy with her acting. I find this to be confusing because Colleen does a great job with this wacky character. She fully embodies this character. From her makeup, hair, clothing, facial expressions, voice, and even the way she walks. It takes true talent to transform yourself into the opposite of your real personality. However, placing this unique, funny, and insane character into an environment filled with other crazy, not well written characters was a horrible idea. The novelty of Miranda wears off due to these other unnecessary characters. I've always been very entertained by Miranda's videos on YouTube because she is with a normal person in all of her collaborations. The contrast here is what is funny. It highlights how truly weird, unreasonable, and hilarious Miranda as a character is compared to normal, everyday people in the YouTube community. Inserting Miranda into a group of other characters with their own unfunny quirks does not work in the slightest. My least favorite characters have to be Miranda's mother, Bethany, and her uncle, Jim. Bethany's subplot about her imaginary injury and cringe worthy love interest with a fetish for injured women was completely uncalled for and agonizingly unfunny. Every scene with her brought the show down a notch and made me feel uncomfortable. Jim was incredibly over the top and over dramatic in a very unhumorous way. He was obnoxious and overbearing. The formula of this show should have been that Miranda is the only odd character, everyone else is normal except for maybe one or two other people, and Miranda has bizarre adventures in the town she lives in. It could have even been a mockumentary style series in which the camera crew follows Miranda from her hometown to different YouTube conventions, meet and greets, and shows she's performing in. This would showcase her interactions with everyday people and other YouTubers who are perfectly normal, and would create the same hilarious contrast and atmosphere her videos have. There are some TV shows that feature a whole group of strange, out-there characters, like "the Office." But, that show was very well written and a lot of effort was put into making the characters work cohesively, all act naturally, and believe that everything they're doing is normal and correct. They play off of one another expertly, getting on each other's nerves, having arguments, creating friendships and relationships, and hitting people with cars. "The Office" works incredibly well because of all these reasons, including experienced actors and writers who understand what people will find funny and unfunny. These people were able to give their full attention to "the Office" and were able to craft a classic television series that people can watch over and over. In the case of "Haters Back Off," almost none of the positives previously listed are true. Colleen Ballinger is truly the only entertaining, funny person in this show, but she is consistently bogged down by everything and everyone else in the show that fails. If another season is to come out, I will give it a chance, and I will never stop watching Colleen or Miranda's videos. However, this series was definitely not for me.
Review of Haters Back Off!
