Jessie

For years, the Disney Channel has been home to the most family-friendly fare on television. From Lizzie McGuire to Hannah Montana, right on through to The Suite Life on Deck, the Mouse House is known for cranking out one squeaky-clean show after another, filling them with engaging actors, laugh-track punch lines and often a decent moral to fill out the half-hour.

It's not like these programs were always pitch-perfect. As adults, sitting through some of their episodes caused eyestrain from all the eye-rolling over the setup-delivery-laugh formula and 8-year-old-inspired slapstick. Not to mention the trouble some of Disney's talented actresses have had outside these shows. And yet for all of that, the programs themselves were (and, in most cases, still are) sweet and innocent. They were populated with caring parents, well-meaning kids and plots that often lent themselves to slow and steady self-improvement. If a parent ever asked me, "Paul, are there any shows clean enough for my family to enjoy without having to always keep my finger on the mute button?" I could often point to something on Disney.

Which brings us to Jessie. Disney's newest hit is duking it out with Good Luck Charlie to become the cable network's most popular show, and it's largely working off the same template Disney's been using for years: The kids are still talented. The jokes are still lame. Even the setup still feels like it was created on Mickey's assembly line: Small-town girl moves to a Manhattan penthouse to serve as a nanny for a charmingly precocious multiracial family—a twist on the poor-girl-goes-to-the-palace theme that's been a staple of Disney tales since Cinderella.

But it's about there where this particular fairy tale stops.

To get to Manhattan, 18-year-old Jessie rebels against and lies to her no-nonsense Marine Corps father. "My dad practically blew his flattop when I told him I was moving to New York," she tells a taxi driver in the pilot. "But he chilled when I told him I had a great job." She pauses. "Do you know where I could find a great job?"

For a network that typically embraces parental authority and shines a positive light on the role of moms and dads, that's a bit of a big-city departure.

And it's not as if the show finds more positive adult role models elsewhere. Bertram the butler can't be bothered to do much of anything. And Jessie's charges—a quartet of kids, three of whom are adopted—have gone through so many nannies that even ABC's SuperNanny wouldn't take the gig. That's perhaps partly because their mother, Christina (a supermodel/businesswoman), and father, Morgan (a famous director), are barely ever there. This Brangelina-style power couple jet-set around the world and, while they seem to love their kids, they're rarely home to see them.

When the two smooch in the penthouse elevator, they're completely oblivious to the children squabbling around them. And when Jessie asks one of the kids if they always fight like that in front of their parents, the girl says, "Sometimes. But they never come up for air to notice." It's telling, too, that Mom and Dad don't show up on Jessie's official website.

Which means the only adult role model viewers are likely to see is … Jessie. And while the nanny does her best to solidify a family out of mismatched pieces (forcing the kids to share a meal together here and there, for instance), it's kinda sad that this kid is the only parent these other kids have. It's like Wendy reading bedtime stories to the Lost Boys—except these lost children actually have a mother. In Paris or Barbados or wherever she is at the moment.

Jessie's less edifying look at parents and family bonds is joined by more toilet humor. Off-color and scatological jokes surface frequently. Much is made of 12-year-old Luke's crush on Jessie, too—an unrequited love that nevertheless feels a little creepy in an age when student-teacher "relationships" make the news cycle almost every week.

In short, Jessie is a tinge more cynical and a touch more crude than we've come to expect from Disney. It's not a huge departure, of course. The sitcom's still free of the violence, foul language and sexualized content you'll see most other places on the cable spectrum. But it's certainly a step in the wrong direction.

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