History YMMV / BraceFace

* MisaimedMarketing: The Dutch version of the Treehouse Direct Youtube channel has this show, despite it absolutely not being preschooler friendly and most of the plots and themes would probably fly over the heads of kids that young.

* OnceOriginalNowCommon: ''Braceface'' covered or featured many topics that were unheard of, or even considered untouchable, for kids' TV shows back in the early 2000s, such as homosexuality, periods, and ACupAngst, in part due to the ValuesDissonance between what Canadians and Americans considered acceptable for kids shows. Many of these episodes even ended up being banned in the States, especially during the show's run on Creator/DisneyChannel! But in Late 2010s and Early 2020s, where these topics have become more normalized for American kids media to address in some way (including, ironically enough, many Disney shows and movies), ''Bracface'' comes off as a typically quaint "teen girl" show and its pioneering achievements end up being vastly overshadowed by the areas where it shows its age.

* SeinfeldIsUnfunny: ''Braceface'' covered or featured many topics that were unheard of, or even considered untouchable, for kids' TV shows back in the early 2000s, such as homosexuality, periods, and ACupAngst, in part due to the ValuesDissonance between what Canadians and Americans considered acceptable for kids shows. Many of these episodes even ended up being banned in the States, especially during the show's run on Creator/DisneyChannel! But in Late 2010s and Early 2020s, where these topics have become more normalized for American kids media to address in some way (including, ironically enough, many Disney shows and movies), ''Bracface'' comes off as a typically quaint "teen girl" show and its pioneering achievements end up being vastly overshadowed by the areas where it shows its age.

* SeinfeldIsUnfunny: ''Braceface'' covered or featured many topics that were unheard of, or even considered untouchable, for kids' TV shows back in the early 2000s, such as homosexuality, periods, and ACupAngst, in part due to the ValuesDissonance between what Canadians and Americans considered acceptable for kids shows. Many of these episodes even ended up being banned in the States, especially during the show's run on Creator/DisneyChannel! But in Late 2010s and Early 2020s, where these topics have become more normalized for American kids media to address in some way (including, ironically enough, many Disney shows and movies), ''Bracface'' comes off as a typically quaint "teen girl" show and its pioneering achievements end up being vastly overshadowed by its age.

* {{Anvilicious}}: After Sharon became a vegetarian, virtually every other episode featured Sharon shoving animal rights down people's throats:

** Ironically, in season three she has to learn to eat meat due to acquiring anemia. It's possible that this has something to do with Creator/AliciaSilverstone, Sharon's first voice actress and the one plugging the environmentalism, leaving the show in season three.
* BestKnownForTheFanservice: The episode "Busted", where Sharon wears a bra that gives her the appearance of a larger chest, is the only reason modern audiences are aware of the show.
* ClicheStorm: Of the early 2000s teenage SliceOfLife variety.
* GirlShowGhetto: It is a typical teenage girl show as one would expect. But it does end up tackling some pretty important issues such as relationships (both familial and budding), racism, homosexuality, ethical views and changes within one's body as they make their way through adolescence, which considering the time period this came out (2001), was still rather unheard of in a kid's show. Heck, it's theorized this was the reason Disney dropped the show after the second season due to being scared off by the heavier subject matter when airing it on its parent network. [[note]]Ironically nowadays they're starting to cover some of this stuff in their own shows[[/note]]. Although it's more likely that Disney simply had no interest in a still relatively niche show not produced by them, given that they were canceling a lot of other shows acquired by their buyout of FOX Family with Beyblade and Power Rangers being the exception likely due to toy sales.

%%* SoOkayItsAverage

** In "Just Quacks", Sharon finds out that the duck conservation group Adam is planning to join also support hunting as a way to prevent duck overpopulation. When she confronts Hannah (whose father runs the group) about this, Hannah points that hunting is actually a major part of conservation, that hunting isn't a crime, not every animal population crisis is caused by hunting, and the group her father runs follows ethical guidelines when it comes to their hunting, such as bag limits and not hunting out of season. Sharon brushes all these points off by believing that nature would balance itself out if hunters didn't exist (which Hannah immediately shoots down), and the show obviously sides with Sharon since a large part of the show is an AuthorTract about vegetarianism and animal-rights. However, this doesn't change the fact that Hannah's points are legitimate and true.

* UnintentionalPeriodPiece: The show is obviously set sometime before the late-2000s. The hairstyles and clothing worn by many of the characters are distinctly late 1990s-early 2000s, especially Maria's hair and midriff-showing dress shirt, along with Adam Spitz's "frat boy" clothing. There is also things such as Nina's RichBitch lifestyle (the show having been made pre-Great Recession), Alden fronting a GarageBand, and the PopPunk and GarageRock-flavored soundtrack. Most strikingly is the depiction of main character Sharon Spitz as an animal rights activist, with the show having been on the air at a time when animal rights activism was a major sociopolitical force with many celebrity supporters (such as executive producer Creator/AliciaSilverstone) -- thus Sharon and the other animal rights activists that show up are often painted in a positive light. By the later half of the decade, animal rights activism got such a bad rep (mainly due to [=PETA=]'s increasingly questionable publicity stunts) that it began being seen as a joke rather than a serious object of attention. And of course, one can't forget the flip-phones.

* StrawmanHasAPoint: In "Just Quacks", Sharon finds out that the duck conservation group Adam is planning to join also support hunting as a way to prevent duck overpopulation. When she confronts Hannah (whose father runs the group) about this, Hannah points that hunting is actually a major part of conservation, that hunting isn't a crime, not every animal population crisis is caused by hunting, and the group her father runs follows ethical guidelines when it comes to their hunting, such as bag limits and not hunting out of season. Sharon brushes all these points off by believing that nature would balance itself out if hunters didn't exist (which Hannah immediately shoots down), and the show obviously sides with Sharon since a large part of the show is an AuthorTract about vegetarianism and animal-rights. However, this doesn't change the fact that Hannah's points are legitimate and true.

* UnintentionalPeriodPiece: The show is obviously set sometime before the late-2000s. The hairstyles and clothing worn by many of the characters are distinctly late 1990s-early 2000s, especially Maria's hair and midriff-showing dress shirt, along with Adam Spitz's "frat boy" clothing. There is also things such as Nina's RichBitch lifestyle (the show having been made pre-Great Recession), Alden fronting a GarageBand, and the PopPunk and GarageRock-flavored soundtrack. Most strikingly is the depiction of main character Sharon Spitz as an animal rights activist, with the show having been on the air at a time when animal rights activism was a major sociopolitical force with many celebrity supporters (such as executive producer Creator/AliciaSilverstone) -- thus Sharon and the other animal rights activists that show up are often painted in a positive light. By the later half of the decade, animal rights activism got such a bad rep (mainly due to [=PETA=]'s increasingly questionable publicity stunts) that it began being seen as a joke rather than a serious object of attention.

* UnintentionalPeriodPiece: The show is obviously set sometime before the late-2000s. The hairstyles and clothing worn by many of the characters are distinctly late 1990s-early 2000s, especially Maria's hair and [[BareYourMidriff midriff-showing dress shirt]], along with Adam Spitz's "frat boy" clothing. There is also things such as Nina's RichBitch lifestyle (the show having been made pre-Great Recession), Alden fronting a GarageBand, and the PopPunk and GarageRock-flavored soundtrack. Most strikingly is the depiction of main character Sharon Spitz as an animal rights activist, with the show having been on the air at a time when animal rights activism was a major sociopolitical force with many celebrity supporters (such as executive producer Creator/AliciaSilverstone) -- thus Sharon and the other animal rights activists that show up are often painted in a positive light. By the later half of the decade, animal rights activism got such a bad rep (mainly due to [=PETA=]'s increasingly questionable publicity stunts) that it began being seen as a joke rather than a serious object of attention.

* CriticalResearchFailure: In "Just Quacks" Sharon argues against hunting by pointing out "there used to be millions of [buffalos] and they almost went extinct because of hunters". However, this is just a ''very'' broad generalization. Yes, the buffalo almost went extinct because of overhunting, but the Indigenous American civilizations that lived in the Great Plains of the United States and Canada hunted buffalo because they were the only consistent animal around that gave them everything they needed for their civilizations to survive, and they never hunted more than they needed. It wasn't until European settlers came along that buffalo got overhunted, because the US and Canadian Governments encouraged settlers to kill off buffalo as a political and social ploy to cut off the Indigenous peoples' main food source so they could steal their lands and force them onto reservations. So, yes, the buffalo went nearly extinct because of overhunting but that was purely motivated by one culture trying to destroy several other cultures' traditions and ways of life.

* GirlShowGhetto: Somewhat subverted, it is a typical teenage girl show as one would expect. But it does end up tackling some pretty important issues such as relationships (both familial and budding), racism, homosexuality, ethical views and changes within one's body as they make their way through adolescence, which considering the time period this came out (2001), was still rather unheard of in a kid's show. Heck, it's theorized this was the reason Disney dropped the show after the second season due to being scared off by the heavier subject matter when airing it on its parent network. [[note]]Ironically nowadays they're starting to cover some of this stuff in their own shows[[/note]]. Although it's more likely that Disney simply had no interest in a still relatively niche show not produced by them, given that they were canceling a lot of other shows acquired by their buyout of FOX Family with Beyblade and Power Rangers being the exception likely due to toy sales.

* UnintentionallyUnsympathetic: Sharon is often a victim of this. Sure, she's only a teenager who's still trying to figure out who she is and navigate social circles in school, but her sometimes overbearing sense of self-righteousness (such as her vegetarianism and views on animal rights) and desire to fit in can cause her to do and say some pretty questionable things.

* BestKnownForTheFanservice:
** Possibly due to it being female geared, many men mainly remember Braceface for the breast expansion episode.
** Likewise, folks with foot fetishes cite this show as the main reason they watch, since the series really seemed to like lingering on shots of bare or socked feet.

* JerkassWoobie: Some episodes paint Nina as this. Her parents, while they clearly love her, rarely spend time with her. Despite her high social status, she doesn't seem to have many friends, and even the people she is friends with don't seem to get along with her. Her own bad behavior ends up driving away her best friend, Alyson, something that's shown to affect her. The episode "Lorenza" shows that Nina feels lonely and miserable, which is why she wanted a dog in the first place. In addition, her cousin, Petra, treats her just as bad, if not worse, than she treats others.

* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: In "Vegging Out" Sharon becomes anemic and the doctor suggests that she might have to give up her vegetarian diet in order to get her iron blood level back up. However, Sharon (and by extension, the audience) only hears this statement from her mother, Helen, who was the one who received the phone call about the anemia diagnosis. Did the doctor really suggest that Sharon start eating meat again, or did Helen make the suggestion sound like it was coming from the doctor out of concern for her daughter and didn't want Sharon to blow up at her if the suggestion sounded like it came from her since Sharon has a tendency to self-righteous about vegetarianism and has a tendency to blow up at Helen if she says something that Sharon doesn't like?

* StrawmanHasAPoint: In "Just Quacks", Sharon finds out that the duck conservation group Adam is planning to join also support hunting as a way to prevent duck overpopulation. When she confronts Hannah (whose father runs the group) about this, Hannah points that hunting is actually a major part of conservation, that hunting isn't a crime, not every animal population crisis is caused by hunting, and the group her father runs follows ethical guidelines when it comes to their hunting, such as bag limits and not hunting out of season. Sharon brushes all these points off by believing that nature would balance itself out if hunters didn't exist (which Hannah immediately shoots down), and the show obviously sides with Sharon. However, this doesn't change the fact that Hannah's points are legitimate and true.

* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: In "Vegging Out" Sharon becomes anemic and the doctor suggests that she might have to give up her vegetarian diet in order to get her iron blood level back up. However, Sharon (and by extension, the audience) only hears this statement from her mother, Helen, who was the one who received the phone call about the anemia diagnosis. Did the doctor really suggest that Sharon start eating meat again, or did Helen make the suggestion sound like it was coming from the doctor out of concern for her daughter and didn't want Sharon to blow up at her if the suggestion sounded like it came from her since Sharon had a tendency to self-righteous about vegetarianism?

** In one specific episode, Adam is trying to get in good graces with his girlfriend Hannah's father, so at Sharon's urging, he joins the duck conservation group he runs. However, when Sharon finds out that the group condones hunting, she goes off on a rant on how evil it is. She even tells off Hannah (who happens to be a GranolaGirl vegetarian herself) for pointing out that the group supports hunting because it helps prevent overpopulation issues in the animals and hunting doesn't cause all environmental issues, especially when it's done ethically. [[StrawmanHasAPoint Despite the fact that these are very legitimate arguments]], Sharon brushes them off by saying that nature would work its way out. By the end of the episode, she gets her brother to tell the people off for supporting hunting (though what started it off mostly had to do with the group mocking Sharon's vegetarian views).

** At the end of the episode where Sharon learns to accept Alden as a meat-eater, she says she can still "work on him" when they're married.

* CriticalResearchFailure: In "Just Quacks" Sharon argues against hunting by pointing out "there used to be millions of [buffalos] and they almost went extinct because of hunters". However, this is just a ''very'' broad generalization. Yes, the buffalo almost went extinct because of overhunting, but the Indigenous American civilizations that lived in the Great Plains of the United States and Canada hunted buffalo because they were the only consistent animal around that gave them everything they needed for their civilizations to survive, and they never hunted more than they needed. It wasn't until European settlers came along that buffalo got overhunted, because the US and Canadian Governments encouraged settlers to kill off buffalo as a political and social ploy to cut off the Indigenous peoples' main food source so they could steal their lands and force them onto reservations. So, yes, the buffalo went nearly extinct because of overhunting but that was purely motivated by one culture trying to destroy another culture's traditions and way of life.

* StrawmanHasAPoint: In "Just Quacks", Sharon finds out that the duck conservation group Adam is planning to join also support hunting as a way to prevent duck overpopulation. When she confronts Hannah (whose father runs the group) about this, Hannah points that hunting is actually a major part of conservation, that hunting isn't a crime, not every animal population crisis is caused by hunting, and the group her father runs also follows ethical guidelines when it comes to their hunting. Sharon brushes all these points off by believing that nature would balance itself out if hunters didn't exist (which Hannah immediately shoots down), and the show obviously sides with Sharon. However, this doesn't change the fact that Hannah's points are legitimate and true.
* ValuesDissonance: In "Dissection Connection", Sharon and Tally, after their protest to get rid of frog dissection on real animals goes nowhere, [[FreeTheFrogs eventually resort to freeing the live frogs in a nearby pond]]. The principal suspends both of them for stealing school property (especially since the frogs were supposed to be pre-killed, but there was a mix-up in the delivery that resulted in live ones being delivered and the biology teacher was going to send the live frogs back in order to get the pre-killed frogs), but other than that there are hardly any consequences. However, with invasive species becoming even more of an environmental issue, and the public now much more aware of how dangerous they can be to environments, Sharon and Tally would have also been charged with knowingly spreading an invasive species around if they had done so today because the live frogs would ''not'' be the same species as those that were living in that pond.

* HarsherInHindsight: In the episode ''The Doctor Is In'', an epidemic goes through the junior high with people convinced they've got the bubonic plague, which was really a contagious yet non-fatal rash (students having thought it was a plague after a lecture on it), the absurdity of the situation came from the idea of First World students in the 21st century thinking they have a Medieval disease that, post-1900, almost always occurs in the poorest of countries. [[http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/jan/31/i-caught-plague-from-my-cat?CMP=twt_gu Flash forward to 2012, where a man in Oregon contracted it after pulling a rat out of his choking cat]].

* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: In "Vegging Out" Sharon becomes anemic and the doctor suggests that she might have to give up her vegetarian diet in order to get her iron blood level back up. However, Sharon (and by extension, the audience) only hears this statement from her mother, Helen, who was the one who received the phone call about the anemia diagnosis. Did the doctor really suggest that Sharon start eating meat again, or did Helen make the suggestion sound like it was coming from the doctor out of concern for her daughter and didn't want Sharon to blow up at her if the suggestion sounded like it came from her?

* CriticalResearchFailure: In "Just Quacks" Sharon argues against hunting by pointing out "there used to be millions of [buffalos] and they almost went extinct because of hunters". However, this is just a ''very'' broad generalization. Yes, the buffalo almost went extinct because of overhunting, but the Indigenous American civilizations that lived in the Great Plains of the United States and Canada hunted buffalo because they were the only consistent animal around that gave them everything they needed for survival, and they never hunted more than they needed. It wasn't until European settlers came along that buffalo got overhunted, because the US and Canadian Governments encouraged settlers to kill off buffalo as a political and social ploy to cut off the Indigenous peoples' main food source so they could steal their lands and force them onto reservations. So, yes, the buffalo went nearly extinct because of overhunting but that was purely motivated by one culture trying to destroy another culture's traditions and way of life.

* StrawmanHasAPoint: In "Just Quacks", Sharon finds out that the duck conservation group Adam is planning to join also support hunting. When she confronts Hannah (whose father runs the group) about this, Hannah points out that the group supports hunting because it helps prevent duck overpopulation and hunting is actually a major part of conservation. She also points out that hunting isn't a crime, not every animal population crisis is caused by hunting, and the group her father runs also follows ethical guidelines when it comes to their hunting. Sharon brushes all these points off by believing that nature would balance itself out if hunters didn't exist (which Hannah immediately shoots down), and the show obviously sides with Sharon. However, this doesn't change the fact that Hannah's points are legitimate and true.

* RetroactiveRecognition: Sharon's younger brother is voiced by Michael Cera, before he was known in the United States for playing George Michael Bluth on ''Series/ArrestedDevelopment'' and the title character on ''Film/ScottPilgrimVsTheWorld''.

** Likewise, folks with foot fetishes cite this show as the main reason they wat, since the series really seemed to like lingering on shots of bare or socked feet.

* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: In "Vegging Out" Sharon becomes anemic due to a lack of iron in her blood and the doctor suggests that she might have to give up her vegetarian diet in order to get her iron level back up. However, Sharon (and by extension, the audience) only hears this statement from her mother, Helen, who was the one who received the phone call about the blood results. Did the doctor really suggest that Sharon start eating meat again, or did Helen make the suggestion sound like it was coming from the doctor out of concern for her daughter and didn't want Sharon to blow up at her if the suggestion sounded like it came from her?

** In one specific episode, Adam is trying to get in good graces with his girlfriend Hannah's father, so at Sharon's urging, he joins the duck conservation group he runs. However, when Sharon finds out that the group condones hunting, she goes off on a rant on how evil it is. She even tells off Hannah (who happens to be a GranolaGirl vegetarian herself) for pointing out that hunting, when it's done ethically, helps prevent overpopulation and hunting doesn't cause all environmental issues. [[StrawmanHasAPoint Despite the fact that these are very legitimate arguments]], Sharon brushes them off by saying that nature would work its way out. By the end of the episode, she gets her brother to tell the people off for supporting hunting (though what started it off mostly had to do with the group mocking Sharon's vegetarian views).