Shake It Up is a Disney Channel Original Series, developed by veteran TV producer Chris Thompson that premiered on November 7, 2010.The series revolves around Cecilia "CeCe" Jones (Bella Thorne) and Raquel "Rocky" Blue (Zendaya Coleman), two thirteen-year-old best friends from inner-city Chicago who find themselves one step closer to their dream of becoming professional dancers when they're hired as backup dancers on Shake It Up Chicago, an American Bandstand-style variety show.Other characters include:
Flynn Jones (Davis Cleveland): CeCe's precocious but annoying younger brother, with an appetite for bacon.
Ty Blue (Roshon Fegan): Rocky's older brother, who is himself a skilled dancer. He's also an aspiring rapper, and fancies himself a ladies' man.
Martin "Deuce" Martinez (Adam Irigoyen): CeCe and Rocky's long-time friend who is known for his "connections" and his questionable schemes to make a buck.
Gunther and Tinka Hessenheffer (Kenton Duty and Caroline Sunshine): A pair of fraternal twins from an indeterminate European country who have been exchange students since the first grade, and also dance on the show. Depending on their mood, they can be either friends or enemies toward the girls.
Gary Wilde (R. Brandon Johnson): The handsome and narcissistic host and producer of Shake It Up Chicago.
Georgia Jones (Anita Barone): CeCe and Flynn's single mother, who serves as a police officer.
Henry Dillon (Buddy Handleson): Child prodigy and Flynn's best friend.
Abuse Is Okay When It Is Female on Male: When Henry (CeCe's tutor) shows up with his clothes torn and multiple bruises, the audience's reaction is "aww." When it's revealed that his abuser is a girl, cue audience laugh track.
As mentioned below, CeCe has dyslexia, and so does Bella Thorne.
Rocky is a vegeterian, and so is Zendaya.
When Cat Deeley guest stars as the Vice Principal in "Wild It Up", CeCe talks about being a dancer on Shake It Up Chicago, to which the Vice Principal responds with "so you think you can dance?"
Adorably Precocious Child: Flynn, who handwaves that he's "the only responsible person around here", and even got a model to like him, saying he's adorable, and Henry.
CeCe: So you did all this just to teach me a lesson? Mrs. Jones: No. We just thought it'd be fun! (she and the coach laugh) But the way you said it makes me sound like a better parent, so let's go with that!
Affectionate Nickname: Ty calls Flynn "Little {Noun}", i.e. "Little Dude" or "Little Man".
Ambiguously Brown: Rocky and Ty (both Zendaya and Roshon Fegan are mixed-race), at least until "Heat It Up". Their mother is shown to be black and their father appears to be mixed race.
Flynn: Oh yeah? Well I just killed a zombie, stole a bus, and spray painted the word booger on the side of a cop car.
Artistic License - Geography: Some episodes are show as being at "Main" station on one of Chicago's elevated rapid transit lines. A "Main" station does exist on the Chicago L, but it's in Evanston, not Chicago itself.
Ty: What happened in here? Flynn: Whimpering, begging, and I had to clean up after an accident (beat) and that was just Deuce. Ty: So where is that filthy animal? Flynn: He's in there giving the dog a bath.
Bilingual Bonus: In "Weird It Up", Ty asks Deuce to be a translator for his date with a foreign exchange student that only speaks Spanish.
Broken Aesop: In one episode when Gunther learns to be cool and uses an American accent (which amounts to being obnoxious and acting like he came straight out of MTV) he has girls swooning over him. The aesop ends up being "be yourself" but that doesn't stop an unintended aesop of "act like everyone else and people will like you better" from appearing.
Chained Heat: After CeCe spectacularly fails her audition, Rocky forces Gary to let her be on the show by stealing CeCe's mom's handcuffs, chaining herself to CeCe and dragging her onto the stage.
(Destiny, Flynn's crush, is twice his age.) Ty: Whoa! Little dude, you left out one tiny detail about Destiny. Flynn: Didn't I mention she's blonde?
Also:
CeCe: She's a gold finger. Rocky: Digger. CeCe: No, I don't dig her. She's a user.
Compressed Vice: It is mentioned in exactly one episode that CeCe has dyslexia. It is never brought up again.
Credit Card Plot: In the second episode, the girls open bank accounts in order to manage their income as dancers on Shake It Up Chicago. Now wielding debit cards, they find it surprisingly easy to lose track of how much they've been spending, and find themselves holding a check they can't pay at an expensive Italian restaurant.
Dawson Casting: In-universe example in the episode "Age It Up": "teen sensation" Justin Starr is really 24 and married (his wife goes on tour with him as his "manager"), and plays 16 to appeal to teenage girls. The show itself avoids this—none of the leads are in their twenties, with only Roshon Fegan (whose character is older than the rest anyway) being over 16.
Rocky and CeCe also have their moments when dealing with each other. Especially Rocky.
Also, Deuce.
Deuce: Man, that would be painful even if the air wasn't running out in here.
Ty can snark pretty well too.
Did Not Do the Research: Also, in the episode "Party It Up", they meet boys from Elk Grove High School, who proceed to cheer "goo Elks!" Elk Grove's mascot is actually the Grenadier.
Disappeared Dad: The only thing we know about CeCe's dad is he isn't there.
Downer Ending: "Party It Up". After Mrs. Jones forces Ty and Deuce to reveal CeCe and Rocky's whereabouts by making them drink lots of water and fill them with urine, she finds them at Gary Wilde's party, brings them home and grounds them for a month. In the last scene, the whole group is forced to clean up the kitchen of their apartment.
An Ambiguously Gay (aside from said sister incest) guy. However, unlike Sharpay, Tinka isn't an Alpha Bitch (in fact, her status as a Funny Foreigner makes her a target for real Alpha Bitches). That gets to Gunther... a bit.
Flynn is very similar to Gabe Duncan from Good Luck Charlie, as are Henry and Austin. And he also resembles Matt McGuire from Lizzie McGuire.
CeCe is similar to Chelsea from That's So Raven, right down to the nearly-identical hair color. In the episode "Reunion It Up", Anneliese Van der Pol, who played Chelsea, guest-starred as CeCe's older Captain Ersatz.
Everything's Deader with Zombies: In "Hot Mess It Up", Deuce, Flynn, and Ty host an internet show called "Zombie Talk". This is later transformed into "Zombie Idol".
Evil Foreigner: Gunther and Tinka, whenever they are the villains.
Fake Guest Star: For the first season, Caroline Sunshine as Tinka. She doesn't appear in the opening until Season 2, even though her character appeared in one episode more than Gunther.
Flanderization: CeCe goes from being an average student to a girl who doesn't know what Pittsburgh is in one episode.
Heterosexual Life Partners/Romantic Two-Girl Friendship: CeCe and Rocky, who do absolutely everything together, and have the same hopes and dreams. Reinforced by Rocky's refusal to be on the show if CeCe can't be on.
Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: The episodes are titled as "(Plot Point) It Up", with the sole (so far) exception of "Shake It Up, Up And Away", which, due to the Title Drop episode name, still has the words 'It' and 'Up', however those two words aren't at the end of the episode name like all other episodes.
Idiot Ball: Honestly, what made CeCe and Rocky think that they were going to sneak off to a party and not get caught by a person who catches rulebreakers for a living?
Imagine the Audience Naked: CeCe suggests this to Rocky at the audition so she's not intimidated by the other dancers. It backfires horribly when this produces some rather disturbing mental images.
It backfires again when CeCe comes down with Performance Anxiety and Rocky reminds her to do this. The only person CeCe can imagine naked is herself.
Loony Fan: Subverted in the episode "Copy Kat It Up", wherein a shy, socially-awkward girl named Kat seems to have a near-stalkerish obsession with the girls, especially CeCe. It turns out to be a Batman Gambit to get a spot dancing on the show.
Malaproper: In "Hook It Up", Gary is seen consistently using incorrect names for everyone he talks to:
Matchmaker Crush: Subverted. Deuce thinks CeCe, who is trying to find a girl to go out with him, has a crush on him. She denies it, but later wonders why he was "turned off" by her.
OOC Is Serious Business: In "Apply It Up", when Flynn begins the Running Gag mentioned below, Henry simply responds "Hi Flynn", which prompts the following response:
Flynn: What? "Hi Flynn?" Where's the insult? Where's the big words I'll have to look up after you leave?
Pardon My Klingon: In "Split It Up", upon hearing that Gary has chosen CeCe over her as Gunther's dance partner for a Wake Up Chicago appearance, Tinka rattles off a blue streak in her native tongue that Gunther declines to translate.
Performance Anxiety: CeCe suffers it in the Pilot episode, which is ironic since she was the most confident about the audition.
Running Gag: Flynn: Hello (long-winded description of Henry that includes mockery of Henry's nerdiness). Henry: Hello (equally long-winded description of Flynn that includes a derisive comment about his lack of intelligence).
Rocky and CeCe's occasional speaking in-sync.
"I'LL GET IT MOM!"
Ruritania: Wherever it is Gunther and Tinka are from.
Sassy Black Woman: Rocky's mom, and Rocky when she gets mad (though Rocky's brown, not black).
CeCe: You know, you scare me when you move your head like that!
Shipper on Deck: Rocky towards CeCe and Gunther in "Hot Mess It Up" as a way of teasing the former.
Shout Out: In the episode where CeCe's mom and Coach go out, we get this:
Coach: I was babysitting my niece this weekend, and she begged me to turn on her favorite show. Guess what it was. CeCe:Wizards Of... Coach:Shake It Up Chicago.
When CeCe is lying to her gym coach about her injured leg, we see reaction shots of Rocky scoffing and rolling her eyes.
Slippery Slope Fallacy: Rocky commits this fallacy once in "Start It Up", regarding energy drinks. She does this again in "Wild It Up", regarding cutting class.
Somebody Doesn't Love Raymond: Rocky Blue is particularly adamant that everyone likes her, and spends an entire episode trying to win the favor of the cantankerous old witch Mrs. Locassio.
Spit Take: Played for Laughs. In "Age It Up", both CeCe and Rocky hear something outrageous, pause for a second, take a swig of water, and do a spit take.
Sudden School Uniform: in Protest it Up. CeCe did nottake the news well. Gunther and Tinka, on the other hand, had over-the-top amounts of free time opened up by no longer coming up with over-the-top outfits on a daily basis.
Suspiciously Similar Song: A reasonable facsimile of "Bad to the Bone" plays as Rocky enters detention clad in her new "bad girl" outfit.
Too Soon: Shake It Up, Up and Away was originally scheduled to air on September 18, 2011, but had to be pulled at the last minute due to plane crashes at the Reno Air Show in Nevada. It was replaced with an airing of another new episode that and would air in October, though.
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