In all that I’ve written about the programming on ABC Family, I haven’t actually mentioned the one show I’ve actually been watching every week. Along with 10 Things I Hate About You and Ruby and the Rockits, ABC Family also premiered a new show this summer called Make It or Break It, about the world of competitive gymnastics.

Not until after her gold medal

On the one hand, it is basically what you’d expect. Girls form cliques and alliances, parents are overprotective or abusive or inattentive, one girl is too poor for new workout clothes, one girl is super focused but risking injury. It’s a watered down, poorly-written, much less aesthetically pleasing version of Friday Night Lights. Except, of course, that it’s on ABC Family, which means that the gym rules require no dating so the cute couple has to sneak around late at night. The most egregious moment of ABC Family-ness is when the super focused girl, more competitive and driven than anyone else, finds out one of her teammates lost her virginity. “Aren’t you afraid having sex will stimulate your hormones or something? You get big boobs and big hips. It could kill your gymastics. How can you take a risk on something like that? Our bodies are everything we have, everything we work for. I’m not having sex until I have a gold medal, and maybe not even after that.” Marriage or gold medal, either way, it’s always better to wait.

Candace Cameron returns!

On the other hand… it’s not… gahh, all right, I’ll say it. It’s not awful. While the nostalgia of the Cassidy brothers on Ruby and the Rockits completely fails to capture my attention, I do get a kick out of watching Candace Cameron (DJ from Full House) play a sickly earnest Christian secretary who falls in love with the dad of one of the gymnasts. And it’s hard to go wrong with the full-on absurdity of this scene, wherein the girls go on a road trip, are menaced by some hooligans at a gas station, and scare them off by doing gymnastics at them. I know, hilarious! And I think the difference between the ridiculousness of this show and the painful sincerity of The Secret Life of the American Teenager is that at least Make It or Break It has a sense of humor. So, I guess what I’m saying is, if you were stuck on a desert island and the only channel you managed to get with your scrap-metal antenna was ABC Family and Greek wasn’t on… you could probably watch this without gouging your eyes out.