YMMV / Even Stevens

• Heartwarming Moments:
  • In "Leavin' Stevens," Louis misses the chance to express his true feelings to Tawny on what is supposed to be his last day at school. He makes a tape instead, in which he confesses his love for her; when it turns out that his family is no longer moving to Washington, he has Beans sneak into her room and steal the tape, but it turns out to be the tape that Tawny has made in order to express her love for Louis. In what is arguably one of the defining moments of the series, the two of them watch each other's tapes simultaneously and then encounter each other at school the next day.
    • Heartwarming in Hindsight: The ending of "Hardly Famous," which features the same soundtrack.
  • The Movie has this moment near the end: Ren apologizes to Louis for always assuming he's trying to ruin her life, to which Louis points out that while he loves messing with her, he would never want to actually hurt her. The two make peace and then Louis even allows Ren time to talk to the boy from the Family Fake Out series who genuinely fell in love with her.
  • In "Stevens Genes", at the end of the race, when Louis gives up a chance to win to help an injured competitor (Trevor). Both Trevor and Larry (who is on Louis' team) fall down, and Louis is indecisive about whether or not to finish his race (though he is clearly in the lead), but he goes back and tries to help Trevor and Larry both up. Unfortunately, Larry seizes the opportunity, leaving Louis as a sucker, and wins the race, but Louis stays with Trevor and tries to comfort him throughout the process, trying to amuse him along the way. Everyone but Larry is grateful for Louis' selfless deed (Trevor, Louis' family, Louis' coach, Trevor's coach, the runners from both teams, the spectators), and though people were chanting for Louis before right before he was going to win the race, they are chanting for him even more now and with a better reason. Louis is later awarded as the student of the month. That is true sportsmanship.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The turbulent relationship Ren and Louis had in the show becomes harder to look at when Christy Carlson Romano revealed in an interview that she was not close to Shia LaBeouf.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: An episode titled "Raiders of the Lost Sausage" came out years before Shia LaBeouf would go on to star in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
• Les Yay: In the episode "All About Yvette" when Ren goes Clingy Jealous Girl over her BFF (for the first 2-3 episodes anyway) Charlotte's old BFF Yvette visiting. And then there is a scene at a school dance when Ren goes to the bathroom and is about to reapply her lipstick, but then sighs and says "What's the point?" because she is so distraught about Charlotte not paying attention to her.
• Moment of Awesome:
  • In The Movie, Louis and Ren covertly teaming up to look like the latter really is trying to kill the former. This makes Miles worry that his show will be canceled for having someone killed on his watch. After watching him torment the Stevens every step of the way, it's cathartic to see his own prank has been turned against him. It doesn't hurt that Lance LeBow is also in on the prank and gives a satisfying "Gotcha!" to Miles when the prank is revealed.
  • When all's said and done, Eileen revealing to the viewers that despite Miles' best efforts to do his worst and break down the Stevens family, it ultimately failed to keep them fractured for long. Because at the end of the day, they're still family!
• Nightmare Fuel: Yes, surprisingly enough, a wacky sibling sitcom on the Disney Channel had a few of these.
  • The Halloween Episode when it's revealed that the students who have been going in for "eye exams" were actually having them ripped out and then becoming brainwashed. We briefly see Tawny and Twitty post-removal and even if it is cheap CGI, it comes across as rather unnerving.
  • At the end of season 2's "Thin Ice", Louis is shown having a dream about a romantic skate on the ice with Tawny. At one point he's pulling her along by the leg and then the leg comes ripped off of her body. It's the sickening crunch sound accompanied with the bloody stump and Louis screaming in terror that all sells it. What the hell, Disney?
  • Louis and Twitty believe that Beans is actually an alien after seeing his parents as humanoid termites. Later it's revealed that they were just shooting a bug spray commercial in costume and were showing Beans their outfits. Except then the ending reveals that Beans really does have giant, alien termite parents and unlike previous gags like this, it's never clarified if this was a dream or reality.
• Retroactive Recognition: Lisa Foiles guest-starred as one of Ren's young admirers Carla before becoming more well known for All That and her web series projects.
• Tear Jerker: The ending of "Sibling Rivalry." When Ren and Louis are tasked to submit embarrassing footage of the other for a sibling rivalry reality competition show, Louis accidentally catches Ren's boyfriend Bobby cheating on her with her rival Mandy on tape. Conflicted whether to use that for the show, he eventually decides to submit a different, not very embarrassing tape of her, allowing her to win the competition, and shows her the original tape in private. Ren breaks up with Bobby as she tearfully returns all his things to him.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: First-time viewers might get caught off-guard by the show's bizarre claymation opening sequence. The claymation figures of the characters look kind of creepy, especially when Louis's face gets flattened after Ren slams the door on his face. Even Christy Carlson Romano said the intro looked nothing like them and they are awfully creepy and the sequence in its entirety looked weird.
• The Woobie: Both Louis and Ren go through the wringer a lot in the series.

---