'Mighty B!': A Very Animated Heroine

Bessie Higgenbottom, the heroine of Nickelodeon's new animated series "The Mighty B!," is a 9-year-old with big, black-framed glasses and front teeth that are half grown in. Bessie comes in loud, extra loud and super loud, and has the ability to go on and on and on in such a way that her poor mother -- head buried under a pillow, eyes looking as if she's on a fast train to a migraine -- finally bellows, "Yes! GO!" simply to get some relief.

The voice, as it turns out, is perfect for a somewhat overbearing personality like Bessie's. Thanks to the vocal talents of "Saturday Night Live" denizen Amy Poehler, who also co-created the show, the character sounds just as she should.

To quote Poehler's own description of her character, Bessie is a "funny and sweet girl-tornado" -- tornado perhaps being the operative word. (Bessie is reminiscent of Ramona Quimby and Junie B. Jones, the title stars of two beloved children's book series who are lovable misfits in their own little social universes.)

Bessie's nemesis is Portia (Grey DeLisle), the blond, blue-eyed, platform-sandal-wearing cartoon version of the spoiled princess/budding mean girl. She is a Paris Hilton wannabe, with a purse-size dog (which turns out to be a rat, in one of the show's funnier animation moments) and an overbearing mommy who will go to any lengths, or pay any amount of money, to make sure her darling daughter always reigns supreme.

Not that this bothers Bessie, who seems relatively oblivious to the seeming disdain of the other girls in her universe, obsessed as she is with earning all 4,584 badges needed to become a superstar Honeybee, a Scoutlike troop that is the center of her existence. Or, rather, a super hero Honeybee, because the mental image Bessie has of herself involves a Honeybee version of Superman: flying through the air in her brown-and-yellow super-suit, her little head with orangish pigtails atop a bodybuilder's physique. Hence, the show's title.

Although Bessie is nearly 10, the show likely will skew to a younger audience, given that most 9- and 10-year-old girls operate in the Miley Cyrus/Ashley Tisdale universe, and eagerly embrace entertainment that gives them a glimpse into the lives of fashion-forward "big girls" with boy problems. And that is something of a pity, since Bessie's obliviousness, at her age, to any social pressure to wear the "right" outfit or be liked by the "right" girls is wonderfully refreshing.

Tagging along with Bessie on her adventures are little brother Ben (voiced by Andy Richter) and her torn-eared dog, Happy, whom she acquires in the first episode. The animation -- headed up by Erik Wiese, a veteran of "SpongeBob SquarePants" -- is absolutely delightful, as evidenced in the episode "Sweet Sixteenth," when Bessie desperately attempts to stretch her little body 1/16 of an inch to be tall enough to ride the local roller coaster. When Bessie finally finagles her way on to the ride, the visuals of her and Happy on the coaster are devilish fun.

The Mighty B! (30 minutes) debuts this morning at 10:30 on Nickelodeon.