By Jordan Bartlett
The show “Victorious” is a popular sitcom featured on Nickelodeon, surrounding a young teenager, “Tori Vega” (Played by Victoria Justice), who has just been accepted into a Hollywood Arts High School and is trying to find her way through the crazy circumstances and unique personalities of the new friends she has made along the way. The show went on from March 27th, 2010 through February 2nd, 2013. The topic of the show’s characters has resurfaced in people’s minds across the web. Recently, people have been watching it again and they are looking deeper into the characters they thought they once liked, especially the main character, Tori Vega.
The majority of fans of Victorious don’t seem to like Tori Vega as much as they like the other characters in the show. In fact, they seem to highly dislike Tori. Some fans even think that the show would have been better off if Tori weren’t the main character. In the Bradley Scout student newspaper, Melissa Martin wrote that even though Tori was the main character, that doesn’t mean that she was the most engaging character. “Tori Vega might be the main character of the show, but I think we ALL (meme intended) know that she is far from the greatest”. While it may be true that Tori isn’t the greatest character, I believe her character was intended to do just that, not be anything special. I feel as if her character was made to be more realistic and relatable rather than “great”. If you watch all of the seasons of Victorious, you can definitely see a big difference between Tori and her friends. The major similarity between them all would be the fact that they all take part in theatre. Besides that, Tori’s personality is different from everyone else’s. She is very bland and didn’t stand out much. It would be very difficult to describe her as a character. I don’t think that’s a bad thing though. Maybe her character was set out to be bland so that her friends’ personalities could be the primary focus of the show. Also, all of the big personalities of everyone wouldn’t be too much to take in for the people watching.
Jade West (played by Elizabeth Gillies) has a sassy, blunt, and dark personality. She is known to be very possessive. “Beck Oliver” (Played by Avan Jogia) is more of a laid-back and calm kind of guy whose good looks catch the eyes of every girl in school “Andre Harris” (Played by Leon Thomas lll) is a talented man who can always give the best advice. “Cat Valentine” (Played by Ariana Grande) is the bubbly one out of the group who is always full of energy even in the worst scenarios. Lastly, “Robbie Shapiro” (Played by Matt Bennett) was seen as the creepy friend who always carried around his dummy “Rex” who was his best friend. All of their characters were so crazy in their own ways that it might have been a good thing that Tori was so “boring.” Her character was there to balance out everyone else’s character and personality. If Tori had a crazy and big personality like the rest of them, it would be way too many fans also feel that it wasn’t fair that Tori got to sing more songs than the other characters regardless of her being the main character. They’ve implied that other characters like Jade and Cat were much more talented and better singers overall. Jade and Cat were very talented and in all honesty, they could pull off most of the songs on Victorious better than Tori but in no way does that mean Tori was untalented. Tori is talented and is still a great singer despite all of that.“Tell Me That You Love Me” sung by Tori and Andre was definitely one of my favorite songs and Tori sounded so amazing. Tori could have been given songs that fit her voice more but she still sounded so great in every song she sang. The actresses of the characters were all great singers so they really shouldn’t be compared by fans. The fandom of Jade and Cat began to get so bad that fans started to discredit the actress “Victoria Justice” as well as her character Tori.
Victoria Justice began to receive lots of hate around the Time of 2017. People not only targeted Tori but they targeted her actress as well. People began making many YouTube videos and writing articles about how Elizabeth Gillies and Ariana Grande are better than her. They also made rumors stating that Victoria tried to throw shade at Ariana in a popular “Popstar” interview. Elizabeth Gillies added that Ariana Grande sings a lot and Victoria replied “I Think We All sing.” The whole situation struck the internet and caused so much tension between Victoria and Ariana. It’s most likely that people misunderstood that statement, feeling that Victoria was jealous of Ariana and wanted attention. Victoria justice could have just been trying to include everyone and not make anyone feel left out. I think She was misunderstood for a long time because of how much her character was disliked. In a Southview Catalyst article, Lindsey Graham believes that it is important to know the difference between the character and the actress. Graham states “Whether you like Tori or not, it is important to separate the character from the actress and realize she was only playing a role.” It is certainly important to separate the actor and the character which I don’t think was done for Tori Vega. The actor and the character are two different people and were the only role that was played well.
Tori Vega was not the worst character ever but she also wasn’t the best. She was not my favorite character for multiple reasons. She kissed Cat’s and Jade’s boyfriends, disregarded others’ feelings sometimes, and intentionally chose to do selfish things to people. In Season 1, Episode 12, Tori sprayed cheese on Cat and her boyfriend without thinking about how they would feel, which isn’t right. She isn’t the greatest, but she isn’t the only character who’s done horrible things in the show. Jade has done and said some pretty horrible things in 90% of the show. Even Beck has done some questionable things but people never hold anything against him. None of the characters in Victorious were perfect but I still feel as though that’s what made the show so great and relatable.
After all, if Tori wasn’t the main character and if she didn’t have the bland personality she did, the show would not be the same at all.
