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| above: my dignity, restored |
Last month, I pathetically admitted that I enjoy Degrassi: The Next Generation more than an average boy my age should. I'll sit there in my dorm room watching the show and get absolutely berated by my roommates at the audacity of my watching this trash. Fuck, I know, it's true, it's a disgrace. When I tell people I watch Degrassi, they show nothing but utter dismay at my decisions. But there I was, ready to defend it until the day I die.
Not anymore.
Okay, it was great for a while. Hell, it was so great, I wasted literally days watching this nonsense. I got into it probably the middle of September. It is now the middle of November and I have finished over seven seasons of the show. Let's say the average season is twenty episodes, and the average episode is twenty-two minutes. That means that in the past two months, I have watched over 3080 minutes of Degrassi in my sophomore year of college. Remember that time I got the shit kicked out of me at that frat house? Maybe I deserved it.
The funny thing is, for seven fucking seasons I defended the show. I defended it despite the nonsensical plotline developments, the unstable yet gargantuan main cast, and the terrible acting. But season eight was just too much for me. I can no longer defend this series.
Canada gets a lot of shit from its sister to the south, and maybe there is no way to get back any dignity it has already lost. Still, though, Canada, you have to do the whole Western Hemisphere a favor and end Degrassi after this season. Please, for my sanity. Please.
In my drunken stupor, let me try to explain why this is just too much.
First of all, as is the case with all quasi-realistic school-life TV shows, the writers find themselves fucked in the ass, since all the main characters are aging just as they would in real life. However, once they graduate, what the fuck are you supposed to do? It's a major issue, and it's one that the writers of Degrassi handled poorly.
Firstly. they cheated when they held at least half of the Season 5 graduating class back from graduating at all. Jimmy "didn't have enough credits" because of his wheelchair, Spinner was a dumbass and repeated a grade, Ashley was in England and thus got held back, and Alex was "a graduated student, but returned to get better grades." All of this is utter bullshit and is obviously just an excuse to return a few main characters and still have the majority of the action happen in the school that the show is named after.
Meanwhile, Paige, Ellie, and Marco all go off to college, and the show inexplicably follows them there, though all ties from the actual Degrassi school have been cut.
So at the beginning of Season 6, the writers of the show are shitting their pants because the producers want probably a few more seasons out of them, and all their main stars are set to graduate at the end of the year—and there is no way that they are going to hold all these students back from graduating, because they already pulled that card last year.
The bitches bitch out and extend the school year. Every season previous contains one full school year. Season 6, however, only covers the first semester of Emma and gang's senior year, and Season 7 will have the second semester.
To make matters so, so, so much worse, Season 7 introduces new characters. Too many new characters. A neighboring school "burns down" and Degrassi houses all these new students. Thus, many new characters are given a legitimate—though flimsy—reason to all of a sudden show up on the roster of main stars. It's painfully obvious that the writers are preparing to keep these new characters on board for seasons to come once all the old ones graduate.
And so we have the shitshow that is Season 8. The characters that we previously followed to college—Ellie, Paige, Marco—all hook up with each other (not an exaggeration), and then disappear from the Degrassi universe. Meanwhile, Emma, Manny, and Liberty are the new college kids, and they are involved in the dumb-as-shit plotlines that happen hours away from Degrassi Community School. And, in the worst move in Canadian television history, one of my favorite shows adds about two dozen new, unknown, random fucking characters to the show.
First of all, I grew to like the characters of Craig, Jimmy, Paige, Toby, etc. Degrassi was enjoyable because of the people that were involved. Just because they all graduated doesn't mean you can forget about them.
Secondly—fuck man, this second decision adds salt to the wounds of loss and grief. Marco is gone, so you add a homosexual character whom I don't care about. J.T. is dead, so you add a class clown whom I don't care about. Liberty is a disgusting sorority chick now, so you add a smart stuck-up nerd whom I don't care about.
What the writers did was take all the characters we knew and loved, erased them, and added unknowns to the cast who 1) we don't give a shit about, and 2) have the SAME fucking stereotypes that the original cast had.
Paige = Holly J. Hazel = Anya. Jimmy = Sav. J.T. = Derek. Liberty = Clare. Toby = Connor. Alli = Manny. Blue = Craig. Riley = Marco. Johnny = Sean. Spinner = Spinner. (Yes, Spinner is THAT GUY who still works at the local café and still chills with the high school kids. From a storytelling perspective, I'm glad we have an oldhead around, but from an emotional perspective, it's like, dude, just let go.)
Not only that, but they've run out of issues to cover. We have already seen every fucking teen drama issue that you can possibly imagine over the course of this series. Pot, drinking, coke, anorexia, stealing, engagement, dyslexia, cancer, school shootings, school rivalry, murder, ADHD, cheating, pregnancy with abortion, pregnancy with adoption, pregnancy false scare, OD, drug dealing, attempted suicide, finding Jesus, losing your virginity, online gambling, house parties, child services, oatmeal, and male cheerleading.
The only thing that can possibly be done now is simply repeat the same goddamn issues with different characters. Sadly, this is exactly what they've been doing. Well, okay, fine, they have come up with some new issues, but really... when you have a B-plot that involves finding Spike's vibrator, we're crossed some kind of line. We're just grasping at straws.
I've gone on long enough. I've written so fucking much about Degrassi that I may never be able to show my face again on the mean streets of Northeast Philadelphia. But still... it just makes me mad, and I had to drunkenly rant about it.
They killed a show that, despite it's gaping flaws, I still enjoyed. They took it, and they tore it wider than Marco's sphincter after a three-year relationship with Dylan. They raped this show more than Darcy at the ski trip. They fucked this show harder than Emma's mouth in that van in the Ravine when she contracted gonorrhea. They killed this show worse that when rival school Lakehurst stabbed J.T. in the back for dating Drake's ex-girlfriend. They beat the shit out of this show worse than Derek cowardly did to that chick Jane just because she joined the football team. They punched the shit out of this show worse than Craig did to his step-father Joey because Craig had bipolar.
This show is dead. I will never watch is again, no matter how many times Canadian television renews it. Never.
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