Whatever It Takes: Joe Reviews Degrassi Episode 3

Degrassi: The Next Generation
"Family Politics"
Season 1, Episode 3
Originally aired November 4, 2001



I totally got punked by making such a big deal last week about how Degrassi touches on all these taboo topics each week. Unless you are a Toby/Ashley incest shipper (oh my god please no), this is a very normal episode of Degrassi. It deals in both the A-story and the B-story with interpersonal conflicts we might find ourselves in as we bump up against family and friends and strangers on the first day of school, and the different ways that one can go about resolving issues just enough that you can make it to the end of that day.

There are no ripped-from-the-headlines teen issues this week, is my point. It's normal. And that's okay! We remember Degrassi for its outlandish abortions and school shootings, but it's important to remember that this show also functions as a middle-school soap opera, and the stakes aren't always that high.

In terms of "Family Politics"'s role in Season 1, this episode functions as a sort of re-pilot for Degrassi, filling in the various holes that "Mother and Child Reunion" left while it was focusing on the catfishing. Most importantly, it serves as an introduction to some of the main characters that got little or no time in the actual pilot.

Ashley, who made a cameo appearance last week, takes on the role of main character in this week's episode. Knowing how Ashley functions in Season 1 of this show, I can tell you that my personal opinion is that Ashley is the fucking WORST. I don't know if it's fair to categorize her as "the worst" based on this episode alone, but if not, it's awfully close. I mean, her opening lines are about her assumptions that she will be school president, and then she clunkily pivots to claiming that she will find her best friend a boyfriend this year, the implication being that she thinks it will be difficult for Terri to find a boyfriend, which is fucking insulting (but Terri is also the worst? I dunno, there's plenty of time in the next couple seasons to talk about Terri, who is basically a stock sidekick character like Manny at this point).

But so here is Ashley, who will be a major player this year as the quote unquote "popular girl," but of the "wholesome" variety. Alike but opposite to her, we are also introduced to Paige Michalchuk, the classic popular girls of the... unwholesome variety? I dunno. I'm avoiding using such words as "slutty," even though that's clearly what the show wants you to think right now, before they pull the rug out from under you later on. "She's not just a ditzy bimbo," Degrassi will argue, "all these characters are human with many shades." True soon enough, but for now, we're left with an impression that Paige glammed up over the summer, and now she's just a chick who shows her belly button and eats Twix bars on the sly even though she's fronting about a diet. #Paige4ever.

I'm gonna keep going through a couple more characters whom we are introduced to here, but I think it's important to stop and state that these characters are only outlines at this point, and that's not a slight against Degrassi. No drama ever introduces fully-formed characters at the very beginning. Shading in characters, revealing layers to these onions, that shit takes time. I can't wait to get to the Ashley that I can stand, the empathetic Paige, the Terri that... gets her head bashed in? But all those characters are coming later. These are the introductions. Maybe that says a lot about my own personal tendency to make snap-judgments when I meet people, especially people like Paige. If I was an eighth grader at Degrassi Community School, I would've hated Paige's fucking guts based on her dumb clear box purse alone. But there's more to her than that!!!

I wanted to preface with all that before introducing Gavin Mason, a.k.a. Spinner, a.k.a. maybe Degrassi's best character, because his introduction is not a pretty one. He is the star of this episode's B-plot, and comes off as the thinnest sketch of the most cliché bull character. His purpose in "Family Politics" is to bully (a temporarily sidelined) Emma and Manny so much that Manny has to fake cry to shake him. That's it. That's the plot. It's not much, and it's a terrible introduction to Spinner, but if you are watching this for the first time, please believe me when I tell you that it gets better.

Perhaps the most important introduction that this episode makes, at least in terms of our current pop culture society here in 2020, is that of Jimmy Brooks, who is played by Aubrey Graham, now known to us as Drake. To outsiders, this might be the one thing you know about Degrassi, the fact that perhaps the most famous rapper working today was once on a shitty Canadian teen soap opera. That may seem weird to you, the person who hasn't ever watched Degrassi before. But believe me when I tell you that, as a long-time Degrassi proponent, this is still fucking insane to ponder to even me. Still. I remember like it was yesterday, reading a Pitchfork article about how Drake was trying to make it as a rapper via a mentorship with Lil Wayne, and laughing and laughing and laughing (seriously, read that fucking article!), thinking that nothing would ever come of this. And then here we are, eleven years later, and the kid who played Jimmy fucking Brooks is one of the most famous people on the planet. This is insane, right? It's fucking insanity.

We will have MUCH more to say about Jimmy Brooks over the next 200 episodes or so, but suffice it to say that, based on what we now know about Drake's stature in pop culture, it's funny to think that his true introduction is basically a silent bully sidekick to Spinner, flanking the main bully and smirking at his verbal knockdown of a pair of 12-year-old girls. Nothing about this scene screams "I will be more successful than the Beatles one day," but there you go.

Thankfully, the character is immediately giving a modicum of depth when he puts his arm around Ashley, implying that he is the boyfriend of the most popular girl in school, thus further implying that he might just be the most popular boy in school. Again, as this is a de facto pilot episode, there's not too much there, but at least for Jimmy and for all these other characters, the groundwork is laid down for further development in the near future.

The crux of the episode quickly comes into focus when it's revealed that Toby, who almost stole the show last week, is actually Ashley's stepsibling. The next twenty minutes focus on that dynamic, the stepsibling rivalry. Toby decides that Ashley is annoying—I mean, she is, but that's not the point—and figures out that the best way to stick it to her is to have his best friend J.T. Yorke, the class clown, run against her. This infuriates Ashley—"but he's grade 7, kids from grade 7 don't win the presidency"—and it only gets worse when J.T. actually starts to win in the polls.

As simple as this plotline is, it's actually quite elegant how well the two sides are balanced here. Toby is right in his insinuation that Ashley is a vapid, pretentious dick who absolutely needs to be taken down a peg, but the way he goes about dealing with it (putting up a front by using his friend as a shield to parental criticism) is totally cowardly. Ashley is right when she breaks down and admits how vulnerable she is, and how afraid she is that her reputation as a star student is predicated on bullshit, but then again, it takes her a while to admit that point, and even then she only does so halfheartedly.

If I'm on Toby's side, it's only because I find Ashley especially aggravating in these early episodes, and maybe also because Jake Goldsbie can act circles around Melissa McIntyre (possibly the worst actor on the show). But even here, at the beginning, you can start to see Ashley come down to earth and start acting like a goddamn human being, and I will be the first to raise my hand and say when Ashley's had enough, when (not if) that time comes.

For now, though, we are happy that Toby and Ashley come to a tenuous understanding, and we hope that they are able to continue to survive under the same roof. At least until the next Degrassi-level crisis, anyway.

Can Degrassi operate on this level consistently? No. If every episode was like this, then Degrassi would not be nearly as memorable. This show is fun when the stakes are high, and "Family Politics" barely had any stakes at all. School president? Does anyone truly care? Ashley does, but that's about it. I totally understand the need for an episode like this at the beginning of a new series, but hopefully next week's episode can bring us back to the fireworks factory.

GRADE: 2 pukes out of 5.


Stray Observations

• Here's something else I was wrong about last week: not every episode is named after an '80s song. There is no popular song called "Family Politics." How about let's say that when we get to an episode that is named after a song, we'll talk about the song, and otherwise, I'll shut up about music for once.
• Oh boy, there was one glaring admission from the "character introductions" that I may or may not have left out on purpose. Enter the true villain of the Degrassi Universe: Liberty Van Zandt. She doesn't serve much purpose in this episode other than to lay down a very basic character trait (overeagerness), but that'll change quickly. I want to give Liberty the benefit of the doubt through this run-through of the series. I know she's not meant to be half as annoying as I make her out to be. I think the main issue is that this is supposed to be a fun, heightened drama, and Liberty exists as the one consummately rational character in a sea of dumb exaggerated buffoons. That role is a thankless one, and it's not fun. I want to have fun. Liberty doesn't want me to have fun. We'll see a lot more of her.
• Though Snake was introduced in a "original Degrassi character" context last episode, we get our introduction to "Mr. Simpson the teacher" in "Family Politics." In his one scene, he managers to embarrass himself twice, once by showing up late to the very first day of class, and once by calling his homeroom "the coolest homeroom in school," something that an actual cool person would NEVER say. Is the implication supposed to be that Snake is a new teacher, and that's why he seems so unprepared? Or is Stefan Brogren just taking his acting cues from The Wire character Mr. Pryzbylewski, despite the fact that Degrassi Community School is lightyears away from Edward J. Tilghman Middle School?
• Ms. Kwan also makes her first appearance in this episode. She never plays a major role in any of the plots, as far as I can remember. I think she's usually just the go-to teacher when the plot calls for an academic classroom setting (seeing as how Snake is mostly dealing with computers, and there's a gym teacher at some point too).
• One more blink-and-you'll-miss-it introduction in "Family Politics" occurs when Paige mentions that she is thinking of starting Degrassi's "spirit squad," which is basically a cheerleading team. The Spirit Squad will be a constant well of stories over the next decade-plus, usually as a yardstick for which students are considered the most popular, and which students are on the outs.
• Here's some questions: How is it possible that Toby was able to use the copier machine, the one that allegedly costs ten cents per copy, without paying first? And are Canadian middle school politics so advanced that they would really have pre-election polling? These are legitimate questions, but sometimes, with Degrassi, it's best to just ignore these types of questions whenever they pop up. It's not worth it.
• Sincere question: Is Degrassi Community School really only two grades? Is that typically how Canadian schools function? I mean, I know they drop the pretense the very next year, when everyone moves up to the next grade, but still.
• Yan Moore does the writing for this episode again. This ties in with the fact that this episode acts as another pilot. The creator is going to set the tone.
• A man named Anthony Browne does the directing for this episode (he also directs Season 1's "The Mating Game," which is coming up shortly). He hasn't directed anything else notable. I will say that it was interesting that this episode also features a handheld-camcorder-as-episode's-actual-camera conceit like "Mother and Child Reunion" did. It doesn't make much sense in this episode (what student is taping this shit? and why? etc.); it only serves as a cheap device to introduce more sides to each new character. Basically, it's Degrassi's way of jerryrigging their version of the "confessional" stylistic device. I don't think this device shows up in any future episodes, so I'm thinking that maybe this was a Yan Moore choice, not a director choice.
• One thing that had to have been a director's choice: choosing the creepiest fucking freeze frame to end the episode. I know I said that Jake Goldsbie could act, but somebody had to have noticed that he looks like he just farted when they freeze on him. It's bad.
• Speaking of acting, it's just fucking bad acting by Dan Woods (Mr. Raditch) when J.T. quits the race. Nah, you're not going to have any sort of reaction when a dickwad 7th year student wastes everyone's time with a terrible chipmunk standup routine through faking a presidential candidacy? None at all? Okay...
• I mean, I could go on about acting in this show, but maybe I shouldn't.
• Knowing what eventually happens with Terri when she finally does get a boyfriend, I wonder if the writers knew at this point as well? I'm talking about when Ashley (obnoxiously) says "We're gonna make sure you have a boyfriend this year, Terri." Ashley could not have possibly known what that would entail, but did the writing room? I can't imagine they were plotting that far ahead, but ya never know.
• Oh shit, this has nothing to do with this episode, but I just saw the other day that Cassie Steele, a.k.a. Manny, is going to be starring as the voice of the main character in an upcoming Disney flick? I wonder if this is going to propel her to the #2 most famous former Degrassi actor? That bar is low, but still, man, she deserves it.