"Secrets and Lies"
Season 1, Episode 8
Original aired: May 6, 2002
First, a programming note: Good morning. Thanks for waking up and turning on your computer and clicking on your PoYB bookmark. Welcome. How's your coffee? Good? Great. It's the morning of November 4th here in the United States of America. Well, it's November 4th where you are. I'm still here on November 3rd, typing this. The polls are just opening where I am. I've read the polls over and over for the past few weeks, but I unfortunately cannot tell the future. I gotta believe that, where you are, a lot of votes are counted, and Biden is in the lead, and some votes are being counted still, and they too are trending Biden. I gotta believe that, despite whatever our orange fascist is spewing on Twitter, there is some semblance of democracy left in our broken country, and a transfer of power is forthcoming. Or maybe not! Maybe you're waking up to a scorched earth. I don't know. Like I said, I am not a prognosticator.
But I do know this: last night was probably stressful for you, and it was probably stressful for me. I've always believed that it's best to return to sources of comfort during times of high stress. Consume what you know as you become surrounded by a world of unknowns. For me, Degrassi is that comfort. I know Degrassi. I believe in Degrassi. Degrassi is a constant, and it brings me peace during those moments in my life when the variables appear posed to beat me into submission. Let us consider Degrassi: The Next Generation here on the morning of November 4th.
A second programming note: I have not watched this episode in almost two months. After I reviewed the Drake/Adderall episode, I watched "Secrets and Lies" at least twice, with the intention of writing about it, but it just never materialized. Life gets in the way (I guess I'm preaching to the choir here on November 4th). But I took notes during those viewings, and I have enough to say based on those notes that I can cobble together a blog post, especially on a morning in which no one in their right fucking mind is giving up even five minutes to read a fucking blog post about a fucking Canadian teen soap opera from fucking 2002 on a fucking pointless blog.
It figures that, on this day of all days, when I am looking everywhere and anywhere for any sense of comfort and sanity, Degrassi gives me an episode in which they ask me to sympathize with Ashley and Liberty, the two worst characters in season one of Degrassi by a Canadian kilometer. Let's start with Ashley, because she really ramped up the asshole-ishness in "Secrets and Lies."
We've mentioned a few times about how Ashley's parents are divorced—I am continually intrigued by how often her mom and stepdad are involved in these season one plots, something I had completely forgotten about before this rewatch—but this time, we get to meet Ashley's dad. Apparently he's been on a "long vacation in Europe." Really, he's been away with his boyfriend. Ashley's dad is gay.
Everyone seems to be okay with this except Ashley. Her mom is cool with it at this point—the two of them are on civil terms. Ashley's friends at school are okay with it—Terri makes a good point that at least both her parents are alive, while Paige tries to bond with the fact that they both have family members who are gay (see you in season three, Dylan), and gets a cup of water thrown in her face for her troubles.
The only person who is a dick about it is Ashley. And you know what? It's really easy for me to call her a dick, but if I was in eighth grade, I might have thought that the world revolved around me as well. It's less difficult for an adult to step back and consider other people's feelings—e.g. appreciate that your parents were able to work through their issues, appreciate that Dad is living his truth, appreciate that there are still two parents in your life who care deeply for you—but a fourteen-year-old doesn't have the emotional capacity to understand any of that. Well... not Ashley anyway.
You know who else is kind of a dick in this episode? J.T. Which means that Liberty was made a fool of so badly that she couldn't be the villain in this episode, so you know J.T. must've been a HUGE dick to cause such a seismic shift in my opinion of LVZ. The gist of their B-plot is that Liberty's crush on J.T. finally becomes explicit enough that J.T. is going to have to address it. And he addresses it in the worst way possible.
But it's an interesting way of addressing it, at least from a plot standpoint. J.T. has heard the rumors about the goings on in the A-plot, and decides to bring some of that magic to the B-plot. J.T., instead of being honest with Liberty, simply pretends he is gay. My zoomed-out general takeaway from this is being impressed that the show was able to weave both of these plotlines together. My specific takeaway is that J.T.'s stereotype-laden gay impression was so cringeworthy but unfortunately accurate as far as seventh grader gay stereotypes go.
My personal takeaway from this, however, is something that the show touches on briefly but then shifts focus before it even gets its due. I'm talking about the position that J.T. finds himself in at the beginning of the episode when a girl likes him and he does not like her back. Man, I kinda wish that Degrassi would've focused more on this very real—painfully real—teenage scenario.
Okay, because there's conflicting feelings here, right? One, there's a total lack of romantic and/or sexual connection to this person, i.e. no desire to have any relationship past friendship with this person. So this creates conflict. But two, there's also a need to not make another human being feel sad, and unfortunately, in this context, telling the truth would make the other party sad. So you avoid the truth for as long as possible, out of the this second need. But you're walking a tightrope, because you don't want to lead the other person on, but you don't want to shoot them down.
A teenage boy can only exist in that position for so long before something gives. J.T. made the poor decision of making a cartoonish performance his buffer between discomfort and hurt, but at the end of the day, I don't blame him for making a dumb decision. There was at least one instance in college when I was in a similar position and I pretended that I was asleep. There was at least one instance in college when I was in another similar position, and I literally ran away—like, I was told that she felt things for me, and instead of responding in any sort of way, I turned and ran out of the building and up the street. Can I really say that J.T. is a dick without being a hypocrite?
At the end of the day, it's made painfully clear that, as much as it hurts, J.T. was right to tell the truth. Same with Ashley's dad—the truth hurt Ashley, but it's out there. Now the healing can start. Liberty can start to deal with unrequited love in a healthy way, Ashley can start to deal with the fact that her dad is still the same guy she knew before, and the audience can start dealing with the fact that all these teenage characters will, time and again, react very, very poorly to the challenges that they face. That's how it goes at Degrassi.
Well, what do you think, gang? Is that enough for today? Have you had your fill of Degrassi? Did it make you forget about the toppling pillars of democracy, at least for a few minutes? I hope so. Maybe by the time we get to the next episode, things will have calmed down around here. Until then... I know we can make it through.
GRADE: 3.5 pukes out of 5
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