Never Seen It #300: Degrassi High: School's Out

400 movies I've never seen before? I'd put a bag over my head if I was blogging this piece of shit.

Degrassi High: School's Out

1992

Kit Hood

Ah man, it's good to be back with Degrassi. Well, okay, I've never seen the Degrassi series that this film acts as the conclusion for, so I can't say I'm "back" with these characters or whatever. But I'm talking more about the rhythms and tones of Degrassi: The Next Generation, the reboot series, and how that all-time great series feels similar to what I saw in this movie. I recognized it emotionally speaking. And it felt good.

Even without having seen a single episode of Degrassi Junior High or Degrassi High, I was familiar with a lot of what was happening here. For one, four of the characters are eventually in the main cast for DtNG (Snake, Spike, Caitlin, Joey), as well as at least two who show up for cameos to wrap up the storylines from this film (Wheels and Lucy). For another, I was just generally aware of shit that was happening because of being "into" Degrassi in my youth. For example, Emma (the main protagonist of DtNG) gets mentioned a few times here. She's in kindergarten! And, like, I know that Emma's dad is out of the picture because he (um) took acid and jumped off a bridge and got brain damage, because Emma tries to find him in DtNG Season 3. Joey's an asshole here, but that shades his character as stepfather to Craig in DtNG Seasons 3 and 4. It's all one big story.

On top of that, I was familiar with the big moment, metatextually speaking, in which Archie "Snake" Simpson drops the F-bomb. Snake is in so many DtNG episodes, and he's such a goober both there and here (by design, that's his character). So even if I've never seen this character as a teen, I knew the legend that Archie was the first person in Canadian primetime television history to drop the word "fuck" on TV. The irony is palpable that it's this character who pulls it off, but only if you're familiar with him and his place in Degrassi. I loved seeing it with my own eyes for the first time.

I also appreciated seeing the Joey storyline play out as well. I knew, if only from the context of the famous "fuck," that Joey was dating Caitlin but "fucking" Tessa all summer, but the way it occurred felt so natural to me, so real to life, in a way that really only Degrassi can pull off. It's so... innocent, I guess is the word. It's not melodramatic at all. It's grounded, the way these characters act. Maybe you can joke around and say that Degrassi is a "soap opera" because of all the subject matter they've covered over the years, but it's really not like a soap opera at all. It's the opposite of that. These are true and honest emotions that these characters are feeling, and they react in extremely realistic ways.

The biggest example was the characterization of Tessa Campanelli. This was a character I knew by name, but she never appears in DtNG so I didn't know much else about her. Maybe if you only know her by the line "and you were fucking Tessa!" you might assume that Tessa was... a harlot, I guess? Your typical teen drama might show one woman as "taking advantage" of the male character, offering sex while the other "prudish" female character refrains. What does it say about me that I assumed it was going to be like that? Because it wasn't, at all.

Tessa was my favorite character in School's Out, and she was by far the most sympathetic. BY FAR. She's crushing on a guy, she's really sweet about it, she's under the assumption that he's single, and she's crushed when she realizes that he's not. Not to mention that she has to get an abortion by herself, that she can't even trust Joey with that information, because he is too self-involved to have earned that trust. There's no question here that Joey is the villain in this scenario. It clicked for me when they had Tessa invite Joey over to cook him dinner, but she was a klutz and the dinner was a disaster. She is human, she is flawed, she is innocent.

And then she gets an abortion, and we never see her again! Ever! Not even in the sequel series! Man, that kills me. But Degrassi is always so good at this kind of thing too—ending on a downer, denying the audience closure. The f-word scene happens with about 25 minutes left in the film, and it's not even close to the worse thing that happens. Wheels, who has been silently getting drunk and fixing up a car the entire movie, takes a drive with Lucy and ends up in a drunk driving accident. Lucy is blinded (temporarily, and her leg is shattered too, as we find out in DtNG), a two-year-old is killed, and Wheels is going to prison. Apparently his own parents were killed by drunk drivers too? We get nothing at the end. Everyone's lives are worse after this post-graduation summer from hell. No closure. Damn, no wonder they wanted to make a whole new Degrassi series a decade later.

Like I said, any claims of melodrama in this TV show have more to do with the choice of subject matter than the way that that subject matter is portrayed. I think that it's pretty real to show a guy who allows his horniness to take over for a summer and hurt two great women in the process. I think it's pretty real to show a girl who just wants to be happy and ends up having to get a secret abortion because of it. I think it's pretty real to show a guy who struggles with drinking and who takes one too many risks and who ends up paying dearly for his missteps. The perceived melodrama is that all of these things are happening at the same time, to the same group of friends. That's just what you get with Degrassi, and you'll have to accept it. If you can manage to consider each individual plotline, one at a time, then you'll find a beautiful treatise on the teenage condition.

At this point, Degrassi works in both ways for me. It speaks to my sense of nostalgia in that I can relate to some of the foibles on the screen (oh god, was I the Joey Jeremiah for some women in high school and college?!), and it acts as nostalgia for that time in my life I was heavily involved with Degrassi itself. Like I said, this is some pretty innocent stuff, all things considered, and it makes me a little sad to watch it. This, despite the fact that I don't really know many of these characters all that well, since it's the finale movie to a series I've never watched. I don't have to know the characters in the context of the Canadian television series, because I already know these characters very well in the context of having been a teenager once, many years ago.

Thanks for putting up with another Degrassi blog post. More to come, I'm sure, because I'll never stop loving this dumb bullshit.

GRADE: 4.5 pukes out of 5

NEXT TIME: Okay, now it's time for the final round-robin small groups of FCQ4. We begin with Force Majeure, as chosen by Zach, who will spend the final days of his 30s watching it.

Album of the Week: SOS

I am told that gift themes for a seventh anniversary should include either copper or wood. I was looking it up because Record Club is celebrating its seventh anniversary this week! I sent out the first email Facebook message on February 3, 2019. Crazy how time flies. Drop your seven favorite Record Club memories in the comments, and then create some new memories by checking out the album for this week!

Record Club:

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WEEK 366 — February 1-7, 2026

SOS

by SZA

LISTEN:

Spotify | YouTube | Bandcamp | Apple

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PICKED BY MELISSA

MELISSA'S PITCH: "I chose SOS by SZA because I hear a lot about her when my students do their album reviews in the fall. I wanted an excuse to listen to her music, and thought she might interest some Record Club friends who might not normally write. Also, now you all have to learn how to say the name SZA, which Nana-Melissa over here took far too long to get."

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ALBUM DETAILS

GENRE: Contemporary R&B, alternative R&B, pop rap, trap, neo-soul, alt-pop, trap soul

RELEASED: December 9, 2022

LENGTH: 67:51

TRACKLIST:

1. SOS
2. Kill Bill
3. Seek & Destroy
4. Low
5. Love Language
6. Blind
7. Used (ft. Don Toliver)
8. Snooze
9. Notice Me
10. Gone Girl
11. Smoking on My Ex Pack
12. Ghost in the Machine (ft. Phoebe Bridgers)
13. F2F
14. Nobody Gets Me
15. Conceited
16. Special
17. Too Late
18. Far
19. Shirt
20. Open Arms (ft. Travis Scott)
21. I Hate U
22. Good Days
23. Forgiveless (ft. Ol' Dirty Bastard)

LYRICS: Genius.com, with ample notations from SZA herself!

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ARTIST DETAILS

NAME: The S stands for savior or sovereign. The Z stands for zig-zag. The A stands for Allah. Her name is pronounced "SIZ-uh," or like "scissor" with an "a" instead of an "or."

PRONOUNS: she/her/hers

ABOUT: Solána Imani Rowe was born on November 8, 1989, in St. Louis, Missouri, but grew up in Maplewood, New Jersey. She is known professionally as SZA, a name she took after being inspired by GZA and RZA of the Wu-Tang Clan. She attended Delaware State University to study marine biology, but dropped out to focus on her music career. She signed to Top Dawg Entertainment in 2013, before making her studio album debut in 2017. SZA has earned five Grammys and was nominated for an Academy Award. SZA keeps her private life private, e.g. she was dating an unknown fashion designer for eleven years, and their breakup inspired many of the songs on this album, even though no one knows who the mystery partner was. SZA is one of the leading artists in the still-emerging alt-R&B movement.

DISCOGRAPHY: SZA officially has two studio albums, with SOS being her most recent, and 2017's Ctrl being the first. However, in 2024, she released a "deluxe version" of SOS called SOS Deluxe: Lana, which is basically an entirely new album. She also released three EPs before her studio debut.

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ADDITIONAL INFO

READING SOME SHIT: RC alumna Chappell Roan interviewed SZA last summer

WATCHING SOME SHIT: "Kill Bill" live in 2023

RECORD CLUB CONNECTIONS: We've heard SZA before in Record Club! She was featured on Post Malone's Hollywood's Bleeding. This makes her the FIFTH featured artist from that album to become an RC alum in their own right, after Future, Halsey, Young Thug, and Black Sabbath's Ozzy Osbourne.

You may have recently heard SZA all over the radio with her feature on the #1 hit "Luther," a song by RC alumnus Kendrick Lamar off of GNX. These two, along with Lady Gaga ("Die with a Smile") and Taylor Swift ("The Fate of Ophelia") made sure that RC alumni were at #1 for more than half of 2025 (27 weeks total).

SOS was nominated for some Grammys, including Best Album. It lost to RC album Midnights by the aforementioned Swift, and it lost alongside output from Janelle Monáe, Miley Cyrus, Olivia Rodrigo, and boygenius. Oh, right, boygenius' Phoebe Bridgers is on this album. SZA and Bridgers' "Ghost in the Machine" won for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance that year.

"Ghost in the Machine" is also the name of the famous season 4 Degrassi episode in which Paige Michalchuk's rape case finally goes to trial. That episode takes its name from the Police song, though. Did you know SZA dated Degrassi actor Drake? I'm trying desperately here to connect this album to Degrassi and Record Club at the same time. How can I do it? Let's see, let's see... Paige was a main character in the 2009 Degrassi movie Degrassi Goes Hollywood, a movie that features cameos by RC alumni Kelly Clarkson and Pete Wentz (of Fall Out Boy) playing themselves? But SZA's ex Drake wasn't in that movie. Hmmmm... let's come back to this eventually.

MENTIONS ON THE BLOG: Three SZA songs were chosen for Yearlong Song Challenge, but none of them were from this album: "Saturn" for Sara YSC Day 66, "Garden (Say It like Dat)" for Sara YSC Day 111, and "Drew Barrymore" for Maeve YSC Day 138. "Garden (Say It like Dat)" was also chosen by Sara for MMM 009.

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COUNTDOWN:

69 Weeks Until Week 420

We are tracking and counting down every week from here on out till Record Club Week 420. We started this countdown 69 weeks out. During Record Club Week 420, we will be covering Donny Most by the esteemed Happy Days virgin Donny Most. The goal for Week 420 of Record Club is that it will feature 69 reviews from 69 different people. 

THIS WEEK: We are 54 weeks away from Week 420.

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Happy listening, RC family!
Have a great week!

Album of the Week: Year of the Goat

The calendar gets all jacked up because of the math. There are seven days in a week, times 52 is 364 days, which means there's an extra day every year, so the weeks shift year-over-year by one day, except Leap Years, which shift it by two days. It's not that complicated, but it does create a slight anomaly in the record keeping for Record Club every six or seven years. This is our final RC album of 2025, even though the reviews will be published in 2026. A while ago, it was determined that the week would be part of the year in which the majority of its days fell into. This week has four 2025 days and three 2026 days, so it's a 2025 week. But because 2024 into 2025 was the reverse, that means that today's album is the 53rd album of the year.

Oh my fucking GOD, no one gives a fucking SHIT about this, Joe, shut the FUCK UP please.

Sure, okay, you got me. Sorry. Welcome to our 361st week of Record Club. We are about to enter our eighth calendar year of this club. I'm still happy to be here. But before we look toward the future, let us revel in the recent past one last time. Let us say goodbye to 2025 with one more album. Hope you enjoy. See ya in the new year.

Record Club:

archives | supplemental

spotify playlist | youtube playlist

choose | writing

WEEK 361 — December 28, 2025-January 3, 2026

Year of the Goat

by Fucked Up

LISTEN:

Spotify | YouTube | Bandcamp | Apple

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PICKED BY JOE

JOE'S PITCH: I don't have a strong pitch, but the weak pitch is that Fucked Up is a band that is important to me and my own musical growth over the past couple decades, and I feel like I should, every once in a while at least, add one of those types of artists to the growing stable of Record Club alumni.

I was about to say "Fucked Up is a good entryway into hardcore music," but I don't think it's as simple as that. Fucked Up are a hardcore band, but for years now, they've pushed against the restraints of the genre, and pushed hard, to the point where many people (people more in-the-know than I when it comes to genre and hardcore specifically) argue that they aren't hardcore at all. Which might be better for this club in a vacuum, especially if you have no interest in exploring hardcore music.

Year of the Goat is the tenth part of a twelve-part series by Fucked Up, which, sure, also does not lend the album any favors in terms of its placement in Record Club. You might argue that it's like asking you to listen to the tenth episode of a twelve-episode mini-series. But I'll also say that Fucked Up's Zodiac series (ongoing for 20 years now, and ending this year with two more double-LPs) has always been extremely loosely connected. I think there might be some work on this album to add some old characters back into the fold, but that's all hearsay, I haven't listened to the album yet.

I mainly want you to hear one of my favorite bands in their most progged-out form. I also want you to hear an album during the week of the New Year that speaks to the idea of years and cycles and rebirth and all that. That's all. The rest is just window dressing. Take it or leave it.

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ALBUM DETAILS

A NOTE ABOUT THE TITLE: On Bandcamp, the title is listed as Grass Can Move Stones Part 1: Year of the Goat. The "Grass Can Move Stones" thing is the title of the three-album series that is finishing the twelve-album Zodiac series for Fucked Up. It's like naming Act III of a play. The individual album (or scene) is what we are focusing on today. The album's name is Year of the Goat.

GENRE: Post-hardcore, rock opera, art rock, progressive rock, art punk

RELEASED: December 5, 2025

LENGTH: 55:26

TRACKLIST:

1. Long Ago Gardens
2. Rivers and Lakes

LYRICS: I don't see any online yet. If they come out this week, link to them for us!

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ARTIST DETAILS

PRONOUNS: he/him/his for Abraham

ABOUT: Fucked Up formed in Toronto, Ontario, in 2001. By the time they recorded their first demo tape later in the year, the band consisted of Damian Abraham (a.k.a. Pink Eyes, a.k.a. Mr. Damian, lead vocals), Mike Haliechuk (a.k.a. 10,000 Marbles, lead guitarist), Josh Zucker (a.k.a. Gulag, additional guitars), Sandy Miranda (a.k.a. Mustard Gas, bassist), and Jonah Falco (a.k.a. Mr. Jo, a.k.a. J-Falco, a.k.a. G-Beat, drums). Guitarist Ben Cook was also a member of the band from 2007 through 2021. They won the Polaris Prize in 2009. Their fans were so destructive during a taping of MTV Live in 2007 that the program banned moshing from that point forward (didn't stop their fans in 2008 from doing the same thing, an experience that Abraham called "fucking out-of-control terrifying). They've released so many singles throughout the years, and have so many collaborations, both of which I feel are in line with the hardcore ethos, even if they aren't necessarily "a hardcore band" anymore. They have a couple of rock operas under their belts, and in 2024 they released multiple albums, all recorded in one single day each.

DISCOGRAPHY: It's complicated. Wikipedia has nine albums listed under "studio albums," including the agreed-upon first five: Hidden World (2006), The Chemistry of Common Life (2008), David Comes to Life (2011), Glass Boys (2014), Dose Your Dreams (2018, a sequel to David Comes to Life). Then there's the four albums released between 2023 and 2024: One Day (2023), Who's Got the Time & a Half? (2024), Another Day (2024), Someday (2024). But that's not including David's Town, which is a "compilation" but basically a fake one, recorded by Fucked Up and collaborators, posing as fictional bands from the fictional town that David Comes to Life takes place in. It also doesn't include Zanzibar, which is a film score for the movie of the same name. And finally, it doesn't include any of the Zodiac albums, which are labeled as 12"s, which is really just another way to say "album." Especially since some, like the 80-minute Year of the Horse (2021), are longer than most normal albums.

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ADDITIONAL INFO

READING SOME SHIT: Haliechuk explains Grass Can Move Stones in New Noise Magazine

WATCHING SOME SHIT: a (purposefully and hilariously dramatic, I think) trailer for Grass Can Move Stones

RECORD CLUB CONNECTIONS: Lots of collaborations, but very few can be connected to Record Club artists. I am particularly disappointed that this means I am going to waste an opportunity to talk Degrassi—Shenae Grimes a.k.a. Darcy Edwards does backing vocals on a 2007 charity single "David Christmas"—unless you wanna talk about the incredibly weak Degrassi connection with the Beach Boys that I mentioned back then. We simply need more Canadian artists in here, I think. E.g. Jennifer Castle has a featured spot on this album, and she's worked with Constantines as well. They all work with each other constantly!

This is the first artist with the word "fuck" in their name, and only the second "fuck" overall for RC, after Yambag's Mindfuck Ultra. This is the second goat after the Mountain Goats, though T-Pain also had a song called "Goat Talk."

Fucked Up join Kaytranada as the only Record Club alumni who have won the Polaris Prize. K'naan's The Dusty Foot Philosopher, PUP's Morbid Stuff, U.S. Girls' Heavy Light, the Beaches' Blame My Ex, as well as a non-RC album from Carly Rae Jepsen, have all been nominated.

MENTIONS ON THE BLOG: It's hard to search on the blog for this one, since "fucked" is not an uncommon word to be used around these parts. But I know at least that four Fucked Up songs have been featured on MMM (025, 031, 032, 038), plus a song on 008 by Hateful Coil, which is really just Fucked Up in disguise. Dose Your Dreams was my favorite album of 2018. Their "Queen of Hearts" was my thirteenth-favorite song of the 2010s, while Dose Your Dreams was my 45th-favorite album of the decade. David Comes to Life was retroactively named by seventh-favorite album of 2011. They have worked with Owen Pallett, landing them on this Top Five, featuring three other RC artists and a #1 that you can ignore forever!!!

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COUNTDOWN:

69 Weeks Until Week 420

We are tracking and counting down every week from here on out till Record Club Week 420. We started this countdown 69 weeks out. I am happy to announce that during Record Club Week 420, we will be covering Donny Most by the esteemed Happy Days virgin Donny Most. I am also happy to announce that Week 420 of Record Club will feature 69 reviews from 69 different people. 

THIS WEEK: We are 59 weeks away from Week 420.

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Happy listening, RC family!
Have a great week!

A Year of Blind Spots: The Wildest!

Joe is working through a list of albums that he considers "blind spots," i.e. albums that he's never heard but feels like he should.

The Wildest!

Louis Prima

1956

What 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die has to say about The Wildest! by Louis Prima:

A popular nightclub singer/trumpeter in the 1930s and '40s, initially in his native New Orleans and then in New York, Prima found work had dried up by 1954. With new wife and stage partner Keely Smith in tow—he a rugged 43, she a whitewashed 22—he called in a favor and landed a gig in the lounge of the Sahara, Las Vegas, hiring young New Orleans saxophonist Sam Butera to drill the band. Success came immediately; this sparkling half-hour, cut live in the studio in April 1956, iced the cake.

Jazz hounds often dismiss Prima as just an Italianate Louis Armstrong impersonator, perhaps because of the three Satchmo hits here: "You Rascal You," and a medley joining a restrained "Basin Street Blues" to a non-soporific "When It's Sleepy Time Down South." But that is to miss the point: this is simply irrepressible music that more than matches its glorious cover shot. Prima is joyous, rumbustious, and irresistible, making even the band chuckle on "Oh Marie," with Smith in contrast, a delightfully straight-laced foil. Butera and pals, meanwhile, set them up with some of the fizziest jump-jive ever recorded. The sound has been imitated often, not least when Brian Setzer's cover of "Jump, Jive, an' Wail" helmed a GAP commercial. Butera, whose arrangement it appropriated, grumbled that he was paid three pairs of pants for the privilege.

Prima died in 1978, but his legacy lives on through daughter Lena, herself seen recently performing at the Sahara, and through his later turn as a real, jive-talking orangutan in The Jungle Book. Truly, the man was the king of the swingers.

What Joe has to say about The Wildest! by Louis Prima:

The book's blurb ends with The Jungle Book, and mine starts with it. A Year of Blind Spots practically ends with The Jungle Book, however. This is the penultimate entry for this column, and the final one where I lift an entire page from a book that I got for Father's Day a year and a half ago. It feels fitting to hit one of our final notes talking about a monkey from a cartoon. Clearly, based on this pretty great (for the '50s, anyway) album, there is more to Louis Prima than his voice acting role as King Louie, but this is how I will always know him, the blurb wasn't lying there. In fact, Louis Prima was on my iPod for a long time due to the presence of "I Wan'na Be Like You (The Monkey Song)" after I purchased it for 99¢ off of iTunes. This was before I decided that having cartoon movie songs on my sacred iPod was crass and undignified.

I suppose there was a time in my life when I might have considered 1950s swing music to be undignified, just by way of being lame as fuck. Pam's first reaction to hearing this album, for example, was namechecking the aforementioned GAP commercial (neither of us realized until I wrote the blurb above that it wasn't even Prima's version on it). I suppose this was during the so-called swing revival? I had to look up Brian Setzer's Wikipedia to make sure he had nothing to do with Squirrel Nut Zippers. Nope! Another tiny furry creature-named band though, Stray Cats, who did "Rock This Town," one of the worst songs of all time, but the song that lends its title to the BEST episode of Degrassi of all time. It's all connected, baby!!!!!!!

So there's your five steps from Louis Prima's wild swing scatting and JT Yorke's murder, but what else of The Jungle Book? I think that The Wildest!, during it's most frantic moments, reminds me of King Louie enough that I'm charmed. "Oh Marie" is definitely the blueprint for the monkey character, with the absolutely gibberish coming out of Prima's mouth in just about the most thrilling way possible. The sarcasm of "(Nothing's Too Good) for My Baby" is the spiritual predecessor to Louie's tomfoolery. "The Lip" even has some of the trumpet sound effects that you hear throughout King Louie's big showstopper. I'm not trying to make some revelatory point here; of course Louis's music and Louie's music are gonna sound and feel similar, since they are one in the same.

I like this album, but I think there's a ceiling for my appreciation of it. That's always been the case with pre-Beatles music (more or less), but The Wildest! probably confirms it once and for all. I can appreciate older music for what it is, I can enjoy when its catchy and endure when its not, I can marvel at the musical talent it must have taken to make such a work of art. But it's still kinda lame, and it's never going to stoke that fire in my soul like great music does. I'm so glad I'm pushing myself in this direction toward the end of A Year of Blind Spots. Going back in time is the final frontier for me in terms of exploring new (to me) music. I have like 35,000 songs on my iPod and less than a 100 of them were made before 1960. Even if ultimately the reaction is going to be something like it is here—"oh, that's pretty cool, I guess"—then it will have been worth listening to Louis Prima.

Yearlong Song Challenge, Day 147: Sara

Prompt: "A song with exactly double the amount of characters in the title than in the artist name"

Selected by Sara

"Kiss Me thru the Phone"

Soulja Boy ft. Sammie

iSouljaBoyTellem, 2008

Soulja Boy and Degrassi single-handedly started sexting. Inflammatory statement? Maybe. Factually correct? Absolutely not. But we don't read this blog for facts, we read it for feelings. We come here for magic. We come here to embarrass ourselves.

The blog has become one large LiveJournal, I was never a Xanga girl. I actually know that my LiveJournal still exists, and sometimes, when I am really feeling like cringing at myself, I go look at it. Towards the end, it just became a place to talk about my baby brother's cancer diagnosis. It got bleak. As you will see, my writing has not really improved in nineteen years. Here is a beautifully unedited post:

[Dec. 11th, 2005|06:41 pm]

so yesterday was so much fun!

mommy and i went to NYC to see The Light in the Piazza, and it was amazing!  even mommy liked it!

i got JAMBA(!) and starbucks and candy! it was a great day

our bus came to pick us up late...that was kinda lame

but the best part was when we were talking to this lady about bus trips (lol, i know) and i was like "well then my school goes up blah blah blah" and she was like "OH! you teach?"  and then my mother almost fell over laughing and yelled "SHES JUNIOR!......IN HIGHSCHOOL!" it was really funny, and this was like right after the waitress at Bennigans gave me the Drinks menu.

Yearlong Song Challenge, Day 93: Sara

Prompt: "A song featuring a trickery"

Selected by Sara

"Get Down"

Anna of Cleves (sung by Genesis Lynea) and Company

Six (Studio Cast Recording), 2018

The first place to look for a song about trickery is a musical. Easy enough. Find a song that moves the plot along, explains someone's actions. In this case, Anna of Cleves. King Henry claims he was essentially catfished by her portrait. 

The second place to look for trickery is the Canadian teen drama, Degrassi: The Next Generation. If PoYB is a music blog first, it is a Degrassi blog second. As I've posted about before, I am on my Degrassi rewatch. I'm assuming this has to be my third or fourth time watching, and my husband's first (how lucky!). Recently, we started Season 5. The Season 1 Grade 8s (Paige, Jimmy, Craig, Ashley, Marco, Hazel) are now seniors. Which is insane to me. So I believe it's about 2006 in the series. There is an amount of suspended reality that you need for the time and content of the show. Eighteen years is a long time of cultural change for a show to withstand. 

This made watching the first two episodes of Season 5 so very very difficult. The episodes titled "Venus Part 1" and "Venus Part 1" are very Manny-heavy. Season 4 ended with a strange storyline of Kevin Smith producing a new Jay and Silent Bob movie at Degrassi. I think it was a way to end the season on a lighter note after Rick died, Jimmy got shot, and Emma got gonorrhea. I found it a bit strange, but alas, I was not old enough to write for Degrassi when it was out. Manny got bit by the acting bug when the movie was being filmed there, which leads us into Season 5. 

Season 5 introduces us to new "hottie" Peter. Peter is rich and pursuing Manny, even though Emma has a crush on him. He says he wants to be a director, Manny says she wants to be an actress, they kind of hit it off. Peter hosts a party and is filming everyone. Which honestly just takes all the fun out of parties. That's why Gen Z isn't fun like us old heads are, always posing for the camera. Manny has previously gotten in a fight with her parents about getting plastic surgery to look "better" and needing it to be an actress. Her dad calls her a loose girl and a slut. (Fuck her dad, for real.) So Manny shows up, gets drunk, and then ends up flashing the camera Girls Gone Wild style. 

Here's the worst part. Peter is SOBER in all this, and takes full advantage of her, and then, because she won't go out with him, he distributes the video!! I know this is 2006, but how are we not more angry at the revenge porn of it all? The minor in question?! Want to know the biggest plot twist and trick of all? Peter is the principal's son. Absolute gutter behavior from the HBIC of Degrassi. 

I am going to assume in my first watch of these episodes, I definitely blamed Manny for her behavior. Watching again in 2024, I just want to shake her and tell her that she's OK. That she should have been honest with Emma about what was going on. That her dad's an asshole for calling her a slut. That the world is built to make women feel like they are not enough. That it's OK to want to be an actress but please finish school first. That you don't need to change your body to make people like you. And that under no circumstances can anyone distribute explicit images of you. Send Peter and Ms. Hatzilakos to jail. Justice for Manny!

Yearlong Song Challenge, Day 80: Sara

Prompt: "A song about platonic love"

Selected by Sara

"Crowded Table"

The Highwomen

The Highwomen, 2019

Friendship is the greatest form of platonic love. Friendship can form into family units when needed. A friendship that I've been thinking about a lot if that of Emma Nelson and Manny Sanchez. If you are not familiar, they are characters on Degrassi: The Next Generation. They are best friends! With all friendships they see certain difficulties. I personally think when they are in years seven through nine, the greatest difficulties they face are Emma being a total brown-nosing narc. Literally her stepdad is a teacher, and she's just someone who wants to tell you the rules over and over. Then after that, she asks you to sign a petition about turtles. Manny breaks the rules more, she is pushing boundaries in many ways. The most recent episode I watched, Manny decides to get an abortion. While Emma doesn't agree with it, she sticks up for Manny when the father (Craig) says that she can't. That's a real friend! That's love.

Yearlong Song Challenge, Day 60: Joe

Prompt: "A pretty okay song that is used for the opening credits of an AMAZING television show"

Selected by Joe

"Whatever It Takes"

Lisa Dalbello and a children's choir

Theme for Degrassi: The Next Generation (Season 2), 2002

As I'm sure EVERYONE on this blog is VERY much aware, I am (slowly) reviewing every episode of Degrassi: The Next Generation, from beginning to end (is there an "end" to this series? we'll find out!). Last we visited the series was for Summer Song Challenge, when my song choice for that day matched up with the title of the episode I was reviewing ("Girls Just Want to Have Fun" by Cyndi Lauper and S02E03 "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun"). I didn't think I was going to have a chance to review S02E04 this year, since the title of that episode is "Karma Chameleon," and Pat already picked that song for Song Challenge, but I forgot that I could just choose the theme song, "Whatever It Takes," and go from there. So here we are. The best TV show of all time, and a version of the theme song that was better once they removed the corny children's choir in later seasons.

Degrassi: The Next Generation
"Karma Chameleon"
Season 2, Episode 4
Originally aired: October 13, 2002

The big calling card for this legendary Canadian teen soap opera was that it was "realistic," or "grounded," or "accurate." It strove to precisely document a typical teenage experience as we, the audience know it (or knew it, when we were teenagers). There is drama, but there is no melodrama. There's a difference. Yeah, sure, there was a school shooter that one time, which pushed the limits of the point I'm trying to make here, but on your average episode of Degrassi, the stakes were a lot smaller.

I would say that the fourth episode of Season 2, "Karma Chameleon," has small stakes. Ashley is trying to apologize for a past fuck-up, and Toby likes a girl. But something that I, a 35-year-old grown man, might consider "small stakes," is obviously a pretty huge fucking deal to a thirteen-year-old Canadian teen. We know that Ashley is going to grow up and find love and forget all about the minor dumb thing she did when she was a young teen fucking around and the groveling her so-called friends made her do. But in that moment, it feels like life or death. That's where the empathy comes from, via the audience. We know what it's like to feel that hurt magnified, even if we can acknowledge that, in the grand scope of one's life, it's not really going to amount to much. When it's happening to you, at that age, it's monumental.

So here's where we are at, here in the fourth episode of the year. Ashley is struggling. She took a pill at a party last year, and while she and Drake were maybe, sort of on the "off" part of an on-again-off-again, she kissed Sean. Ashley, for all her faults, is a kind person, and has decided here, a whole summer removed from the incident, that it's time to try to make things right. So she apologies to Paige (I don't remember why Paige is upset... is it because she's just an asshole, or is she defending Drake or something?), Drake, and Sean. They are all pretty sincere apologies, and I don't agree with Paige that Ashley is just going this so that her friends don't hate her anymore. I really do think that Ashley is trying to make things right. She's the good guy here.

Unfortunately, things go a little too well for her, and Drake and Sean both end up thinking that they are going to be dating Ashley. Drake gets upset, Ashley pulls away from Sean, Sean gets upset too, and no one is happy. Even Terri is miserable because Paige convinced her to ditch Ashley after Ashley accidentally said something kinda cruel to Terri. And the episode ends on a CLASSIC Degrassi down-note—it's picture day, and Ashley's school photo is taken as she stares into the camera, downtrodden, a single tear falling down her cheek.

Sometimes I think about the lessons that kids can learn from these episodes. I know they aren't meant for me, since I've already gone through all this shit as a teen and more. So I put myself in the shoes of a fourteen-year-old, and wonder what they might learn from the tale of Ashley. For this episode specifically, maybe a kid is walking away from it thinking that trying to make things right between you and your friends is worth it, no matter what. Which at first glance might seem antithetical, since Ashley tries to make things right and this shit only gets way worse for her. But still... a lot of that is circumstantial. In those miniature moments, those connections between Ashley and Drake and Ashley and Sean, everything feels really good. You can get a palpable sense of goodness feeling good, and anger feeling bad, you know? And so why wouldn't you walk away from this thinking that being good means you feel good?

We can especially examine this in light of the recent events with Drake, a.k.a. Jimmy Brooks, a.k.a. Aubrey Graham, but forever in our hearts as Drake. He gets into a shoving match with Sean in this episode, and a couple weeks ago, he got into a proverbial shoving match with Kendrick Lamar. I see similarities between the two. In both cases, Drake starts the fight, but also seems to lose that fight. Feels like Kendrick and Sean would've been content to just leave Drake and Jimmy be forever, but then they were forced to enter the fray, and each were more than happy to punch back. (And if you're looking for a crossover here, let's not forget that the actor who played Sean was NOT INVITED to Drake's Degrassi video shoot... hmm, I wonder if their fight over Ashley had anything to do with it?!?!)

I can see the value of Degrassi. I started watching it for real when I was in college, so I wasn't the same age as the actors and the intended audience. I just worry that maybe some of the younger folk are going to take the wrong message from this. Yes, I'm talking about the actors here too. What did Drake himself learn from his character's actions in this episode of television? Jimmy/Drake showed real vulnerability, and Paige made it so that he felt like a punk-ass bitch for it. And so he felt like he had to punch Sean, even though Sean's not really the problem. The problem is Jimmy, and the problem is Drake. And maybe the actor Drake grew up and the point of the Degrassi episode "Karma Chameleon" still hasn't landed for him.

Sean asked Ashley out on a date; Kendrick rapped in the voice of Drake's father and stated in that voice that Drake should kill himself. In neither cases does Drake feel GOOD about this. There's no fucking way. And Ashley, his fictional ex-girlfriend, showed him the way out of this all those years ago—try to be a good person, and you'll feel good about it—and he's still not doing it. Degrassi is right there, man! Use it! It helps! The lessons were already hard-fought, right there on the screen, just for you!

I don't want to overstate my case about being kind, especially since this was the thesis of the rap battle I wrote about last summer, and also half of the thesis of the Nickelback thing last Saturday, and also it's kinda icky that a white dude would be typing some version of "can't we all just get along?!" anyway. But there's truth there. This is what I'm trying to say, but through the lens of my favorite TV show this time. Being kind feels good, and acting like an asshole—no matter what, no matter if the other guy deserves it, no matter if the other guy kissed your kind-of-girlfriend, no matter if the other guy called you a pedophile, no matter if he was right in that regard, no matter if the other guy abused his partner or if the person doing the accusing was just grasping at straws, no matter if you'd eventually get involved in a school shooting and become paralyzed below the waist, no matter if your best friend is Spinner fucking Mason, who pops boners in science class and math class and right in the middle of the cafeteria—feels really fucking bad, man. And I don't know why you'd consciously choose to feel bad over feeling good. It doesn't make sense.

We should also consider whether Toby's new girlfriend (and Spinner's adopted sister) Kendra Mason actually exists or if she's a figment of Toby's imagination. Think about it. She completely disappears after Season 4. She's not at Spinner's Season 9 wedding to Emma. No explanation where she went. It might be time to consider the possibility that Toby started taking new medication at the end of Season 3 and stopped having visions of a twelve-year-old animé fan who wants to make out with him in the computer lab. I know this has nothing to do with Ashley's quest for redemption or Drake's lack thereof, but it bore mentioning, because I love Toby, and I want the best for him, and this was the B-plot and I can't fit it into the main thesis otherwise.

Main thesis: Be kind. It'll pay off eventually. You go, Ashley. Live your truth. Become friends with a first-appearance Ellie Nash. Don't mess with pedophiles. Be happy. You deserve it, kid.

Ashley deserves it, and so do you, dear reader.

GRADE: 3 pukes out of 5

NEXT TIME: "Weird Science"—it's the Spinner boner episode!! Holy shit!! I didn't even realize that episode was next when I made that jokey reference to Spinner's boners a few paragraphs ago!!!

A Few Mini-Reviews Here at the End of the Year, Under the Wire, Sorry, I'm Just Trying to Make Sure We Have Had Enough Blog Posts This Year... Have There Been Enough Blog Posts? Wait, Holy Shit, I Can Use HTML Code in Blog Titles?!

World's Greatest Dad (film, 2009)

The premise is kind of insane, but I won't spoil it here. It's probably insane enough that there was no way that it could be a bad movie even if it tried. You never know with these box-office bombs. Could be because it was a legitimately bad film. Could be that audiences just don't appreciate the humor of a film. World's Greatest Dad is the latter. When that Dear Evan Hansen film adaptation similarly bombed, I read the plot description, and was shocked to read the insane plot of that musical. And now I am doubly shocked, because World's Greatest Dad has a weirdly similar plot, similar enough that I'm now convinced that the creators of Dear Evan Hansen completely stole from World's Greatest Dad and just took out the autoerotic asphyxiation. Ah shit, now there I go spoiling something. Here's another spoiler: you get to see Robin Williams naked. A decently funny movie that went down really well at 5 AM this morning as I watched with the infant with an ear infection.

GRADE: 3.5 pukes out of 5

Café Carmela (restaurant, Northeast Philly)

December is all about using gift cards from the previous Christmas (we also did a cheese class, which was excellent, but won't be reviewed here), so we finally hit up Café Carmela. The concern, as it always is when my parents recommend a restaurant within fifteen minutes from our house, is that this is gonna be one of those "Center City-style restaurants," an idea that I just find kinda sad. The Great Northeast is already filled with enough totems to the swaths of people who are too scared of overblown ideas of crime to move closer to the city but too poor to move to the suburbs. I'm cool with a good restaurant, but let's not pretend like it's something that it's not. Thankfully, Café Carmela was not that. Just a nice mid-to-upscale pizza place. We got there early enough that we weren't bothering anyone with the children (who are better behaved than some similarly-aged children I've seen out in the wild, mind you). The pizza was kinda burned but they advertised the burning on the menu. It wasn't a Point-style oops-we-fucked-up burn, more like a "crispy" and "fancy" style pizza. It was fine. Better was the crab mac 'n' cheese, and best was the cheesesteak, which is eventually gonna find its way onto those trendy "Best Cheesesteaks in Philly!" lists eventually, mark my word. If you find yourself in the NEast with an empty stomach and you are afraid that you're gonna get carjacked if you travel any farther south on I-95, then I guess this is your place.

GRADE: 3 pukes out of 5

Sobriety during the holidays (by some fucking loser, 2023)

Not good, but manageable, in retrospect. I didn't slice my hand open while carving the turkey this year, so that's at least one hash mark in the "pro" column of sobriety. I also felt really awful, emotionally, at the very beginning of the Christmas Eve festivities. All of the kids screaming in my parents living room which is set at a constant 90 degrees, and I took the crying baby and just went into the basement for like 20 minutes just to cool down. After that, it was fine. It's just that I would normally have alcohol to block all that out, ya know? Christmas Day was even better, mainly because we hosted and thus could set the temperature in the house. The worst part for me, for the entire weekend, was the end of the night on Christmas, when the kids are falling asleep and I'm cleaning the dishes and the rest of the kitchen. In the past, that was when I hit my fucking stride. It was the best moment of zen all year—drunk on ten beers, Christmas music blessedly switched over to Midwest emo, window over the kitchen sink open, happy for a good day and content to be the master of the room as I clean. This year, I substituted the warm fuzzy feelings of inebriation for a sore back. Still: I survived, and hence, the grade...

GRADE: 5 pukes out of 5

The fact that every dad I've spoken to in the past few days is living in a house in which every child and every adult is sick (2023)

This is just how it's gonna be from now on, huh?

GRADE: 0 pukes out of 5

"Rock This Town," Degrassi: The Next Generation (Season 6, Episode 11, 2007)

The one in which J.T. is stabbed to death. Martha and I watched it Christmas Eve morning at 5 AM (see movie review above: this is a pattern this week). It's my favorite Degrassi episode, and I felt it to be kismet that this was the episode that happened to be playing on the Degrassi channel that is inexplicably included in the "live TV" section on our Roku TV the one time I put it on. Wait..... no, I should be writing about this in Song Challenge. What's the soonest prompt that I could slot in "Rock This Town" by Stray Cats?

GRADE: 5 pukes out of 5

Blogging (2023)

Eh.

GRADE: 2.5 pukes out of 5

Shelter from the Storm: Home and School

May 3, 2005, 5:43 PM

 

Time is moving so goddamn slowly these days. It feels like it's been forever since I wrote on Xanga, and it's only been like a day and a half. Last time I wrote about how I had high hopes for the week at school, and now it's Tuesday and it feels like Thursday and the fact that time is moving so slow on that end too doesn't bode well for this week in general.

I can't name any specific incidents that shout "BAD!" or anything. Just a general malaise. It's tough to see the forest around this particular tree—is the mental fog something that teenagers go through in the normal course of adolescence, or is there something wrong with me? Maybe it's a little bit of this and a little bit of that. A little bit of "yes, shit sucks when you're this age" and a little bit of "I could use a slight perspective shift."

Like, okay, take the incident in Monday's Honors Chemistry lab period. Nothing was necessarily my fault, but it still somehow feels that way. Basically what happened was that there was a slight aberration in the chemicals we were mixing in the test tube, it wasn't heating up properly or something, and so Dottie Po (the silly moniker of our very unsilly chem teacher) decides to just move the whole beaker, and because there must have been a slight crack in the glass, exacerbated by the boiling water, the bottom of the beaker gave out, splashing scalding water all over the desk and all over the equipment and all over Dottie's arm. She gave out a mighty yelp when she got burned, which was disquieting in a way that I don't know if I can even explain. It's like, you see your teachers as invincible sometimes, and so when you hear an exclamation of pain, it shatters an illusion that you didn't even realize you had.

So that's been my week so far. Ah well. As the new-ish (three years old at this point) series of Degrassi says in their theme song: if I hold out, I know I can make it through.

Here's a bit of fucking optimism for ya: the weekend absolutely shimmers with potential. Options lined up for Friday night are limited to various kegs around discreet corners of the neighborhood. There's one allegedly happening in Burholme, and I thought maybe me and Mike and the gang might want to check it out, and possibly see if we can find the mythical firepit as a sort of side quest. There's also one behind St. Basil's Academy, which is unknown territory for me, and might be a bit farther of a trek, but we'll see. And then on Saturday, there's word that a band called Pepper's Ghost is going to be playing a set at the FYE in King of Prussia Mall. The LSCHS newspaper, The Wisterian, had a really positive write-up about the band from our very own Matthew S., so I've been meaning to check them out. That'll depend on who's going and whether we can find a ride or not.

Speaking of high school publications, our school also has a quarterly poetry magazine called The Gazebo. Not that I consider myself a poet by any means, but I've submitted something that I called "The Conspiracy at the Vatican and Its Impact on the Modern World." It's a surrealist, sort of stream-of-consciousness thing (as you may have been able to guess, it has nothing to do with the Vatican). I appreciated the opportunity to try it out, but I have no idea whether it's something that Ms. Anderson (moderator of The Gazebo) would find worthy of publication. It might be that stream-of-consciousness is viewed as cheap and insulting next to the works of my sincerely talented classmates.

Oh yeah! Speaking of cheap and insulting writings from Joe K***. I keep forgetting to tell you guys this. Apparently one of the topics at the most recent Presentation B.V.M. Home and School meeting (basically like a parent/teacher association) was the issue of Xangas, or like, blogging in general I guess. My mother alleged that my Xanga in particular was mentioned. I don't know if the unnamed person was speaking about my old Xanga or this new one that I'm am currently writing on, and I was too pale-faced to ask her.

Apparently, parents don't like Xangas, et al., because they "give too much personal information away." I mean, I guess I can't argue with that logic. I did just get done putting in writing how I plan on breaking the law on Friday night, and named the specific locations where I would be breaking the law specifically. Whoops.

All of this makes me extremely uneasy. Of course I don't want parents reading these words, but at the same time, I haven't taken any steps whatsoever to even address the possibility that they could, and I can't seem to do it no matter how many times I tell myself that I must. I keep getting drawn back to the Xanga, to the idea of putting my thoughts and feelings into words for my closest friends to see. There's an appeal to that. Sure, yes, I need to stop being a fucking moron about what I write, but I'd hate to go way to the other side of the spectrum, where the Pres teachers and parents stand, and bomb all Xangas everywhere out of existence forever. I like writing and I'm going to stay here for as long as I can, no matter what fucking school meetings mention all this.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Comments

Anonymous: That's hilarious–your xanga being the topic at a Home and School Meeting. That's classic.
I love the background song. The Band...awesome.

vllyb128: joe! haha you should have looked closer... oh well...

Jfingers88: Alcohol = bad thus Keggers = bad and Drinking = bad

Anonymous: Your xanga was the topic of a home and school meeting LOL, man thats fucking hilarious. At a home and school meeting at my friends's was on myspaces, becuase a kid had threaten to rape a teacher.

Summer Song Challenge, Day 18: Joe

Prompt: "A song that makes you think of your favorite TV show"

Selected by Joe

"Girls Just Want to Have Fun"

Cyndi Lauper

She's So Unusual, 1983

Pretty clear to everyone whose every met me that my favorite TV show of all time is Degrassi: The Next Generation, and so, after an over-two-year break, I'm back at it with the Degrassi reviews, right here on Puke on Your Birthday. WHATEVER IT TAKES!!!!!!


Degrassi: The Next Generation
"Girls Just Wanna Have Fun"
Season 2, Episode 3
Originally aired: October 6, 2002

Degrassi was never interested in attaching meaningful episode titles to any of their episodes. Sure, the episode is more or less '80s themed, and Cyndi Lauper gets a shout out multiple times, but I wouldn't say that there is any thematic relevance to the term "girls just want to have fun." I'd maybe even say that the episode makes a convincing argument that girls—all humans, really—don't want to just have fun. "Girls Just Wanna Have Their Relationships Validated in Meaningful Ways," but I guess Lauper never thought to make a song titled that way.

Today's A-story and B-story take place at the same venue, the Senior Dance, which is nice. Not only because it's convenient for bloggers writing about this 21-year-old episode of Canadian television, but also because it proves that the showrunners are taking extra steps to tie the A- and B-stories together thematically.

Over in the main plot, we have Emma learning that the Degrassi canon never dies. Her mother—Spike from the original Degrassi series in the 1980s—is dating her teacher—Snake, a.k.a. Mr. Archie Simpson, also from the original series. I've never seen that one—I'm a '00s kid, I guess—but apparently Spike and Snake were an item. So explains Emma to her pal Manny, anyway. "Rekindled romance," she describes it as. And so the main concern here is that Emma loves her mom (having been raised by her in their little two-unit family) and feels kinda weird that Spike is dating, not to mention the fact that it's Emma's teacher we're talking about here.

And then in B-plot land, we have Spinner and Drake (for those new to PoYB's write-ups, just know that we refer to Jimmy Brooks as "Drake" here, even though there is an actual character named Drake in Season 6 or 7 who straight-up murders main character J.T. with a knife... we'll address the cognomen conflict when we get to Season 6 in these reviews sometime in 2057) competing in a dance competition. Each believes that he himself is the best dancer, and they eventually come to figurative blows, sabotaging each other in the dance competition, and learning a lesson about trust and friendship along the way (also maybe Drake learns a lesson that you should never try to be Michael Jackson... except maybe the real Drake never learned this... aren't there whispers that Drake is really inappropriate with children in a suspiciously Jackson-esque way... will PoYB ever learn how saying this type of shit in a winky-winky sort of way never comes off well in the long-term... I'll stop now...).

That quip about "trust and friendship" comes off like I'm being sarcastic, but I swear I'm not. That really is what this episode is about—how we need our loved ones to hang on tight, and how much it hurts when we aren't given constant reminders that those people are in our lives because they love us, but also how it's not their responsibility to placate our egos and remind us every single second of the fucking day. Like with Spinner and Drake, they each want to win the dance competition so badly, so much so that they forget that they are only the well-adjusted people they are now because of each other's help.

And like with Emma and Spike. I get why it's weird that Emma is freaked out with the possibility of Snake becoming her stepdad, because that's a violent shift from their current arrangement as teacher/student. But I also get why Spike is a little lonely being a single mom, and desires a little romance to find true fulfillment. Neither side of the conflict is necessarily incorrect, but they both end up hurt because neither is able to see from the other's POV. Of course Emma is gonna need a little extra attention from her mom and is hurt when Spike decides to go to the Elvis Costello concert with Snake instead. Of course Spike is gonna be hurt that Emma doesn't give a shit about her mother's happiness and only cares that her mother's new boyfriend is an awful DJ. But it's not the Snake thing that's keeping these two at odds; that was only the catalyst. The problem is forgetting that they need each other to make it through this crazy, mixed up world.

Probably didn't help that Craig is out there in Degrassi World still, causing the drama and mixing our characters up in unique ways. Craig is an agent of chaos in Season 2! And here we are, witnessing Craig stir the pot yet again, this time not even on purpose. You see, Emma and Manny spend the whole episode chatting it up that Craig so totally has a crush on Emma. At the last second, though, Degrassi pulls the rug out from under us, and has Craig ask Manny to dance with him at the Senior Dance. Though we can probably mark this the beginning of Manny's transition from sidekick to main character, in the episode we're covering today, this is still Emma's story, and the whiplash only compounds her hurt. First her mother, then Manny?

Don't worry, this isn't the start of a Emma/Manny fight. Though they are a year younger (and thus had to sneak into the Senior Dance through a side door), they are a little more mature than Spinner and Drake. Or at least Manny is. You can tell she's torn. She's mortified that Craig's ask is so obviously hurting her best friend, and yet, a cute older boy asked her to dance, and I think on a certain level, Emma doesn't really blame her (though I truly forget what the rest of the season entails in terms of Emma and Manny, sorry). Emma's really only upset because this proves something she has suspected all day—those closest to her are all gonna ditch her when romance comes a-knockin'.

It's not really like that, and Emma I think knows that too by the episode's end, when she has a heart-to-heart with Spike, and they both lay their cards right out there on the table for all to see. It's one of those rare Degrassi episodes that has a sincere emotional resolution—of course it was silly to assume that her own mother was going to choose some fucking dude over her. But maybe Emma just needed to hear it again, that's all. She just needed Spike to put words to what they were both feeling. And that feeling once again is: the need for friendship and love and camaraderie, the importance of loved-ones in our lives, the need for trust in each other, and so on.

The best episodes of Degrassi are able to pull of this type of catharsis effortlessly, and I don't quite think "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" quite gets there. You can see the ragged seams around the effort it took to get some of these characters in the same room, and even then there were a bunch of star players who were left out in the cold (guess we're gonna have to go another couple years on PoYB before we can talk about my boy Toby, my favorite non-Spinner character). Also, I get annoyed when TV characters get pissy at each other and don't just talk about their feelings right away, in order to set the stakes, and Degrassi is no exception. Like, did it really take Emma literally walking in on Spike and Snake face-fucking before we had the mother-daughter confrontation? Shouldn't Emma have just said something to Spike before she ditched girls night for Elvis Costello? Get your shit together, Emma!

But overall, I'm willing to give Degrassi the benefit of the doubt more often than not. And I think they did the best they could here with what they were given. Not too many fireworks, but it's Degrassi—we'll get there soon enough.

GRADE: 3 pukes out of 5

Stray Observations

• We get a brief scene of Ashley getting totally shit on by Paige, and I couldn't remember why, until I reread what happened at the end of Season 1. Man, it's tough to keep track of Degrassi sometimes, especially when you go two years in between reviews.
• The episode went out of its way to make Snake look like a hapless bozo in this episode (as a way to sympathize with Emma's POV), but man, I totally related to how awkward he was when he was attempting the heart-to-heart with Emma early in the episode. Whenever I try to have a serious talk with someone, I stumble over my words in the exact same way.
• Marco gets introduced in this episode! He doesn't have any speaking lines, but there he is, winning the dancing competition. I wonder if the showrunners had any plans for Marco at this juncture. E.g. I wonder if the "Marco gets all the girls" line was a pointed reference or just a coincidence.
• I probably don't have to worry about spoilers as much as I do in other reviews on this blog, since you're still only reading this if you've ever seen Degrassi, right? So should we be able to talk about how Craig eventually cheats on his girlfriend with Manny? When is that, Season 4ish? Before or after Emma gets gonorrhea in the Ravine?
• I like the little moment when Manny is kind of realizing her own sexuality when she's talking about Mr. Simpson (a.k.a. Snake). How she gets a little breathless talking about his height and "cute smile," and it's not really remarked upon after that moment. If she knew anything about the Degrassi canon, she'd know that Snake was the first character in Canadian television history to drop the F-bomb in primetime. And that's hot!!!!!!!!!!!
  
• I guess it's a little funny that Drake is obsessed with getting Toronto Maple Leafs tickets in this episode. Imagine how prescient it would have been in he was obsessing over Toronto Raptors tickets.
• So let's see, I think it was just Elvis Costello and Jackson who were in this episode and also covered in the Summer Song Challenge so far. No one has picked a Drake song yet. Thankfully.
• I probably should've just done the famous and excellent Degrassi song "Everybody Wants Something" by the Zit Remedy (a band that included Snake, plus Joey Jeremiah, who also makes a sort of cameo appearance in this episode). Say what you will about this fucking show, but that's a banger of a song. It shows up in the background of the daytime Juniors Dance in this episode. Though it seems to me that sometimes SSC participants will speak the name of a song, and then that song will magically appear in the next couple days, so let me just yell this into the universe real quick: SOMEONE PICK "EVERYBODY WANTS SOMETHING" BY THE ZIT REMEDY PLEASE!!!!!!!!
  

NEXT TIME: S02E04, "Karma Chameleon," which maybe we'll review if Record Club ever does a Culture Club album or something.