My Love For Teenage Melodrama Has Met It's Match, Eh?

"So, uh, what do you wanna do tonight?"
"Mmm, get a pizza, watch ‘Degrassi Jr. High."
"You got a weird thing for Canadian melodrama."
"I got a weird thing for girls who say ‘aboot."
~ Chasing Amy

Before I delve into the meat of this post, I have two admissions to make. First, when I was in Middle School in Miami back in the mid 90's, each morning we'd have a half hour home room period where they would show us episodes of the original DeGrassi Junior High. Second, anyone who knows me is aware that I have an addiction to cheesy teenage melodrama (see, Creek, Dawson's; Hills 90210, Beverly (the new one as well) and Girl, Gossip). I am not ashamed of this. I will proudly admit that I own seasons 1, 2 and 3 of Dawson's Creek on DVD and am angry I don't have 4, 5 and 6. In fact, one can make an argument that Season 4 is the strongest of all of the seasons, although I maintain that there is not better television than the second half of season 3 when Pacey and Joey are finding their feelings for each other.

That being said my current job allows me to take one weekday off a week. On this day, I usually wake up around 10am. As I was flipping through the channels, I caught that MTV was airing back to back episodes of DeGrassi: The Next Generation. With my knowledge of the original series, I decided to take a shot with the next generation of DeGrassi's youth. After all, American teenage angst is wonderfully unintentionally hilarious. If you add Canadian to that mixture, well, the prospects are off the charts.

The first thing that took me off guard was that DeGrassi is a half hour show that has an ensemble cast of about thirty-five fucking kids. And these are just the kids in the opening credits. There are other kids too. Apparently they are in Season 8 now, and some of the kids are the same kids from Season 1, so I'm not sure all of that makes sense. Plus, they all talk in Canadian accents.

Anyway, DeGrassi is basically Saved by the Bell combined with Beverly Hills 90210 with a Canadian twist. It tries to balance the funny with serious. I'm not quite sure if it succeeds. I've given it five episodes so far. The proverbial jury is out.

Speaking of the serious, I researched the show on Wikipedia (the show has it's own Wiki site), and was absolutely shocked at some of the plot lines the show has covered. Granted it's high school so there's obviously a lot of fucking, heavy petting, mouth sex, drugs, cheating, break-ups and general shennanigans, but I mean, come on. So check out a brief list of shit that has gone down at DeGrassi:

- Excessive Sex Among Freshman Students
- High School Basketball Star Getting Shot and Being Wheelchair Bound
- Middle-Class Kids Joining Gangs
- Actual Coitus in the High School building
- Gay Ice Hockey Players Moving to Switzerland to Play Professional Hockey
- Freshman Bringing Vibrators to School
- Rape Resulting in Chlamydia
- False Accusations of Teachers Molesting Students
- "Stealing Goods" (assuming they mean "goods" in the UCC meaning)
- Performance of Rampant Sexual Acts in "The Ravine"
- Male Anorexia
- Teenage Pregnancy, Including, But Not Limited to 14 and Pregnant
- Abortion
- Teens with Bipolar Disorder
- High School Student Getting Testicular Cancer
- HIV Scares
- Gonorrhea
- Cocaine use
- Underage Nude Video Taping (not with cell phones, so not technically "sexting")
- Internet Stalking
- Teenage Death by Aorta Stabbing
- Lesbianism

This is probably more shit combined in less than eight seasons than The Creek or 90210 covered in their entire runs. Andie McPhee would be considered normal at DeGrassi. They wouldn't let Brandon Walsh run the newspaper (if they have such things in Canada) because he's too fucking pure. The females at DeGrassi would have Brenda Walsh cry. They would have looked at Pacey Witter fucking his teacher with disappointment that he didn't get syphilis in the transaction. They would have stabbed Dylan in the aorta for chrissakes.

Candaians are fucking crazy. Who cares if they're afraid of the dark.

All this for a 30 minute show that has been on for a little over seven seasons. Who knew Canada was so fucking crazy? I mean, I know today's youth are crazy fucked up and I've only been out of high school ten years, but shit. Does this shit really happen? My head hurts.