Degrassi:

Aaron made light fun of me for watching the 5 seasons of Degrassi Junior High/High. I just picked up the final two seasons and watched them. before I did so, I rewatched seasons 1-3. Amazing. Amazing!


Let's talk about why Degrassi is one of the top teen shows of all time, period.

1). Degrassi looks very, very real. In order to cast it, they hired around 50-60 children to act in the show. All shots of characters in the school show other characters in the background acting naturally, and its the same faces over and over again. The people employed are real children, not actors who were hired after national searches and so forth. They are simply the local kids in a district in Toronto. As a result, they look real. The students look like a real student body, with very few truly hot people. In fact, no child female character on the show is truly hot, and only a handful of the male child actors are truly hot. On a scale of 1-5, there are a handful of 1s and 5s, and some 2's and a few 4s, and a bunch of 3s. They look like real children, because they are the locals in a neighborhood.

2). The plotlines are fantastic. In order to have an educational component, almost every episode of the series has what I call an "Event" plotline, where one character goes through an event and must react to it. These events include death of a parent, getting into a fight, shoplifting, eating disorder, suicidal thoughts, and more. These events propel the characters and those around them into interesting storylines. These were very ahead of the times. There are two stories that deal with homosexuality, teenage pregnancy, abortion, AIDS, and more. Many of the shows were outright banned in various countries where Degrassi was shown, especially the 4th season episodes about a character who gets an abortion and the subsequent fallout. Then you have the normal story plotlines, where characters are falling into and out of relationships with other students. So you have story plotlines and event plotlines all happening at the same time. Different episodes feature different characters, so there is no central main characters. You may have an episode where some main characters never have speaking parts, but they are still in the background doing realistic things

3). Believable acting. Nobody here is a great actor (except perhaps the two actors who play Joey and Caitlin). Sometimes they say things in awkward ways or stumble through lines. The result is very realistic and believable dialogue. The best single acting job is when the character of Wheels does the two part episode where his parents are killed in a car crash by a drunk driver.

The result is a highly influential (it won an Emmy), drama that was ahead of its time in terms of plotline and filmed the show in a very different way than most shows. It's indie, Canadian, PBS, avant-garde teen angst to the maximum. I loves it.

Analysis of the show will continue next.