Tag Archives: Gretchen Helbig

Late Night Retro Television Review: Degrassi High 2.8 “Home, Sweet Home”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Sunday, I will be reviewing the Canadian series, Degrassi High, which aired on CBC and PBS from 1989 to 1991!  The series can be streamed on YouTube and Tubi

This week, everyone is sick of Wheels.

Episode 2.8 “Home, Sweet Home”

(Dir by Kit Hood, originally aired on January 7th, 1991)

Oh, Wheels!  Always in trouble, that one.

Ever since getting kicked out of his grandma’s house, Wheels has been staying with Joey but, after several weeks, Joey and his parents are sick of their houseguest.  Wheels easts all the food, never says thank you, and has yet to even to start to look for his own place.  Instead, he steals a bunch of money from Joey’s mom’s purse.  As a result, Wheels not only gets kicked out of the Jeremiah residence but Snake’s parents announce that Wheels can’t stay with them either.  Trapped outside during a thunderstorm, Wheels calls his grandmother and promises to obey her rules if she allows him to come home.

“I don’t believe you,” she replies before hanging up on him.

OUCH!  Though, to be honest, she’s right about Wheels’s sincerity.  Wheels is a pathological liar who takes advantage of anyone who trusts him.  It’s been a while since he was the cool kid that everyone wanted to date.

Wheels eventually crashes on Snake’s back porch.  (“My parents cannot know you’re back here,” Snake says.)  The next day, at school, Wheels promises Joey that he will pay back the money he owes.  Joey turns his back on Wheels and walks off.

And, again, Wheels really has no one to blame for but himself.  And those of us who know our Degrassi history know that things are soon going to get even worse for Derek Wheeler.

Meanwhile, Michelle returns home so she can have a quiet place to study.  She is shocked to find her father is at the house.  (She thought he would be at cooking class.)  Michelle agrees to move back in but on the condition that she pay rent and that her father stop trying to control her life.  Her father reluctantly agrees.  I guess, now that she’s broken up with BLT, it no longer matters that her father was previously portrayed as being a raging racist.

This episode was okay but it felt very familiar.  We’ve done the whole Wheels-is-awful thing already.  Add to that, as terrible as Wheels is, I don’t really agree with Grandma’s decision to refuse to allow him to come home.  Wheels promised to abide by his grandmother’s rules and that was the condition that Grandma set for his return.  Wheels is a handful and undoubtedly was being insincere but I think Grandma is going back on her word here.  If Wheels had come home, she could have at least continued to talk to him and kept trying to get him to go to therapy.  Instead, she left him out in the middle of Toronto in a rainstorm.  Shame on her for that.

Some characters are just doomed no matter what and that’s certainly the case with Wheels.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Degrassi High 4.13 “Testing, One, Two Three”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Sunday, I will be reviewing the Canadian series, Degrassi High, which aired on CBC and PBS from 1989 to 1991!  The series can be streamed on YouTube!

This week, everyone faces a test.

Episode 4.13 “Testing, One, Two, Three”

(Dir by John Bertram, originally aired on January 30th, 1990)

After being absent for the past few episodes, Joey and Caitlin are finally the center of this week’s story.  Both of them are struggling.  Joey, despite all of his efforts to study and pay attention in class, is still getting bad grades.  The school counselor thinks that Joey has dysgraphia, a learning disability that makes it difficult for him to express his thoughts in an organized fashion.  Caitlin, meanwhile, is going to have to appear in court as a result of getting arrested while vandalizing that nuclear plant.

A few thoughts:

  • Claude — or “Clode” as he wants to be called — once again shows himself to be the worst ever when he says he’s not sure if he can go to court with Caitlin.  Claude is the one who convincing Caitlin to vandalize the plant in the first place and, when the cops showed up, he abandoned her.  Big-time rebel Claude actually asks his parents for permission to skip school to go to Caitlin’s court date.  They say no, just as Claude knew they would.  What a putz!
  • “My parents aren’t liberal like yours!” Claude whines to Caitlin.
  • Maya actually puts off a doctor’s appointment so she can go to Caitlin’s medical appointment!  Good for you, Maya …. except, doctor’s appointments can kind of be important, too.
  • Actually, now that I think about it, why should anyone be going to court with Caitlin?  Caitlin made the decision to spray paint her stupid slogans on her own.  Claude shouldn’t have abandoned her but Caitlin shouldn’t have been there in the first place.  Caitlin acts as if Claude should take her punishment for her but actually, Claude being a coward doesn’t mean that Caitlin is somehow absolved.  She knew she could get in trouble when she climbed over that fence.
  • This episode is a good example of why Caitlin drives a lot of people crazy.  Caitlin has a problem and everyone else is expected to drop everything and spend all of their time worrying about it.
  • Joey, meanwhile, has a real problem to deal with.  He feels stupid.  He’s not dumb, not at all.  But his grades remain stubbornly bad and he’s just been told that he has a scary-sounding “condition” and that he’s going to have to take a special class to learn how to function.  And yes, there’s no shame in having a learning disability.  I have ADHD so when Joey talked about struggling to organize his thoughts, I knew exactly what he was saying.  But, when you’re the one hearing the words “learning disability,” it’s scary!  My heart went out to Joey in this episode.
  • Evil bully Dwayne made an appearance, harassing Joey after he overhears Joey describing him as being a gorilla.  Joey and Dwayne get into yet another fight.  Joey gets detention.  Dwayne gets suspended.
  • Caitlin is also in detention, as a result of slapping Claude.  Caitlin and Joey are still not getting along but we know that’s going to change.
  • Finally, there was one other subplot.  The students in a difficult biology class were excited to learn that Alex (John Ioannou) had an advanced copy of the big test.  Alex’s older brother saved all of his old tests.  Alex gives Tessa a copy of the test but makes her promise not to let anyone know.  Tessa lets everyone know.  Everyone in the class passes!  They don’t get caught.  But the teacher says its obvious that the test was too easy so he decides to toss out the results and give everyone a new test …. WHAT!?  CAN HE DO THAT!?  What the heck, Canada!?
  • Incidentally, I never would have passed Algebra II if my sister hadn’t saved all of her tests.  Thank you, Erin Nicole!

And that’s it for the week.  Remember — in yourself, you must believe!

Late Night Retro Television Review: Degrassi Junior High 3.16 “Bye-Bye Junior High”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Sunday, I will be reviewing the Canadian series, Degrassi Junior High, which aired on CBC and PBS from 1987 to 1989!  The series can be streamed on YouTube!

This week, Degrassi Junior High comes to an end!

Episode 3.16 “Bye-Bye, Junior High”

(Dir by Kit Hood, originally aired on February 27th, 1989)

The school year is ending and things are looking fairly positive for the majority of the students at Degrassi Junior High.

The ninth graders are looking forward to finally getting to enroll at the local high school next year.  The eighth graders are looking forward to finally being at the top of DJHS’s social hierarchy.  The teachers are happy because they’ve given their final exams and almost every student has done well.

Even Wheels!  Even though he skipped most of the year and spent a lot of time in detention due to his behavioral issues, Wheels manages to get passing grades.  Of course, his grades still aren’t that impressive.  Wheels just scrapes by.  However, his homeroom teacher says that everyone knows that Wheels has had a difficult year and the important thing is that Wheels showed improvement when he finally did come back to school.  In other words, Wheels will be moving on to the 10th Grade.

Spike, who has not been allowed to attend school in person, struggles on her final exams.  But Ms. Avery (Michelle Goodeve) talks Spike into taking some correspondence courses over the summer so that Spike can move on to the 10th Grade and take part in Canada’s version of the gifted program.

As for Joey, he gets two A’s and several B’s.  Unfortunately, he gets one C, in French.  (Seriously, how do you live in Canada and not know French?)  Joey’s parents told him that, if he got a single C, he would not be allowed to go to the last dance of the year, the all-important Graduation Dance.  Fortunately, Joey’s parents reconsider this rather harsh deal and they allow Joey to go to the dance with Caitlin.  Caitlin gets to wear a really pretty dress and Joey finally attends a dance without bringing his keyboard.

Even Shane shows up for the Graduation Dance!  Of course, he’s using a walker and has obviously suffered severe brain damage from falling off that bridge but hey, at least he’s not dead.

It’s the most positive episode of Degrassi ever …. until the school burns down.

Yep, you read that correctly.  This episode ends with Degrassi Junior High burning down.  Throughout the episode, the fire alarm keeps accidentally going off and we hear the principal making announcements about how there’s some sort of electrical short in the boiler room.  Well, during the school dance, a fire breaks out in the boiler room and this time, the fire alarm has a good reason for going off!

Degrassi Junior High ends with the students and teachers standing outside and watching as their beloved school goes up in flames.  Never has the cheerful Degrassi Junior High theme music felt more awkward than when it plays over images of flames exploding out of a school.

Why did Degrassi Junior High end like this?  As longtime fans of this franchise know, schools are always burning down in Toronto.  In this episode, we watch as Degrassi Junior High burns down in 1989.  We watch this with the knowledge that, 20 years later, Lakehurst High School is going to burn down and send all of its students to Degrassi Community School.  Though Degrassi Community School never actually burned down, it did see its share of fires.  Whenever this show needed an excuse to bring in a bunch of new transfer students, a school would burn down.

(In this case, DJHS burned down so that all of the incoming ninth graders, like Joey and Caitlin, would be able to attend the high school with Wheels, Lucy, Snake, and the rest of DJHS’s final graduating class, therefore keeping the cast together for Degrassi High.)

This was a good finale for Degrassi Junior High.  It was nice to see everyone happy and this episode certainly did capture the way that I always felt at the end of any school year.  Even the school burning down brought a nice bit of finality to everything.

Next week, we start Degrassi High!

 

Late Night Retro Television Review: Degrassi Junior High 3.13 “Making Whopee”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Sunday, I will be reviewing the Canadian series, Degrassi Junior High, which aired on CBC and PBS from 1987 to 1989!  The series can be streamed on YouTube!

This week, it’s an Arthur episode! …. really?

Episode 3.13 “Making Whopee”

(Dir by Eleanore Lindo, originally aired on February 27th, 1989)

With all of the season three drama surrounding Wheels, Shane, Spike, Joey, and Caitlin, it can be easy to forget that Degrassi Junior High started out as a show about a nerdy but well-meaning kid named Arthur trying to navigate his way through a brand new world.  Indeed, almost the entire first season revolved around Arthur and his friend, Yick.  By the time the third season rolled around, neither character was particularly prominent in the show’s ensemble.  I think one reason why Arthur and Yick went from being the main characters just being in the background is because their storylines never presented as much potential for excitement as the stuff going on with everyone else.  While Spike dealt with being a mother at 14 and Caitlin dealt with epilepsy and Wheels struggled with depression, Arthur and Yick were just average kids with average kid problems.

That’s why its a little bit jarring — after all of last week’s drama — to suddenly be presented with an Arthur episode.  In this episode, Arthur struggles to accept the fact that his dad has a girlfriend and that he would rather hang out with her than watch Space Cadets with his son.  When Arthur wakes up one morning to discover that his father’s new girlfriend has slept over, Arthur is stunned.  Later, when Arthur’s Dad comes to the Degrassi open house with his girlfriend, Arthur loses it and says that he’s sick of her coming between him and his father.  The end result is that Arthur’s father ends up single and depressed.  Arthur begs his Dad to watch television with him.  Arthur’s Dad sobs on the couch.

Damn, what a sad ending!  Of course, sad endings are a bit of a Degrassi trademark.  I’ve lost track of how many episodes of this show ended with someone in tears.

As for the B-plots, Luke continues to feel guilty over giving Shane that hit of LSD and the fact that everyone in school blames him for Shane’s accident certainly doesn’t help matters.  (Shane, for his part, is still in a coma.)  Meanwhile, Melanie finds herself competing for Snake’s attention with a snooty ninth-grader named Allison (Sara Holmes).  Melanie has nothing to worry about.  Allison may be older but Melanie is still the one who Snake asks to the graduation dance.  In fact, not only does Melanie get a date but she also gets her best friend back.  Kathleen forgives Melanie for reading her diary and also announces that she is now in therapy for her eating disorder!

Yay!  A happy ending for some….

And a totally tragic ending for others!

That’s Degrassi for you.

As for this episode, I’m a child of divorce so I could relate to a certain extent to what Arthur was going through.  I always hated it whenever my Mom dated anyone new and I will admit that I could be a bit of a brat about it.  That said, I never reduced her to crying on the couch.  I mean …. seriously, Arthur, what the Hell?  I preferred Melanie’s story because it had a happy ending and it was another storyline to which I could relate.  Talking to your crush and not realizing you have lipstick on your teeth?  Hey, we’ve all been there!

Late Night Retro Television Review: Degrassi Junior High 3.12 “Taking Off: Part Two”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Sunday, I will be reviewing the Canadian series, Degrassi Junior High, which aired on CBC and PBS from 1987 to 1989!  The series can be streamed on YouTube!

This week, Degrassi goes there again!

Episode 3.12 “Taking Off: Part Two”

(Dir by Kit Hood, originally aired on February 20th, 1989)

When last we checked in with the students at Degrassi Junior High, Shane was missing and Wheels, having been sexually assaulted by a man who picked him up while he was hitchhiking, was walking towards Port Hope in search of his biological father.

Shane is discovered underneath a bridge.  As the police tell his friend Luke, it appears that Shane either jumped or he fell.  Shane is alive, but he’s in a coma and there’s no guarantee that he’s going to survive.  When asked whether or not Shane had done any drugs at the Gourmet Scum concert, Luke finally admits that Shane did drop acid right before the show began.

As for Wheels, he manages to make it to Port Hope and he even finds the cheap hotel where his father, Mike (Dave James), is playing with his band.  Wheels imagines knocking on the hotel room door and his father happily greeting him and inviting him to join the band.  Instead, when Wheels knocks on the door, Mike is shocked and not particularly happy to see him.  Though Mike forces Wheels to call his grandmother and let her know that he’s okay, Mike does agree to let Wheels spend the day at the hotel.  Mike then promptly abandons Wheels.

When Mike eventually returns, a few things become obvious.

First off, Mike didn’t even know that Wheels’s adoptive parents had died.

Secondly, Mike doesn’t want anything to do with his biological son.

Third, Mike’s new girlfriend is pregnant and, as she explains it, they can’t afford to have Wheels around.

I mean, goddamn!  Poor Wheels!  First, he gets sexually assaulted while hitchhiking.  Then, his father rejects him.  Wheels, after yelling at his father for abandoning him, is prepared to run away again but suddenly, his grandmother shows up.  She was finally able to convince Joey to tell her where Wheels had run of to and she shows up to take him home.  Wheels is adamant that he’s going to run away again but when his grandmother starts to cry and calls him out for being a “selfish, selfish boy,” Wheels reconsiders.

At the end of the episode, Shane is still in his coma and it’s still up in the air whether he accidentally fell or if he was trying to commit suicide when he plunged from that bridge.  Wheels, however, returns to school and is greeted by Joey and Snake.  Joey apologizes for telling Wheels’s grandmother about Port Hope but Wheels says it’s okay.  He’s ready to give school another try.  Everyone smiles as the end credits roll on a well-acted and classic episode of Degrassi Junior High.

YAY!  It’s a happy ending, as long as you haven’t seen Degrassi: The Next Generation.  If you have seen The Next Generation, you know that Wheels has alcoholism and prison in his future.  And, for that matter, Shane is going to end up spending the rest of his life in an institution.  So, it’s not really that happy of an ending.

But it’s very much a Degrassi ending.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Degrassi Junior High 3.11 “Taking Off: Part One”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Sunday, I will be reviewing the Canadian series, Degrassi Junior High, which aired on CBC and PBS from 1987 to 1989!  The series can be streamed on YouTube!

This week, Degrassi goes there!

Episode 3.11 “Taking Off: Part One”

(Dir by Kit Hood, originally aired on February 13th, 1989)

Gourmet Scum has come to Toronto and everyone is excited to hear the Scum sound.  At the concert, Shane and Luke (Andy Chambers) purchase LSD from the local Scum dug dealer.  Shane drops acid before the concert begins.  Surely, this won’t lead to any trouble, right?

Meanwhile, Wheels is still skipping school.  While his teachers send notes to his grandmother to let her know that Wheels is falling behind, Wheels is spending all of his time playing a boxing video game at the local arcade.  When Joey asks Wheels how can afford to spend all day playing one game over and over again, Wheels says that he sold his bass.

“What about the Zit Remedy?!” Joey says.

Sorry, Joey, Wheels doesn’t care about school or your stupid band anymore.  In fact, Wheels is planning on running away from home.  When he gets a birthday postcard from his biological father, Wheels discovers his father’s band has a two-week gig at Port Hope.  Wheels decides to join his father, despite not being sure where New Hope is.  In fact, it’s not even Wheels’s birthday.  His birth father missed the date by about a month but Wheels doesn’t care.  Wheels just wants to get away from everything.

How is Wheels going to get to New Hope?  He decides to hitchhike!  Uhmm …. not a good idea, Wheels.  Actually, everyone who picks up Wheels seems to be pretty nice.  That is until this guy pulls up….

“Don’t do it!” I shouted as Wheels got in the car.  Unfortunately, as this all happened 35 years ago and I was just watching it play out on YouTube, Wheels couldn’t hear me.

As they drive towards what Wheels assumes is Port Hope, the driver (chillingly played by James Knapp) asks Wheels if he has a lot of girlfriends.  He asks Wheels if he works out.  He asks a lot of questions that immediately raise red flags.  Not that Wheels notices….

Suddenly, the driver pulls off the road, turns to Wheels, and grabs Wheels’s thigh.  AGCK!  Wheels manages to get the door open and scrambles out of the car.  The driver throws Wheels’s backpack out of the car and then drives off, leaving Wheels in the middle of nowhere.

Meanwhile, back in Toronto, Joey’s mother tells Joey that Shane’s mother has been calling because Shane didn’t come home after the concert.  Soon, the police are talking to all of Shane’s friends and trying to figure out where he could be.  Luke is asked whether Shane did any drugs.  Luke lies and says, “No.”

This was a classic Degrassi episode and probably one of the most effective anti-hitchhiking PSAs ever filmed.  When the driver attacked Wheels, it was a truly frightening moment and it was impossible not to remember all of the times, over the course of this season, that Wheels has bragged about his ability to take care of himself.  Now, Wheels is stuck in the middle of nowhere and Shane, who didn’t pay child support specifically so he could go to the concert, is missing.

Never has “To be continued….” felt more ominous.

Late Night Retro Television Reviews: Degrassi Junior High 1.3 “The Experiment” and 1.4 “The Cover-Up”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Sunday, I will be reviewing the Canadian series, Degrassi Junior High, which aired on CBC and PBS from 1987 to 1989!  The series can be streamed on YouTube!

Oh my God, is Mr. Raditch a racist!?  We’ll find out this week.

Episode 1.3 “The Experiment”

(Dir by Clarke Mackey, originally aired on February 1st, 1987)

Joey Jeremiah’s a drug dealer!?

I am stunned!  Seriously, on Degrassi: The Next Generation, Joey was the grown-up who was always giving the teenagers a hard time for being irresponsible.  When his stepson, Craig Manning, got hooked on cocaine, Joey sent off to rehab and didn’t even bother to show up at the airport to say goodbye!  And yet, with this episode, we discover that, in junior high, Joey Jeremiah sold pills.

Now, I should point out that they were just vitamin pills.  Joey told Melanie (Sara Ballingall) and Kathleen (Rebecca Haines) that the pills were actual drugs that would get them high but, as he explained to Wheels, he was just doing that to make some money.  In fact, Joey tells Wheels that he deserves a lot of credit for keeping Melanie and Kathleen off of hard drugs!  That said, Melanie and Kathleen both fool themselves into thinking they’ve gotten high and they ask Joey to get them even more drugs.  In fact, Melanie and Kathleen bring some of their friends with them so that everyone can get high!

Meanwhile, Yick and Arthur have a problem of their own.  Yick thinks that Mr. Raditch is biased against him because Raditch is constantly criticizing Yick for being disorganized.  He even refers to Yick as being “Mr. Yu the Disorganized.”  In order to test whether or not Mr. Raditich is prejudiced against Yick, Arthur takes a paper that Stephanie wrote for Mr. Raditch the previous year and he has Yick turn it in as his own work.  Yick finally gets a good grade!  But just to make sure that Mr. Raditch isn’t prejudiced, Yick turns in a second paper that was originally written by Stephanie.  This time, Mr. Raditch recognizes the paper as having been originally written by Stephanie.

This leads to an absolutely brilliantly played scene, in which Mr. Raditch interrogates Yick and Arthur in front of the class about why they’ve been turning in Stephanie’s work as Yick’s own.  While Yick attempts to explain why he feels that Mr. Raditch is prejudiced against him, Kathleen, Melanie, and their dumb friends keep laughing loudly because they’re convinced that they’re all stoned even though they’re not.  Mr. Raditch, needless to say, is not amused.

Anyway, things work out in the end.  After Stephanie asks Joey if he’s really a drug dealer, Joey confesses the truth.  Unfortunately, for him, his confession is overheard by Melanie and Kathleen and Joey ends up being chased down a hallway by a bunch of angry, wannabe drug addicts.  Meanwhile, in detention, Yick writes a paper about stereotypes and how difficult it is to be called Mr. Yu the Disorganized.  Both Yick and Mr. Raditch realize the errors of their way.  Yick and Arthur leave school to play basketball together, but not before locking Joey in the janitor’s closet.

Episode 1.4 “The Cover-up”

(Dir by Kit Hood, originally aired on February 8th, 1987)

School picture day is coming up and Stephanie is freaking out because, if she wears the frumpy clothes that she wears around the house, everyone will laugh at her.  But if she wears her trampy school clothes, her mom will know the truth about how Stephanie changes whenever she gets to school.  As usual, Voula smirks about it and refuses to give Stephanie any advice, largely because Voula is the absolutely worst.  (Not everyone wants to dress like they shop at the American Girl store, Voula.)  In the end, Stephanie wears her trampy clothes to picture day and good for her!  Seriously, dress however you want.

While this is going on, Caitlin (Stacie Mistysyn) and her friend Susie (Sarah Charlesworth) try to get the mysterious Rick (Craig Driscoll) to smile.  They tell him jokes.  They were pig noses.  Rick, however, has little to smile about because, as Joey discovers, Rick is being beaten by his father.  When Joey asks the school secretary what he should do if he knows someone who is getting beaten, the secretary misunderstands Joey’s comment and calls Child Protective Services on Joey’s parents!  (It  doesn’t help that Joey has a black eye as the result of a skateboarding accident.)  Fortunately, the very Canadian social worker guy figures out that Rick is the one who is being beaten and he arranges for Rick’s father to get some help and for Rick to stay with his older brother.  The next day, at school, Rick smiles!

This was a significant episode because it featured the first Caitlin storyline.  Caitlin, of course, is destined to become one of the most important characters in Degrassi history, with her love story with Joey destined to take over 20 years to play out.  Of course, in this episode, she’s more interested in Rick.  (Rick, for his part, feels like an early version of Sean Cameron, Degrassi: The Next Generation‘s resident troubled bad boy.)

Anyway, these were two good episodes.  It’s kind of interesting to watch as Joey Jeremiah goes from being an annoying prankster to basically the center of just about storyline.

Next week: it’s time for a Canadian swimming competition!