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!