Roger Dunn | Through the Shattered Lens

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: The Next Generation, which aired from 2001 to 2015! The series can be streamed on YouTube and Tubi.

This week, Ellie figures something out about Marco.

Episode 2.14 “Careless Whisper”

(Dir by Laurie Lynd, originally aired on January 13th, 2003)

This episode opens with Marco, Jimmy, and Spinner playing basketball and Marco staring at the shirtless Spinner until Spinner says, “What are you looking at, fag?”

Later, when Dr. Sally (Sue Johanson) comes to give the Health class her annual sex education talk, Jimmy and Spinner ask her how a dude could be attracted to another dude. At this point, someone in the class could have and perhaps should have pointed out that Jimmy and Spinner seem to spend a lot of time together but instead, everyone just snickers.

Everyone except for Marco. As class ends, Marco is quick to tell Spinner and Jimmy that he hates gay people.

Meanwhile, Ellis is wondering why Marco never seems to show her any affection. They’re hanging out. They’re going to the movies. And yet, she feels like Marco is still more of a friend than a boyfriend….

Yes, this is the episode where Ellie figures out that Marco is gay. When Ellie asks him, “Do you like girls at all?,” Marco replies with, “I don’t know.” As we all yell, “No, Ellie!,” Ellie agrees to continue to pretend to be Marco’s girlfriend so that Spinner and Jimmy won’t make fun of him but she says that this isn’t a permanent arrangement….

Seriously, Ellie was always getting her heart broken on this show. First, she agreed to be Marco’s pretend girlfriend. Then she dated Sean, even though he was obviously still in love with Emma. Then she pursued Craig, who was incapable of loving anyone other than himself. And finally, she fell for that narcissistic college newspaper editor. Ellie deserved better and really, while I have sympathy for Marco’s struggle to accept his sexuality while being best friends with the two biggest homophobes in Canada, Marco was always at his most selfish when it came to Ellie.

That said, both Adamo Ruggiero and Stacey Farber give good performances in this episode, as Marco and Ellis respectively. Today, we kind of take it for granted that every high school-based show is going to have at least a handful of gay characters. (By the end of Degrassi’s Netflix run, almost everyone in the school was LGBTQ.) In 2003, though, an extended storyline like this was still a big deal and it undoubtedly took some guts on the part of the showrunners.

As for the B-story, Toby is totally in love with Kendra. Kendra thinks that Toby is getting a bit too possessive. Toby agrees to back off a little. Kendra, you can do better. Sorry, Tobes.

Degrassi goes there!

Episode 2.11 “Don’t Believe The Hype”

(Dir by Anais Granofsky, originally aired on December 23rd, 2002)

“A hate crime has been committed here,” Snake declares in this episode. He declares it very seriously. In fact, he’s a little bit too serious. His voice and his expression are so grim that the line actually has the opposite effect of what it intended. The same can be said of this episode itself. Degrassi was always political but, up until its final seasons, it was usually smart enough to understand that encouraging audiences to look between the lines was preferable to hitting them over the head. Occasionally, though, this show did give us an episode like this one.

As for the hate crime, it’s the vandalization of a display about Iraq. It’s International Day and Fareeza (Jessica Rose) made the display to inform people about her home country. Fareeza is sure that her display was vandalized by Hazel because, earlier, Hazel give Fareeza a fashion ticket because her hijab was judged to be “terrorist chic.” Hazel also said that Fareeza needed to back off before “Jamaica declared war on Iraq.”

Fareeza replies that Hazel’s last name — Aden — doesn’t sound Jamaican. (It doesn’t? Really?) “You look Somalian,” Fareeza says.

Anyway, it turns out that the displays was vandalized by two unnamed students. But Mr. Raditch still tells Hazel that she committed a hate crime by joking about declaring war on Iraq. At first, Hazel is defensive but then she becomes so overwhelmed with guilt that she admits that she isn’t Jamaican. She actually is Somalian! Of course, I think one could argue that Fareeza committed a hate crime with her “You look Somalian” comment. I mean, talk about stereotyping! It’s like telling me I look Irish just because I have red hair and I’m half-Irish.

(At this point, I should mention that Andea Lewis, who played Hazel, was not Somalian. In fact, in real life, she’s half-Jamaican. But then again, Jessica Rose, who played Fareeza, was not from Iraq.)

Now, needless to say, Hazel being a Somalian refugee is one of those plot points that will hardly ever be mentioned again. And Fareeza will never appear in another episode of Degrassi. Fareeza showed up. She taught everyone a lesson. Having fulfilled her plot obligations, her character is never seen again.

Hazel later gives a presentation about her Somalian heritage and the school loves her. (We don’t see the presentation that Fareeza gave about Iraq. Sorry, Fareeza, this is Hazel’s episode.) Meanwhile, JT’s friends discover that he’s good at sewing and everyone, except for Liberty, makes fun of him. It’s easy to roll one’s eyes at Liberty’s crush on JT until you remember that JT is destined to end dying on Liberty’s birthday. But that’s far in the future. For now, JT is an adorable scamp who has no idea that he’s going to be literally stabbed in the back.

There’s nothing subtle about this episode and the end result is that it feels almost more like a parody of Degrassi than anything else.