Everybody Can Succeed, All You Need Is to Believe
Now, I'm a Degrassi fan from way back (I was already hanging out on Degrassi Street when most people had thumbed a ride to West Beverly), but I have to be honest and say that Degrassi: The Next Generation has fallen off the rails...
Unfortunately, I think Degrassi may have become a victim of its own success.
It breaks my heart to say that, because I've always wanted the franchise to be as successful as possible, and I'm sympathetic to the idea that it's a slippery slope. On the one hand, there are some high-profile publicity stunts that work--Kevin Smith, a longtime fan who was right there with me (figuratively speaking) during the interregnum, was a perfect choice to play a recurring role on the show, even if he was basically appearing as a Mary Sue version of himself. (Kudos to dontmentionlove for that very apt description.) On the other hand...Taking Back Sunday? Really?
I'm not sure I could peg an exact jump-the-shark moment when things started taking a turn for the worse, but it was probably somewhere in 2005, around the time the current series began to really break through in the US. You'd think this would be great from a fan's perspective--at last, validation south of the border!--but if I'd known that the show would become a glossy shadow of its former self, I would've rather had it stick to its Canadian roots.
With The N seemingly rerunning episodes around the clock, the cast started doing more and more personal appearances in the States...and then, all of a sudden, those castmembers were sporting fake tans. The somewhat goofy Degrassi Minis started showing up online. In a strange (and frustrating) twist, new episodes premiered in the States before they aired in Canada, where Degrassi: The Next Generation is filmed (under CanCon guidelines, no less). And worst of all, the show's main storylines started playing out in the style of The OC instead of that patented (if melodramatic) homegrown style we've come to know and love. The series now seemed more beholden to its American sponsor than to its Canadian producers.
Nowhere is this tonal shift more clear to me than in the way the series has treated the death of regular character J.T. Yorke thus far. Degrassi isn't slavishly devoted to realism, by any stretch (its depiction of Toronto weather during the school year, to use just one example, can't exactly be described as accurate), but its hallmarks have always been a devotion to continuity and plausible character development. When Degrassi "goes there," it tries to show how people would honestly react to a serious situation, and it depicts the idea of ongoing consequences to those situations. All of us who had to watch Claude Tanner's suicide in Health class are well aware of this, and even the current series has shown itself capable of this in the past--Jimmy didn't have one of those miracle TV operations to cure him of his paralysis after being shot (for which I am forever grateful), and things like Marco's coming-out process have been depicted as the continuing processes that they are.
Did we get a mature look at the nature of random acts of violence, though, or senseless deaths of the young, or (perhaps most importantly) the impact on teenagers of losing a friend, when J.T. was written off his mortal coil? No, we got a sort of posthumous love triangle involving Liberty and relative newcomer Mia fighting over things like who gets to open his locker and whose video gets to be shown at his memorial service--which came off like an afterthought by comparison. The result was just...cheesy, and not worthy of such an unprecedented Degrassi event.
(In fairness to the show, this is a fairly recent event, and I'd really like it if my concerns were proven moot with regards to this particular storyline. However, my overall concerns go beyond this development to the series as a whole.)
Why am I even inspired to post a longwinded rant about this now? Well, I've been considering whether or not to put together a Degrassi Timeline, which would mean getting fairly involved in that world's internal history for a while. As I was mulling over this question, I discovered that someone on Wikipedia posted a timeline, but it's rather weak, and I'm not interested in improving their work. Still, I hadn't decided on posting one myself, since I needed to know if I liked that world enough to do so...and right now, I don't know that I do.
So, here I sit, waiting for the rest of the season to air and not even knowing when new episodes will return to CTV, Degrassi's primary producer. Degrassi mastermind Linda Schuyler recently revealed that this season and next will cover a single school year, making me feel like Degrassi: The Next Generation is trying to milk that cash cow just a little longer. All in all, the franchise seems to have cheapened itself over the past couple of years...
...but in the end, I suppose I'll have to come to terms with it. Whatever it takes, I know I can make it through.
Unfortunately, I think Degrassi may have become a victim of its own success.
It breaks my heart to say that, because I've always wanted the franchise to be as successful as possible, and I'm sympathetic to the idea that it's a slippery slope. On the one hand, there are some high-profile publicity stunts that work--Kevin Smith, a longtime fan who was right there with me (figuratively speaking) during the interregnum, was a perfect choice to play a recurring role on the show, even if he was basically appearing as a Mary Sue version of himself. (Kudos to dontmentionlove for that very apt description.) On the other hand...Taking Back Sunday? Really?
I'm not sure I could peg an exact jump-the-shark moment when things started taking a turn for the worse, but it was probably somewhere in 2005, around the time the current series began to really break through in the US. You'd think this would be great from a fan's perspective--at last, validation south of the border!--but if I'd known that the show would become a glossy shadow of its former self, I would've rather had it stick to its Canadian roots.
With The N seemingly rerunning episodes around the clock, the cast started doing more and more personal appearances in the States...and then, all of a sudden, those castmembers were sporting fake tans. The somewhat goofy Degrassi Minis started showing up online. In a strange (and frustrating) twist, new episodes premiered in the States before they aired in Canada, where Degrassi: The Next Generation is filmed (under CanCon guidelines, no less). And worst of all, the show's main storylines started playing out in the style of The OC instead of that patented (if melodramatic) homegrown style we've come to know and love. The series now seemed more beholden to its American sponsor than to its Canadian producers.
Nowhere is this tonal shift more clear to me than in the way the series has treated the death of regular character J.T. Yorke thus far. Degrassi isn't slavishly devoted to realism, by any stretch (its depiction of Toronto weather during the school year, to use just one example, can't exactly be described as accurate), but its hallmarks have always been a devotion to continuity and plausible character development. When Degrassi "goes there," it tries to show how people would honestly react to a serious situation, and it depicts the idea of ongoing consequences to those situations. All of us who had to watch Claude Tanner's suicide in Health class are well aware of this, and even the current series has shown itself capable of this in the past--Jimmy didn't have one of those miracle TV operations to cure him of his paralysis after being shot (for which I am forever grateful), and things like Marco's coming-out process have been depicted as the continuing processes that they are.
Did we get a mature look at the nature of random acts of violence, though, or senseless deaths of the young, or (perhaps most importantly) the impact on teenagers of losing a friend, when J.T. was written off his mortal coil? No, we got a sort of posthumous love triangle involving Liberty and relative newcomer Mia fighting over things like who gets to open his locker and whose video gets to be shown at his memorial service--which came off like an afterthought by comparison. The result was just...cheesy, and not worthy of such an unprecedented Degrassi event.
(In fairness to the show, this is a fairly recent event, and I'd really like it if my concerns were proven moot with regards to this particular storyline. However, my overall concerns go beyond this development to the series as a whole.)
Why am I even inspired to post a longwinded rant about this now? Well, I've been considering whether or not to put together a Degrassi Timeline, which would mean getting fairly involved in that world's internal history for a while. As I was mulling over this question, I discovered that someone on Wikipedia posted a timeline, but it's rather weak, and I'm not interested in improving their work. Still, I hadn't decided on posting one myself, since I needed to know if I liked that world enough to do so...and right now, I don't know that I do.
So, here I sit, waiting for the rest of the season to air and not even knowing when new episodes will return to CTV, Degrassi's primary producer. Degrassi mastermind Linda Schuyler recently revealed that this season and next will cover a single school year, making me feel like Degrassi: The Next Generation is trying to milk that cash cow just a little longer. All in all, the franchise seems to have cheapened itself over the past couple of years...
...but in the end, I suppose I'll have to come to terms with it. Whatever it takes, I know I can make it through.