A Review of the First Season of Degrassi Junior High
A Review by Nick Peron
Dorkive Notes: One day I decided I was going to try and review every episode of Degrassi Junior High, using as much satire as possible. If it isn't apparent to you, I got bored really quick and used the "I went crazy from watching too much Degrassi" excuse to get out of doing the rest of the episodes. Surprisingly, it turned out to be my most popular review, and people wanted me to do a follow up of the second season, which i did with the same results.
Opening Statement:
Children of the 80's will remember this golden jem of television. Doesn't matter if you catched the episodes when they first aired, or were forced to watch episodes during sex-education in high school, or are obsessed by the latest incarnation of the Degrassi franchise (In that case, you are a punk kid, and I fucking hate you.) we can all look at each other an admit that, yes, Degrassi has touched all our lives in some fundemental way, and to some of us, not even our uncle can touch us like that.... But I digress.
But the question I pose today, is just how effective was Degrassi? For a show that was supposed to inform and educate kids in a way they could relate with about the dangers of being a teenager, just how effective was it? If it was about the plight of being a teenager, Degrassi covered it. Everything from teenage pregnancy, buying a bra, having a father who was in a shitty band from Hamilton, child molesting vaccum salesmen in wood panneled station wagons, peer pressure, abortions, AIDS, Swamp Sex Robots. Holy shit, beeing a teenager is hard! What ever am I going to do?
Well, as I hinted above, Degrassi was supposed to be the solution, a handbook on what to do when posed with these life problems that plague young people. I'll give it the benefit that in most cases it's subject matter was quite open minded, and looked at all possibly options which (at that point in time, or even still to this day in some cases) are considered taboo.
Did it work? Well that's what I'm going to try and find out. In this very report, I'll be cracking open the magical 80's vault and taking a peek inside, shuffling past horrors like Turbo Teen and The Facts of Life
I should get into getting everyone (re)aquainted with the cast members in the wonderful world of Degrassi Junior High. But, If you give a shit and you want more info on this show, how about you stop asking me and check out the Internet Movie Database, every movie/tv show losers bible for a chaunch you stupid fuck.
Each will be on a separate page, and I will be breaking things down into the following order:
The Cast: Where I focus on the main characters and talk about them a little bit and how they are represented in the episode in question, and what the fuck, while I'm at it, I'll throw in some funny observations, because that's what you fuckers want right?
The Episode: Then I'll break into a more details synopsis of the episode, you know talk about all the different plot points and shit like that, because you all really care about that about as much as you care about how many different creative ways to use the word "Fuck".
My Opinion: Because that's all that really matters. What in this episode worked? What didn't? Will I develop an unhealthy obsession with Degrassi girls and build a time machine so I can go back in time and ask them out? Only time will tell.
!!!NANCY ALERT!!!: In the interest of national security, we here at Dorkswithoutfaces are creating this public service to you, the valued reader. Throughout the course of the first season of Degrassi Junior High there are multiple instances where the character Nancy Kramer (Played by Arlene Lott) appears in the background of every possible scene imaginable. In the interest of public safety, we have taken hired the best team of experts that our budget can allow (since we're broke, it's essetially only me) to score the number of Nancy appearences per episode. I think it's kind of funny that Arlene Lott was always in the background scenes of each episode, because she has later went on to be an art director, as she has spent a lot of time filling up the background area of a scene, I suppose she has a good idea what looks good back there where the actor people aren't.
So with these things in mind, we will now being our quest to find out if Degrassi was really the beacon of hope for teenagers or if it was just simply a nice jesture that we all just ignored, because, fuck, we were 13 years old we know everything god damn it! And no grown up is going to tell us how to run our lives!
