A Review of the First Season of Degrassi Junior High
A Review by Nick Peron
Degrassi Junior High Episode 04 - The Cover-Up:
The Characters:
Rick Munro: Is the Degrassi bad ass, held back a grade and a bag of suppressed anger. He never smiles (and looking at the picture to your left, you can see exactly why) He has a father who beats up his son over things like motorcycle magazines and bottles of Coke. Rick enjoys motorcycles, wearing shitty jean jackets, riding his bike, brooding and not letting anyone in. He is the secret crush of Caitlin.
Joey Jeremiah: Joey, always the victim also suffers from child abuse because his parents clean his room and use his jean jackets to patch up holes on other things made out of jean. He has it so rough. We also learn that Joey can't skateboard very well and is prone to crashing into bike racks. Joey is startled into having a conscious when when he sees Rick getting beat up by his father, this guilty conscious lasts for exactly one episode.
Caitlin Ryan: Caitlin is Degrassi's hip, yet environmentally aware student. She has a secret crush on Rick. She also enjoys embarrassing herself, and telling stupid jokes. One of her best friends is Susie. The two of them attend class together. In this adventure she tries to make Rick smile. It doesn't go to well.
Susie Riviera: If Lucy is the trendy black girl of Degrassi, then Susie is defiantly the anti-Lucy, based on the account that she is so plain and boring, not to mention she gives off a very wooden performance. Susie is Caitlin's best friend, and as the plain and boring best friend Susie tags along with everything Caitlin does, no matter how humiliating or stupid.
The Bad Hair Hall of Fame:
This episode of Degrassi is a hallmark in bad hair technology, two supporting cast members had possibly some of the worst hair I've ever seen in the series. On the far left we have the Children's Aid guy, sporting his shitty 80's Rocker hair, and on the right Rick's slap-happy dad. If he should be beating anybody up, he should be beating his barber or hairdresser because that is some fucking hideous hair.
The Plot:
On a very special episode of Degrassi Junior High we get a front row seat of what it's like being Rick, Degrassi's resident bad ass. Yup, every morning you wake up to read the same beat up motorcycle magazine enjoying some No-Name Rice Crispies, possibly swimming in spoiled milk, while your father gets ready for work, and then feigns interest in the magazine your reading only to trick you into telling him how you got the money to buy it so you can lip off at him so he can beat the living shit out of you.
With the fact that Rick is an abused child firmly established we cut to Degrassi Junior High already in session, and photo day is coming up. Joey (who just wiped out on his skateboard earlier) is going to pull an all out JJJJ ("Joey Jeremiah and his Jean Jacket"... Riiight.) but when Joey gets home he realizes his mother cleaned his room and cut up his best jean jacket. THIS is certainly a case of child abuse, and Joey runs upstairs to wish his parents were dead.
The next day while complaining that his parents are "abusing" him, Joey is given an offer he cannot resist: Rick offers to sell him an old jean jacket for 15 bucks. When Joey goes home with Rick, and the two check out the jacket while drinking the last two Cokes in the fridge, Rick's dad comes home and freaks out that said Cokes are not in the fridge. Rick pushes Joey out of the apartment and tells him to pay for the jacket later before the shit kicking begins.
Joey has a moral delema, and wonders if he should tell anyone about what he witnessed. When getting his picture taken, Joey realizes that he is short 10 bucks, and says he'll pay Rick later after school. During the day, Joey asks Doris what he could do if he knew someone who was being beaten up by his father. Doris thinks that it's Joey (since he still has injuries sustained from being a fucking moron on his skateboard) who is getting abused (and thereby setting up quite the sit-com style cliche wouldn't you think?.. Well it's not a laughing matter god damn it! This isn't Love American Style
When Joey returns home with Rick that day after school, they are confronted by someone from Child Protection Services, about the apparent report of child abuse. When Rick rushes out of Joey's house the guy with the bad Duran Duran hair-cut confronts the boy and makes him an ultimatum. Live in pain, or join the dark side. Well something like that. The next day at school, Joey and Rick become friends just like that even though technically, Joey snitched Rick out. Caitlin & Susie are shocked to see that Rick is smiling, since they were trying to make him do so for the entire episode by any means possible, pig masks, lame jokes, and photo-ops.. No smiles. But Joey pays him the 5 bucks he owes for his jacket and the two become good friends.
My Opinion:
I would be making a crack about how Rick's father flips out and beats the shit out of his son for the stupidest crap, but having met abusive parents before, I can clearly say that, yes, abusive parents always freak out of stupid shit. Gah, there aren't enough cokes in the fridge. POW! There are used tampons and menses on my toast! SMACK! Etc. etc.
The episode however, quickly dismisses the issue with a quick band-aid solution that suggests that Children's Aid can't really do for you, that and most people are completely oblivious to the fact that your getting the shit kicked out of you on a daily basis.
I don't think it's very comforting to know that if I were in Rick's situation that a Children's Aid guy with a bad perm will show up at my house on a motorcycle and his grand scheme to save all children from being beat by their parents is to ask them "Do you have anywhere else you can go?"
Nancy Alert:
Good ol' Nancy, after the poor turn out last episode, she's back in full force in this episode, totaling a whopping 18 shots. Interesting Nancy fact: The classiest thing Nancy will wear is a big red and black dress with pearl necklaces when it's photo day, any other day of the year it appears that she is wearing the same material they make bed sheets out of. Somebody give this girl a gift certificate for Addition-Elle.
