Buy Or Don’t Buy

So this is my first post for BODB! I don’t intend on making it a regular thing but I felt a moral obligation to all fans of Degrassi: The Next Generation to warn them against continuing to watch the deformed beast this once great show has become.

Foremost on the list are the new characters they want the viewers to connect with. All of them have very weak personalities that are based on non-evolving stereotypes: queen bee b**ch, self-hating gay, nerd, angry foster kid, secret bad-girl muslim, etc. It’s not like we haven’t seen this before, this was the formula they used on the original cast. It was obvious when they introduced the younger cast that I was supposed to like them in these roles, but there were still the original characters so I never cared…until suddenly I realized that these newbies were the only characters I was watching! I must have been so apathetic through the transition to even notice.

The lame characters are forgivable, but THIS is not:

Rick, the Colombine-esque school shooter, is brought back for a Halloween episode, possesses the queen bee, and terrorizes the school. I can’t even call it bad taste because it’s about 10 steps beyond that level. Then I just saw their plans for a Christmas episode:

First they bring back the school shooter and then JT, a popular character killed by a rival school’s gang. I don’t know who thought it was a good idea to bring back dead characters from two very powerful episodes of the series. To me it rings as downplaying the messages those episodes were trying to impart. Clearly Degrassi has decided to forgo it’s morally-centered plots in favor of ratings. I’d like to say it jumped the shark, but it’s a teen melodrama so it’s been doggy-paddling in the shark tank for years. Definitely don’t buy.