#MajorSpoilers
I finished watching all ten episodes of the new series on Degrassi on Netflix. It was the same old same old with angst and heartbreak but my opinions on the characters has changed a lot over the course of the episodes.
The dull stuff
Frankie’s love life was so tedious, as she considers getting back together with Winston but then develops feeling for Jonah so quite cruelly dumps Winston on the night of the ball. Too bad, they’re both so annoying, they belong together.
Poor Grace
After much speculation, we finally found out Grace’s deep dark secret. No, not about her being gay, but that she has cystic fibrosis. Oh, but she also revealed that she is in fact Not Gay effectively destroying her and Zoe’s fling and probably their friendship. I like that the show didn’t give into making Grace a stereotype.
Love triangles everywhere!
I’ve already mentioned Frankie, Winston and Jonah but there were even more love geometry with Shay, Tiny, and Ariana (okay, I believe her name is actually Lola) and two intertwining triangles with Zoe, Grace, Maya, Zig, and Jonah. Remember when I said Zoey and Zig are a good couple? Yeah, Zig is a jealous cheat and Zoe is a terrible friend, screw this couple.
Misogyny everywhere!
A huge theme was feminism where Maya joined a feminist club after facing some sketchy treatment from men at a gig. There was discussion on consent and sexualisation of women in video games. Maya receives online harassment in the form of rape threats and doxxing and I can’t help but draw parallels to a certain movement that has exposed some pretty ugly behaviour from gamers.
#WTFHollingsworth
This family is crazy. Frankie we’ve mentioned, Miles fresh from being disqualified as school president meets new girl Esme who gets him into taking drugs to help with his anxiety as his father looks set to come back into his life. I actually started to feel sorry for him, at least he manages to redeem himself by the end.
The big bad was Hunter whose angry white boy meltdown was pretty gripping. It started off well as he mangaes to start a competitive gamer club (why didn’t this exist when I was in school?) which is taken down by the feminist club. I thought the feminist club was being unreasonable but that didn’t excuse him sending online threats to Maya and saying some pretty ignorant stuff about Goldi’s headscarf. After violently lashing out at Yael, he goes all Light Yagami and writes the name of his enemies in a notebook. What looked like a potential school shooting was avoided but that dude needs some serious therapy.
Verdict
This series wasn’t too bad and I think the change to Netflix was a good move. There was a case of new characters that were underdeveloped so hopefully they get more storylines in future episodes.
At My Desk 