The problem with television is just how hard it is to let it go.  The discontinuation of various series is a subject for another entry at another time.  So is the general idea of breaking up with a show while it’s still going (hello, The Office and How I Met Your Mother).  There is one, though, that I just keep coming back to even though I haven’t truly loved it in a good five seasons.

I’m looking at you, Degrassi.

My problems with Degrassi are many, but most of them filter into the idea that the show has grown increasingly American over its run.  This breaks down into a couple of different major themes, one of which I’ll write about more later, but the one that’s getting to me today is sexuality.

One of the biggest highlights of Degrassi has always been its frank and generally honest approach to teenage sexuality.  As in, teenagers have sex.  Sometimes there are consequences, sometimes there are not.  Teenagers who get pregnant actually have to deal with pregnancy (keep, abort, adopt) rather than briefly fret over the idea of abortion/keeping and then magically miscarrying at the moment of decision (Beverly Hills, 90210; Party of Five).  There are gay kids, there are confused kids, now there’s even a trans kid.  Sexuality and class; sexuality and God; sexuality and violence; sexuality and agency.  Degrassi has been all over exploring these ideas.  These are all good, amazing things.  The show’s original run as Degrassi Junior High and Degrassi High, the first several seasons of The Next Generation have had some of the most nuanced explorations of teenage sexuality on television.

[Manny]

Every one of those moments, however, has been entirely Canadian.  In The Next Generation, season three, Manny finds herself pregnant after what may or may not have been a one-night-stand (we know she and Craig have sex once, but their hidden relationship in later episodes appears to not go there).  In an entirely daring move on the show’s part, Manny makes the decision to have an abortion and actually goes through with it.  Not only that, but she does so with her mother by her side.  That’s big.  And, of course, American kids did not get to see the two-part episode on their TV until years later during an “every episode ever” marathon.  (The episodes were included on the American DVD release and used as a marketing tool for such.)  American TV has huge problems with abortion (duh).  Also, during the first season, and I’m not sure in how many years of repeats, the poster in the girls’ bathroom that’s basically a PSA for condom usage is blurred for American viewers.

But, okay.  We know that, right?  We get weird about sex in our supposedly over-sexed media.

[Adam]

Continuing.  The thing is, The Next Generation exists entirely as a result of teenage sexuality in Degrassi Junior High.  Punk-rocker kid Spike gives birth to a baby girl, Emma, whom she chooses to raise.  The Next Generation starts as Emma begins junior high.  The years that follow include Manny’s pregnancy, Liberty’s pregnancy (adoption), an oral STI outbreak, teen mom Mia, Manny’s drunken flashing to a video camera, Emma’s sober flashing to make a feminist point, etc.  Whether or not these events are handled in the best way possible is always up for debate, but the point is that they’re allowed to exist.  And the consequences to the characters are in line with real life consequences — just, you know, melodramatically so (because this is still TV, Canadian or not).

Recently, the second half of the tenth season started — we’re four episodes in (I think).  The end of the summer “Boiling Point” twenty-four-episode extravaganza concluded with a couple characters hooking up in a classroom and characters using the boiler room for reasons that give a delightful nod to the boiler room of My So-Called Life.  And Snake (married to the now unseen Spike), recently promoted to principal of Degrassi, throws down.  Locks up.  Locks down.  Whatever it is that’s this season’s catchphrase.  And now I’ve got problems.

First. Travel back with me to that third season when they had that vaguely misguided Breakfast Club episode.  Snake’s recovering from cancer and informs the principal that he needs to loosen up, let teenagers be teenagers, and to remember that life is short.  It’s very moving.  When Emma flashes the school in protest, Snake does little more than shrug his shoulders and beg Emma to have a nice, quiet end to her senior year.  (And he’s nothing less than compassionate when she drops the bomb that she might have an oral STI.)  Snake, as we know him, tries desperately to remember what it’s like to be a teenager while still drawing authoritative boundaries.

[Seriously, it's a super unsettling episode, especially if you were a teenager when the Columbine shootings happened.]

Second. Travel back with me to the fourth season when there’s a school shooting.  That’s one hell of a two-parter (still leaves me shaking when I watch it).  The consequences at the school are minimal – mostly resulting in the principal leaving – but let’s just say there are no metal detectors.  Also, once again, Snake proves to be the voice of reason in helping students deal with their feelings about the shooter.  Ditto in season six when beloved character JT is stabbed to death at a party (at Snake’s/Emma’s house) and when, at the beginning of season seven, characters partially involved in said stabbing become students at Degrassi.  There is so much violence that is handled, more or less, in stride.

And now this season.  There are metal detectors.  There are school uniforms.  There are very few after-school clubs/activities.  It is police state central.  Because a couple kids got caught fooling around on school property.  (Which, you know, never actually happens in real life. I’m remembering you, boy best friend, with the girl in the baseball dugout.)  Girls attached to the rampant sexuality that’s supposedly taken over the school (whether in actuality or in rumor) are forced to take a self-esteem class.  Because that’s the problem.  Because there is a problem in the first place.  There is no equivalent for the male characters.

This absolute overreaction to teenage sexuality is, for me at least, the final step in the Americanization of Degrassi.  They’ve been working at it for a while, and now it’s done.  And I’m left with questions.  I mean, why?  Is this because they’ve got (or, should I say, had, because the numbers have dropped, dropped, dropped) a great American audience?  Because police states make for more dramatic television (and give some plots to an otherwise exhausted series)?

Lastly, I’m interested in what happens next.  Both to Degrassi and another show that’s garnered similar attention from across the ocean.  British teen soap Skins has been lauded for the realism (even more so) that used to make Degrassi so amazing.  And now it’s coming to the States.  Remade.  Apparently go-for-go (which, at that point, why not save money and syndicate?).  That’s never going to fly.  That will last for half a second before someone, somewhere reminds whoever’s in charge of American television that sexuality has drastic, drastic consequences — ones far more serious than any kind of violence and definitely ones far more serious than pretending that what we don’t talk about actually doesn’t exist.