Season 2, Episode 22 - Tears are Not Enough Part 2

Original Airdate - February 23rd, 2003

content warning - parental death

I really liked the season one finale. It felt like it brought most of our characters to the party (literally lol) in an interesting way. It felt like it was exciting and really changed the landscape. It had weight and swagger. This finale does not do that. It’s a fine episode, but, even compared to part one, falls a little flat as the season finale.

We pick up at school. Mr. Simpson tells the Grade 9s that Craig’s dad has died. Craig is fine, but he’s not expected to return to school this term. Ashley goes into care mode, volunteering to take donations for flowers. But then Craig shows up. No one is quite sure what to make of the fact that he seems okay? Normal? It’s unsettling.

A bunch of students set up for the dance. Ashley wants to do something for Craig, but Terri tells her there’s probably nothing she can do. Terri’s mom is dead. She’s speaking from experience. Still, Ashley goes to him to offer comfort. But Craig doesn’t want comfort. He wants to focus on the dance. Of course he’s still going!

Meanwhile, Paige is excited for the Luau. She has big plans to get herself and Spinner elected Luau King and Queen. Even though she’s a grade 9, and the dance goes up to grade 11, she thinks she can win by gathering all of the 7-9th graders to vote for her. And she got a tan to help her look the part. Unfortunately, Hazel doesn’t notice her light bronze. She may need to go back for more!.

Jimmy throws a wrench in things. He’s still mad at Spinner for stealing his iPod and mocks Spinner for his job in the cafeteria. Spinner is feeling bold, because he’ll be Luau King. That’ll show Jimmy. Jimmy goes to Hazel and asks her to the dance. He wants them to campaign against Paige and Spinner. Hazel isn’t sure she wants to go against her best friend, but Jimmy convinces her to take a turn in the spotlight. Paige is pissed. They’re going to split the younger students’ votes.

Craig continues acting very strange. He aced his science exam, yay, and very casually says that at least his dad did something for him. He lies to Jimmy and Marco, and claims he was in the car, but then says the whole thing was a joke. Weird!

He and Joey go to Albert’s house to start cleaning up. There are some details designed to make it feel eerie - the breakfast dishes are still on the table. The bed is unmade. But Albert was so controlling and type A that I don’t buy it. Even faced with his dad’s belong, Craig feels nothing.

At the funeral, he snaps, but not in a sad way. One of Albert’s associates gives a eulogy and goes on about how devoted a father Craig was. Craig starts laughing. Joey pulls him out, past funeral attendees Ashley, Emma, Sean, Mr. Raditch, and for some reason Caitlyn Ryan.

Outside, Craig is doing a lot. This whole thing is a joke. His dad was shitty, and in a way, Craig is glad he’s gone. Craig is later diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I don’t know how long this was intended to be part of his character, but this does read very manic to me. Joey can’t calm him down.

At school (the next day? What is time? Was this a weekday funeral?), Ashley tells Ellie that she’s a little spooked. Craig is acting so strange, in her mind. Craig one ups himself by submitting himself and Ashley for Luau King and Queen. Joey tries to convince Craig not to go to the dance. His grief may show up when he least expects it, but Craig refuses to stay home.

Spinner goes to the tanning salon with Paige and has a total freakout. He’s claustrophobic and refuses to sit in the tanning bed. Paige demands he use spray tanner and she’ll go back in the bed. There’s a silly bit where she’s looking at a men’s bodybuilding magazine like it’s porn, and I liked it.

Okay time for the dance. We touch in our most of our cast because all of them, except two, are currently in couples! Emma and Sean have a great time, JT and Liberty have a great time, Kendra and Toby have a great time. Toby actually accidentally says he loves her in this episode. Ellie and Marco queen out and perform heterosexual relationship.

Jimmy and Hazel are campaigning hard and giving everyone leis. Paige and Spinner show up and they look awful. Paige tanned too long and Spinner’s tan looks fake. Terri mans the ticket desk, and poor single Manny may not even be in this episode. I didn’t notice her if she was.

Craig shows up and finds Ashley in her sick goth Luau look. I genuinely like it a lot. Seconds after he arrives, they announce the results of the vote. Craig and Ashley won! I don’t really understand this, but I guess it was probably sympathy for what he’s going through? I don’t think either of them are that popular.

They go up on stage to accept the award and Craig thinks he sees his father in the crowd. He’s overcome and pushes through to try to talk to him, but it’s just a Degrassi teacher. Craig breaks. He heads outside.

Ashley follows, concerned, and tries to comfort him. Craig snaps at her. Goth girl obsessed with death probably loves this! He really pops off. It’s like a full blown tantrum. He rips down some of the dance decorations. Again, mania. He storms off. Ashley wants to follow, but Raditch tells her to hang back and give him a minute. Neither of them notice Terri go after him.

Terri finds him crying in the hall and offers her empathy. She gets feeling irrationally angry. She found out her mom died while she was at a friend’s birthday party and was furious she didn’t get to play the party games. She can speak to Craig’s rage and denial, and he softens. He admits that sometimes he wanted his dad gone, so he doesn’t understand why he feels so sad. Terri helps him realize that, despite everything, Craig loved his dad.

It’s a nice scene undercut by two things. First, Raditch comes to check on them at the end, sees them talking, and decides to let Terri handle it and it’s very weird. But more importantly, this is just a little beyond Christina Schmidt’s acting skills. It’s extremely wooden.

Paige realizes her obsession with winning Luau queen was silly. Some people have real problems. The tension between Jimmy and Spinner seems to break.

Craig heads back to the dance for one last slow song with Ashley before he heads out. He opens up to her and says her concern makes him feel better. It’s nice, I guess, but a little anti-climactic. That’s season two!

I don’t have a relationship with my father. We are not completely no contact, but we’re barely contact. There are one or two check in texts a year, likely surrounding a major holiday. I don’t respond in detail.

I think about his death a lot. I probably think about him dying more than I wonder what he’s doing with his life. It’s something of an obsession, if I’m being honest. But hey, it is something I’ll have to worry about eventually. At some point in my life either he will die or I will. I am planning to outlive him.

And I don’t know how it will make me feel. Most of the time, I think I’m going to feel almost nothing. I worry about having to go through the motions of a funeral and estate management in a state of annoyance. What a burden for someone I don’t really care about.

The rest of the time I worry it’s going to wallop me. That I’m going to be tortured by grief for a person I don’t really know. A person I have decided I don’t want to know. I am scared that there’s no amount of processing or therapy or inner child work that will stop me from falling apart when I no longer have a living father. And I feel like that’s so dumb.

My parents got divorced before my living memory. I have no conception of what life was like for me when my father was in my home. As I aged my time with him got less frequent. First, because of distance. He stayed in Chicago, and I moved with my mom to Alabama. Then, because of interest. I don’t really have another explanation for why he stopped visiting in my teenaged years.

Our relationship, as thin and functional as it was, fractured for me fully in college. It did have to do with a death. My grandfather passed during my senior year. To me, it was sudden. But it wasn’t actually. He was in the hospital for a while. My father never bothered to tell me.

As he broke down and sought my comfort in his own grief, I learned how close I’d come to becoming fatherless myself. He told me for the first time about the serious cancer he’d struggled with. I learned how difficult the treatments were. I learned they almost didn’t work.

I was hurt. I felt like he’d robbed me of a last visit with my grandfather and almost robbed me of closure I was still chasing with him. I decided I wanted nothing to do with him. I skipped my grandfather’s funeral, worried I’d yell at my dad or that I wouldn’t and I’d regret it. I made myself harder to reach. I stopped answering his calls as much. My texts responses grew short. No more follow up questions.

And I started writing a story about his death. In the story, he’s a superhero. Everyone loves him. Everyone mourns him. The main character doesn’t. The main character things it’s all phony. The main character hates how much he feels in the face of that.

I’ve heard enough from those who have been through it to know that there is no way I can conceptualize or emotionally prepare myself for the death of a parent. Whatever I think I will feel will be wrong. It will be some different thing that I can’t wrap my head around yet.

And that feels so silly. What will I have left to grieve? He already left when he stopped being an active parent. He left again when he stopped being a distant one. He left me when he was sick and didn’t bother to tell me. He left me when he got married again and didn’t bother to tell me. He left me when I made a final attempt to mend some fences and realized he has no idea who I am, what I do, or how I live my life. Not because I haven’t told him, but because he doesn’t care. He’d rather make up a fantasy version in his head.

I have never had my father. He has never been a presence. How can I lose him in any greater way? How can he die if he was never alive in my life to begin with.

But then maybe I’m wrong to worry about my feelings. Maybe I won’t feel anything at all. That’s the unfortunate thing at the root of my obsession. I won’t know until I know. There’s probably a deeper reason that scares me.