Season 1, Episode 6 - The Mating Game

Original Airdate - November 25th, 2001

Ashley and Jimmy are about to celebrate their 8th month anniversary and Ashley is riding high. They are Degrassi’s strongest and longest lasting couple and she’s gotten Jimmy a cool silver chain, the perfect gift. But the Degrassi curriculum has two surprises for her that threaten her confidence.

First, Dr. Sally visits the school to teach the Grade 8s about sex-ed. They snicker through her presentation on proper condom usage. Sidebar, but the show actually includes the entire explanation of why and how to use a condom, without making a joke out of it, and I think that’s really neat.

Though the sex-ed presentation is awkward, it’s got everyone in class thinking about doing the deed. Ashley didn’t think she was ready. But, then again, she and Jimmy have been together for a long time.

The second surprise comes in the form of a Shakespeare assignment in Ms. Kwan’s English class. The students have been assigned roles in Romeo & Juliet that they will memorize and perform for their classmates. Jimmy is playing Romeo, and Ashley is Ju— oh wait. She’s the nurse. Paige is playing Juliet.

Bless Paige. I don’t think she is actually interested in Jimmy at all, but she simply cannot resist the opportunity to push Ashley’s buttons (see Eye of the Beholder). She jumps feet first into the assignment, has great chemistry with Jimmy, and plants a kiss on him in rehearsal.

When Ashley confronts her about it, she plays dumb. She was just practicing, she would never hurt her dear friend Ashley. But maybe she gets why Ashley is so worried. Ashley got him a beautiful silver chain. He got her a shitty clay heart. Plus, while Paige insists she doesn’t believe this herself, she’s heard that Jimmy may want something more physically.

The main source of that rumor is Spinner, who thinks it’s either time for Ashley to put out or for Jimmy to push her to the curb for someone who will. He weirdly suggests Jimmy goes after Paige, even though I think he and Paige have something going on. Jimmy is feeling the peer pressure.

Ashley is used to Paige’s antics. Ever since they were kids, Paige always went after what Ashley had. But it’s still getting to her. Nervous she’ll lose her man, she kisses him in the hallway and tells him there’s more where that came from. Her mom, Jeff, and Toby will all be out of the house the day of their anniversary, and she’s ready to go all the way.

Ashley orders condoms online though a bicycle messenger which is very weird. Terri watches on, and tries to make sure Ashley is making this decision for the right reasons. Ashley is a bitch and asks why she would take dating advice for someone who has never been on a date.

Oh Ashley, ignoring the advice of a person who cares for you to jump into be with a boy she is moving too fast with. But she’s not the only one moving too fast. Jimmy goes to a convenience store with Spinner and the clerk gives him shit. This clerk is an asshole, but it gets in Jimmy’s head. Does he really want this?

It’s time to have sex, and Ashley is a little freaked out. She rushes out of the room to gather her thoughts and walks back in on Jimmy grabbing the condoms. She realized she can’t do it and tells him she isn’t ready, fully prepared for him to dump her for Paige. But he’s just as relieved as she is. He also doesn’t feel ready. They laugh it off and make balloons out of the condoms until Toby comes home.

Oh Toby, poor Toby. Our B story is about the tangled web of crushes in Grade 7. Mr. Simpson is teaching the kids about making websites, and Emma is thrilled to make hers about an endangered turtle. Toby learned something from internet pervert Julian and decides to try to get Emma’s attention by pretending to be interested in the same things as her.

He rents a DVD about endangered animals and invites her to watch. But an oblivious Emma extends the invite to the whole crew. Manny will host because it’s the only way her parents will let her do something on a school night. And of course, Emma takes the opportunity to invite her own crush, Sean. Lucky for Toby, Sean declines.

Toby is ready to make the most of the situation, but Emma gets held up at school by Liberty, who needs help with the Grapevine. Liberty seems to really need a friend, and Emma is the one most able to deal with her intensity. We also learn that Liberty has a crush on JT. Oh the places that story goes.

As they’re wrapping up, Emma notices Sean in the Media Immersion Center. He’s doing his website about dogs, because he misses the dog he had to leave behind with his parents when he moved in with his big brother. He and Emma bond over a love of animals. Toby, you have no shot.

Emma never makes it to the DVD viewing, which Manny and JT suffer through, and Toby is hurt. He went through all of this effort and she just bailed. He tells her off at school the next day. Emma turns to Manny, confused as to why he’s so upset, and Manny tells her what is painfully obvious to everyone else — Toby has a huge crush on her.

Meanwhile, Jimmy plays it cool with Spinner, blaming the lack of sex on Toby’s arrival. But Ashley is more honest. She apologizes to Terri, who was right all along, and they make up. The episode ends with Ashley, glad that Jimmy was so cool about waiting, but feeling just a little unsettled for reasons she can’t quite put her finger on.

I think some time in recent years, it became very in vogue to criticize Romeo & Juliet. The catalyst for this criticism seems to come from shows like Degrassi. In these shows, Shakespeare’s tragedy is presented as The Most Romantic Thing Ever, completely missing how young and foolish the leads are meant to be. I agree with this. I do not think we’re supposed to see them as a couple to emulate. For some, shows like Degrassi, where bad “medieval” music plays over Jimmy calling Ashley his Juliet really don’t get it.

But I think these critics often go too far and miss the point themselves. They flatten the play into Two Idiots Who Kill Themselves. I’m going to be a little quirky and say that I think Shakespeare is very talented. He wrote them some genuinely romantic shit. I don’t think it’s fair to write off the characters’ connection as fully misguided or just raging hormones. I think, in doing so, you’re kind of doing exactly what their parents do!

I recently saw the touring production of & Juliet, a jukebox musical featuring the songs of Max Martin. It’s such a weird show with such a weird premise. Shakespeare’s wife, Anne, comes to visit him to see his latest production, Romeo & Juliet, but she has some notes. Juliet dying at the end is such a bummer. After they argue about the ending using the Backstreet Boys song I Want It That Way, she takes his magic(?) quill and writes a whole new story.

The show is occasionally quite a bit of fun. Juliet, her nurse, and her invented best friends run off to Paris and have a very silly night at a party hosted by a young, sensitive musician where they sing Kesha’s Blow. Juliet makes all the same mistakes and ends up engaged (Oops, I Did it Again). It gets a little, dare-I-say, Shakespearean, because her nonbinary best friend May and Juliet’s new fiancé fall for each other. That’s all an extended set up for a NSYNC’s It’s Gonna Be Me joke. You’ve seen the memes.

At its best, many of its needle drops are played as jokes. Some of the dialogue is funny. It’s easy to let yourself have a good time. But the whole thing is dripping with an baffling amount of misguided, girl boss-style feminism that wants to criticize Shakespeare while removing all of the context from his work.

The musical, primarily using Anne as its voice, is constantly complaining that Juliet had no agency, as though a 13-year-old in medieval Italy had nothing but options at her fingertips. It insists that Romeo is not a romantic who develops true feelings for Juliet that are so intense they lead him to some bad decisions. He is, instead, a womanizing asshole who uses the same lines on Juliet that he’s used on girls across Verona. & Juliet cannot take the original text or Juliet’s actions in that play on their own terms, because it would completely destroy its own premise.

One of the clearest examples of this came late in the show. Anne laments that she feels so helpless in her own life that she just wanted Juliet to get to make a single choice. And yet Anne’s first big rewrite is to take away one of the boldest and most profound choices Juliet makes for herself - her death by suicide. I’m not saying it’s a good decision, but it is a decision!

I think there are a lot of incredibly fair feminist critiques that can be made of Shakespeare, a man who was writing in and reflecting a blatantly patriarchal time. But complaining that his thirteen-year-old heroine is not enough of a Strong Woman is almost as bad as painting her as some kind of perfect being of pure love.

She is naive and in over her head and has no good options because of her parents’ obsession. She has big and genuine and complicated feelings and no support in processing them. She ignores the good advice of a person who cares for her to jump into bed with a boy she is moving too fast with.

Huh. That last part sounds familiar.

For my money, there is no more perfect time to evoke Romeo & Juliet than an episode of a teen soap opera where two dummies consider having sex when they are not ready. It’s certainly better that Juliet stepping into her power by singing Katy Perry’s Roar.