Season 3, Episode 22 - The Power of Love

Original Airdate - April 5th, 2004

We’ve got three, three!, stories in this weird finale and NONE of them are that interesting!

It’s the last day of the term at Degrassi. The very next morning, Jimmy is headed off to a cool basketball camp in LA for the summer. He was excited, until he got a girlfriend. Since this will be their last day together for a while, he’s determined to show Hazel the night of her dreams - limo, fancy dinner, and bffs Spinner and Paige along for the ride.

Things start going wrong immediately. Jimmy arranged for the outfits for the Bollywood themed dance. There was a mix up, and his outfit is a sari, not a kurta. Embarassing! The limo rolls up, and it’s beat all to shit and has a bunch of weird Southern decor. Even worse, the limo driver is verbally abusive actor Billy Ray Cyrus. His character is named Duke. The inside of the limo is gross.

They roll up to dinner and it’s the same Italian restaurant with the same gay waiter. Which also makes it the restaurant where Spinner and Paige dined and dashed. The meal is excellent, but the waiter recognizes the truant couple and adds their meals from the other day to the bill. Jimmy doesn’t have enough to cover it all, so he has to borrow money from Hazel.

The dance starts while they’re on their adventures. Many characters who do not get their own real plot this episode appear and dance to Marco’s perfect playlist. He’s running around, fretting about the decorations. Especially a piece of fabric that keeps getting stuck in one of the lights…

Jimmy and the crew come out of the restaurant to see Duke is getting arrested for unpaid parking tickets. Duke convinces the cops to give the teens a ride to the dance. Embarrassing!

And then that piece of fabric catches on fire. Simpson herds all of the kids outside as the sprinklers go off. Jimmy, Hazel, Paige and Spinner roll up to realize they missed the whole Bollywood experience.

But then the party keeps going! Someone turns on the radio, and the kids of Degrassi dance in the parking lot. Jimmy is being a sad sack, but Hazel tells him he doesn’t need to try so hard. As long as they’re together, the night is plenty perfect to her.

Okay Sean! Simpson calls him into his office to tell him that he’s barely failed Media Immersion. Sean is devastated, this is going to threaten his student welfare. But Simpson has a plan. He gives Sean a last minute extra credit assignment. Make a database for the shop’s parts, and he’ll pass.

Sean does it, and Simpson is happy to pass him. Mr. Simpson says a lot of really nice things to Sean about how even though Sean isn’t with Emma, and hasn’t really been turning to ole Archie anymore, Simpson does want to be there for him. Simpson reminds him his door is always open. Sean, overwhelmed with both appreciation and guilt, admits that he stole Simpson’s laptop. Sean says he’s sorry, but Mr. Simpson isn’t ready to hear that.

Sean and Ellie come to the dance, mostly because Sean is hoping to make nice with chaperone Simpson. Simpson completely ignores him as he heads out to get more ice. Sean finds him in the parking lot. His car won’t start. Sean takes a look. It’s a real disaster and is going to require a lot of labor.

Mr. Simpson yells at Sean about how selfish and immoral it was to still a computer from a dying man, and Sean doesn’t know what to say. He knows it was wrong, he just wants to make it right. He begs Mr. Simpson to let him repair his car for free. Simpson agrees, and these two are on the road to forgiveness.

Story three! Joey and Caitlyn are going strong, and Joey is ready for the next step. He surprises Caitlyn and asks her to move in. Caitlyn is taken aback and wants to think, but she quickly decides that yes, she is in. But there’s a twist. Her boss tells her that the funding came through for an ambitious globe-trotting story about HIV/AIDS. It’s Caitlyn’s dream story, one that requires nine months of travel, and one she would have to start on now.

Caitlyn says no. She chooses love! At dinner (at the same Italian restaurant where Jimmy and the others eat), she tells Joey she will move in. But when she mentions the crazy coincidence with the story, Joey does not react how she expects. Joey says she needs to do the story, and they should go get her ready to leave. Caitlyn goes cold and heads out of the restaurant to pack alone.

Joey comes and finds her at the office. Caitlyn admits that she still doesn’t feel like she can trust Joey’s love for her since he cheated when they were engaged before. She thought if he really loved her, he wouldn’t want her to go.

But Joey says it’s the opposite. Because he loves her, he doesn’t want her to miss this opportunity. And Joey feels so secure in their relationship, that he’s willing to wait for her travel. They have an emotional kiss goodbye. It’s going to be tough, but they’re determined to see it through.

And with a whimper, Degrassi season 3 comes to a close. Sorry for those of you who don’t care about Degrassi, but I have a lot of thoughts about this season that won’t fit neatly in my power rankings. This is a season retrospective. I’ll see you non-Panthers in season 4.

I had really been looking forward to this season. For whatever reason, in my head, this was the season where Degrassi really takes off. Everyone is in high school! The romantic web becomes more entangled! We cover Serious Issues! Things Get Good!

And with the exception of that last one, all of that is true. There is an obvious attempt to push the series in a more mature direction. And while I certainly admire the attempt, I don’t think any of it quite works. Let’s break down how Degrassi tries to Go There this season, and how I think it stumbles along the way.

There is a clear escalation in the type of stories we’re covering this season. Intimate partner violence, self-harm, abortion, and, bold for the time, coming out. We’re pretty far from My First Period and Trying to Win a Pringles Contest. This is the season that creates the reputation for the show as a series that tackles real, serious issues that teens deal with. And next season will cement that.

Now this isn’t the beginning of very special episodes. Last season we had sexual assault, abusive parents, and parental death. But those stories tended to be siloed in special two parters. Here, they’re more intermingled all throughout.

And I’m not sure that’s totally a good thing. I am glad Degrassi attempted to tell these stories, but all of them are weighted very strangely. Ellie’s self harm is covered in a single half hour. Emma’s difficulties with a parent with cancer are relegated to B stories. At times, it can feel like the series wants to evoke these difficult topics, but doesn’t actually want to play with them that much. It’s strange, and not something I associate with the show. Maybe I think they’re trying to do too much? Is that what I think? Ask me next season.

This season is dominated by long term arcs. Manny’s journey from hot girl to home-wrecker to abortion to outcast and back to joy. Simpson’s cancer. Sean’s trip into the depths of bad kid land and back out again. Degrassi, to its credit, has often tended to leave things half resolved from episode to episode, but here, we really see them building out defined storylines.

But weirdly, almost all of those storylines just kind of peter out. Manny finds her confidence with JT again in a couple B stories. Simpson gets better quickly, again in a B story. It’s telling that by the finale, Sean’s is the only arc that gets any screen time. It feels like they set in motion a lot of interesting things, but never quite know how to land the plane.

A further unfortunate effect of this approach is that is leaves a lot of our characters without much story. Toby, who features in none of these, almost disappears this season. Terri, who features only in her own two episode arc, is absent from the others. Hazel, Liberty, and even Jimmy start to feel like lesser characters overall, an unfortunate fate for our three brown and black cast members. I think they find a better balance with this later on.

Degrassi started as a show with two grades. In time, it will typically have three or even four. This season feels like the first time we really get three age groups. Grade 9s, Grade 10s, and adults. I actually think there is room for this many different groups, but should one of those groups be actual grown ups?

I get it. If Degrassi comes back tomorrow and Emma’s child is a character, I will want Emma to have some story. I know there is affection for these characters. But the problem is that the nature of their struggles are so different from the rest of their cast. Cancer, relationships with decades of history, these are not things that link in easily with semi-formals and teen pranks.

For Simpson, they are at least able to pull Emma into the story. But Joey and Caitlyn are on an island, both in frame and in theme. It’s not a bad story, I got kind of invested in it, it just isn’t the right story for this show.

I didn’t expect to have this opinion as I finished this season, but overall, I think this is the weakest of the three seasons I’ve covered. There are great moments. But it’s messy. It feels like a show moving through some growing pains. Degrassi is maturing, and this is the awkward pubescent years. But as the features settle, as they learn to shave, as their voice settles into its final register, I think we will find ourselves on much more solid ground.