Season 3, Episode 16 - Take On Me

Original Airdate - February 16th, 2004

Content Warning - mention of self-harm

This is the Breakfast Club episode. It’s a play on the movie The Breakfast Club. That could have been very dumb and pointless, but I actually think they use it to push forward a lot of stories. Also, there’s a lot of Raditch.

Ellie rolls up to Saturday detention. She’s flicking a rubber band against her wrist. We know some of who to expect inside. Sean will be there after telling Raditch to go to hell. Jimmy and Toby earned their spot for trying to change Jimmy’s grade. But the final member of the detention crew is a surprise. Hazel.

Raditch tells them to silently do homework and think about their mistakes. Sean starts throwing a ball onto the ceiling, much to Jimmy’s annoyance. He knocks a panel out, which lands on Ellie’s stuff. He lifts Toby to try and fix it, and though they succeed, they fall down. Ah, the joys of youth.

Raditch catches them in the aftermath and separates them around the room. But the seal is broken, and now they’re chatting. Sean wants to know why good girl Hazel is here. The others quickly share their own reasons. Ellie says she skipped class. But Hazel refuses to say. Toby makes fun of her, so Hazel runs off to the bathroom. She catches Raditch working out in the gym.

They all have a good laugh about that, which turns into a game of truth or dare. Hazel picks truth and gets the obvious question — why are you here? She changes to dare. Jimmy dares her to kiss Toby and she does. Hazel is fun in this ep! I’m glad they used her, and not the more obvious princess prototype, Paige.

Simpson shows up. He’s out of the hospital, done with chemo, and coming back to set things up at school.

Back in detention, Toby is on cloud nine after his kiss and can’t wait to tell JT. Hazel demands he tells no one, and Sean calls her a follower. She goes with the social hierarchy and never strays from the path. Which brings us again to why she is here. Hazel snaps. She admits that she got a spam email with a porn link and clicked through, curious. She got caught. Good for her.

The boys play a makeshift game of hockey with cafeteria supplies while Ellie and Hazel watch. Mr. Simpson catches them, but doesn’t say anything. He’s happy they’re enjoying life. Sean swaps out with Hazel so that he can have a private chat with Ellie. He asks about her rubber band, and she says it’s a therapy technique to keep her from self-harm.

He asks why she does it, and she explains that it’s pain that she can control. To her surprise, he expresses understanding. No one ever has. Ellie asks him about the rumors that he’s stealing, and Sean admits that he is. Raditch walks in and gets mad at the hockey game. He puts them in separate rooms.

In her room, we learn the real reason Ellie is here. She’s been recording all of this conversation for a story, and she seems particularly interested in Sean’s confession, which she got on tape. This is fun! In the original film, Ally Sheedy’s “basket case” also came to detention willingly. She was just bored and had nothing better to do. I like that Degrassi’s parallel character is also at detention of her own free will.

Ellie switches out a fresh tape, and goes to gather the group back together. They explore Degrassi and find a basement and a service elevator. Jimmy steals the keys from the nearby custodial closet, and they ride the elevator up, leading them to a hatch to the roof. Toby is very nervous about all of this, but the others encourage him to go with it.

Hazel and Jimmy head off together, and Jimmy finds a necklace from some long ago Degrassi student. He gives it to Hazel. Hazel thanks him for defending her against Sean earlier, and he kisses her. It really feels like these two weren’t already together only because the writers forgot they should be, but they are together now.

Sean and Ellie have their own moment. Sean tells Ellie she’s cute, and he likes that she isn’t afraid of him. She says she likes that he isn’t disturbed by her. She shows him the scars on her arm, a final test of sorts, and he simply holds her hand.

Toby has his own triumph. He heads to the edge of the roof and faces his fear of heights. He’s feeling powerful when he sees Raditch walking Mr. Simpson out. He spies on them, as Raditch brags about how this new zero tolerance policy will let them control the kids. Simpson tells Raditch he needs to chill. Let the kids be kids. You can’t control them, and it’s not really your job.

Simpson drives off, and Raditch spots Toby. Uh oh. Toby gathers the others and they rush back downstairs. Sean’s room has locked, so he asks Jimmy to come use the keys to get him inside. Jimmy risks getting caught himself to do so. They all make it back to the rooms, but Jimmy drops the keys in the hall. Raditch finds them.

He brings them together, and asks who took the keys, but no one will say. He threatens them with three extra weeks of detention. Toby speaks up and takes the fall. Raditch respects it, and taking Simpson’s words to heart, and tells them all to leave. They all feel a real bond, and Ellie goes to get her camera to take a picture to remember this day. But in the process, knocks over her bag. Her recorder starts playing.

The others are pissed to learn that Ellie has been recording them. She tries to explain, but Sean doesn’t want to hear it. Especially because he correctly clocks that the story she’s working on is about the thefts at Degrassi. He smashes the tape, not knowing that the tape with the confession is still in her bag. This is not ethical journalism. Just to be clear.

The following Monday, JT is surprised by how chummy the detention crew seems to be. Ellie goes to Sean to apologize. She explains that while she was recording, everything she said and felt was real. She gives him the confession tape as penance. Sean forgives her. That’s two new Degrassi couples coming out of one episode. No B story! The End!

I woke up today, like many, to the news that ICE had murdered a second person in Minneapolis for the “crime” of observing them. It’s been a rough few weeks for those of us that love communities and hate fascism. I have oscillated through extreme anger, grim powerlessness, joy because I have good people in my life who make me happy and make me laugh, and then guilt for daring to be happy while the people of the twin cities, including my family, are dealing with this.

I thought about taking the day off from Degrassi entirely. Then I decided I’d watch the episode and write a completely unrelated essay where I raged about how infuriating I find any commentary about this situation that is framed around “winning the midterms” like we don’t need to do something drastic to protect people, as soon as possible.

So imagine my surprise when this episode, this silly Breakfast Club tribute, dropped something relevant in my lap. Double surprise, it came from Mr. Raditch.

I grew up in Alabama. An interesting thing that happens when I share that with people is they make assumptions about my education. These assumptions are based on current events. Today, Republican state leaders have made great efforts to erase the racist history of the country from our education system. That was not my experience growing up.

Alabama history is the history of racism in this country. Displacing Indigenous people from their land in the Trail of Tears, the confederacy, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Selma. Alabama is at the heart of some of the darkest and most prejudiced stains we carry as a country.

And growing up in Alabama, we learned about it. I visited museums dedicated to the horrors of slavery. We had guest speakers who were at the Edmund Pettus Bridge. It wasn’t perfect. It was all fairly laced with a tone of “but we fixed it!” But we did learn.

It’s part of why I find it so easy to call what we’re going through now what it is. Racist. Violently racist. And while I think the Nazi comparisons are apt and appropriate, I can also recognize ICE as a very American form of violent, authoritarian racism.

So I guess, in a way, I understand why the Republicans have tried to erase history. My Republican state government accidentally opened my eyes too much. Many of my peers from growing up share the same clear-eyed understanding of the lines the conenct the slave trade, the KKK, and ICE. Have to make sure the younger generations don’t.

Controlling the minds of the young is an evergreen hobby of the old and powerful. And it can work! But it’s not working. There are too many of us too dedicated to sharing truth. We live in an era where knowledge is so available. The internet, as much as it can be a disinformation machine, is an incredible gift.

There can be nothing slipping through the cracks if you want to control the young. Young people want to know the truth. They want to discover for themselves. They bristle at the idea of being told what is. They want to experience it.

This silly little Breakfast Club tribute actually made me feel quite a bit of hope. It reminded me that authoritarian control will always try to separate us and silence us to make us into the perfect followers it wants us to be. And it will always fail. Because community, curiosity, and honesty are simply more powerful.

You can stop telling kids the truth at school, and they will find it online. You can use your podium to lie about the victims of your fascist takeover, but you cannot change the reality. It may be brutal and difficult and infuriating, but compassion and community win every time.

We’re really not that different, and the ways in which we are are beautiful and powerful. We will not stand for the kidnappings of our neighbors. We will not abide the murder of those trying to help. We will not quietly support an opposition that is too weak to call the problem what it is.

We will fight. You, reading this, will fight. I will too. And in the midst of that fight we will laugh and cry and rest and rage and dance and watch a dumb Canadian television series from 20 years ago. And we will win. Our American history is a history of racism, but it is also a history of fighting back. We don’t win every battle, but we win the war.