Season 2, Episode 20 - How Soon is Now?

Original Airdate - February 9th, 2003

Content warning - discussion of rape

All things considered, Paige is doing okay. She’s in a therapy session with Degrassi guidance counselor Ms. Sauvé, and she’s able to discuss her assault without putting blame on herself. In fact, she feels like maybe she doesn’t need to keep coming to therapy on a regular basis. She’s good.

Quick sidebar about Ms. Sauvé. She’s going to be with us for a very long time. She doesn’t appear much, but she pops up to support some of Degrassi’s heaviest stories even beyond Emma’s time on the show. And so often, I’m gobsmacked. My school had guidance counselors, but is doing talk therapy part of their services? Is that a Canadian thing or just a tv thing? Seems really nice!

Anyway, Paige’s good mood is definitely getting noticed. JT and Paige have gotten closer since he started being the school mascot, and she sweetly responds to his ideas for a fun mascot gag, no insults included! She’s even flirting with Spinner again.

But her confidence is shattered when she learns Bardell will be participating in a big basketball tournament hosted by Degrassi. Dean is on that team and will be there. In her school. She feels violated. She wants him away from her.

She talks to Sauvé about pressing charges. Can they just send him away to jail? The counselor is supportive, but honest. The more time that goes by since the rape, the less chance they have of getting a conviction, especially because Paige doesn’t have any of the hard evidence they could have gotten in the immediate aftermath. This is delivered without judgment on Paige, which I really appreciate. Paige decides it’s not worth it.

Her mood sours. JT tries to cheer her up but she shuts him down. She tells him she’s not even coming to cheer at the basketball tournament anymore. JT demands answers, but all Paige will admit is that it has to do with an athlete on Bardell’s team. JT tells her not to let a guy keep her from cheer, which she loves. Paige Michalchuk isn’t afraid of anything!

It’s effective enough that Paige decides to go, but she’s nervous. She barely sleeps that night. She sees Dean almost right away, and worse than that, he comes and talks to her. He mocks her for the PMS performance, and she tells him to stay away. Of course, rape boy doesn’t respects her boundaries and follows her inside the school. He taunts Paige, making it clear that he feels untouchable. Everyone saw her flirting with him and thinks she wanted it. No one will believe her if she says different. Fuck this guy!

Dean will not stop bugging Paige, and Spinner notices. But he misinterprets the situation. He tells Paige she shouldn’t be so hung up on Dean, and Paige storms off. Hazel all but tells Spinner what happened, but Spinner is so dense and stuck in his own feelings of rejection that he doesn’t believe it.

Hazel shares that with Paige, who doesn’t want to take it as proof no one will believe her. They see Dean flirting with Manny. Paige isn’t about to let Dean target her, and tries to warn Manny to stay away. But much like Paige when she was warned by the other girl at the party, Manny thinks Paige is jealous. Two people makes it feel more like Dean was right.

Paige is overwhelmed. She skips the game, so JT goes to find her. When he won’t leave her alone, she spills. She tells JT Dean raped her and how overwhelmed she is that no one believes her or will do anything about it. JT, absolute hero, marches his scrawny ass into the gym, picks a fight with the much larger and stronger Dean, and calls him a rapist to his face. Dean fights back which gets him expelled from the tournament.

Spinner sees all of this, including Paige’s reaction, and finally uses his brain. He asks Paige if what Hazel said is true, and goes to fight Dean himself. Paige follows and stops him. She doesn’t need Spinner to beat Dean up, she’s going to fight him herself. And he better be ready for what’s coming.

She goes to Sauvé and decides to move forward with pressing charges. She knows she may not win, but she wants to scare him. Even though JT is the one who started the “fight Dean” campaign, Spinner gets the reward. She asks him to the end of the year dance.

While all of this is unfolding, Ellie is finding herself in her own rough situation. She and Marco are so perfect. They mesh so well. Their faux ad project for Media Immersion is a hit. They designed a unisex perfume, and now it’s time to shoot the video. Ellie will direct, of course, and Marco is the perfect actor. She plans to incorporate Marco’s love of Bollywood musicals. He brings her eggplant parmesan to support her work.

From the outside, they’re the perfect couple. Craig says so. Ashley says so. But Ellie knows the truth. Marco is “confused.” And Ellie is really struggling with her own feelings while waiting for him to figure himself out.

Her feelings get the better of her while they’re practicing the commercial. Heather Sinclair was supposed to be a dancer, but is late. A great use of the unseen Heather Sinclair recurring gag. Ellie stands in, and caught up in the moment, kisses Marco. He does not react, and Ellie is embarrassed.

The next day, she changes the whole commercial concept. No more Bollywood or dancing girls. Marco tries to go with it, but the whole thing feels stilted. She yells at him. She’s the director. He doesn’t like that she’s trying to control him. She thinks that’s rich. She says the other commercial concept was fruity, and Marco understands what this is really about.

The next day, they both cool down and apologize. Marco understands that asking Ellie to pretend they’re dating is asking her to pretend to be someone she’s not, and he can relate to that. Ellie presses the issue. Are you confused still? Am I hanging on for nothing? Marco admits for the first time that he’s gay. It’s tough for Ellie, but it’s what she needs to hear. No more confusion. Clear is kind.

There are a few things I remembered about Paige’s assault storyline. The first is how much of a fucking creepo Dean is at all times. The second was the PMS performance. And the last is that the whole thing becomes dominated by legal process.

I remember this as being fairly common in 00s era sexual assault storylines. The good ending was that the character decided to bring charges, went through a difficult process in the court system, and hopefully the rapist went to prison. This was justice. Any version of the story that didn’t include these beats had a bad ending. Looking at it now, with a very different perspective on courts and prisons, it’s hard to feel that way.

Paige’s storyline in this episode is an interesting launchpad to discuss this. Within this half hour, I think we see all three of the components we would need to address to say justice has been served. But only two of those three components are addressed by Dean going to prison.

Let’s start with this easy ones. The victim is freed from the abuser. Paige wants Dean away from her. This episode highlights how easily Dean is able to re-enter Paige’s space and put her in a trauma response. Paige should not have to face a man who raped her, and he should not have easy access to her. Incarceration is certainly one way to take care of that.

Second, the rapist cannot victimize anyone else. In this episode, Dean targets Manny, but there is a heavy implication way back in Shout Part 1 that Dean has done this before. Clearly, this guy needs to be stopped. No one wants to see Dean do this to Manny or anyone else. Again, if he was locked in a prison, that would be difficult.

But the third component exposes where the carceral system breaks down. The victim is able to move on. Paige needs to heal. That’s going to be an extremely long process that involves therapy, reparative relationships, and coming to terms with what happened over and over again. It’s tempting to think that seeing Dean punished for what he did will help her repair. But this is, of course, a fallacy.

The fact of the matter is, the criminal justice system is not designed to benefit victims, it’s designed to “protect society.” The focus is getting the person labeled a criminal off the street, so that they cannot commit a crime again. Paige is not the motivation for that work, Paige is simply the vehicle. The person who pressed the charges identifying the criminal and whose testimony can assist the state in apprehending Dean. Many sexual assault victims find their time in this process dehumanizing and retraumatizing.

And what does Paige really get out of this? Validation that what happened to her was wrong? She doesn’t need a court for that, and Sauvé warns her the court may not give her that outcome at all. Safety? The system didn’t keep her safe in the first place.

Paige’s motive to pursue all of this is given pretty explicitly in the episode. She wants to hurt Dean. Scare him. The episode frames this as a good thing. Our girl boss is stepping up to take this man down. Any good therapist would gently work with her to understand that impulse, and gently help her realize vengeance will do nothing for her long term.

There is a system that could satisfy all that Paige needs. A system that believes Paige and takes actions to keep Dean from her. A system that seeks to intervene with Dean to help him process and understand why he treats women this way and why that’s not okay and puts barriers in place to hold him accountable. A system that goes further to educate boys and men about consent and about calling each other out and about protecting women from men acting badly. A system that doesn’t pit women against each other for male attention so that both Paige and Manny would heed the warnings they were given.

I won’t spoil Dean’s ultimate fate, but let’s say this all goes well. Dean gets found guilty and goes to prison. It won’t be for life, but it will ruin him. It will make him hate women more. I’m not saying he’ll be right to think that, but that is the way these things go. That’s what prison does. It makes most people worse versions of themselves.

And then he’ll get out. Probably Paige will be hard to track down by then, but he can still get someone else. He probably will. That’s not on Paige. Dean is not Paige’s responsibility. I have no animosity for the characters in the show pursuing the paths laid out for them.

But I’m frustrated with the show itself. I wish the show was more interested in interrogating what Paige gets out of going through all of this than presenting it as the undeniably correct choice. I wish the show was interested in what accountability can look like besides prosecutors and prisons.