THEY WERE THE BEST OF TEENS; THEY WERE THE WORST OF TEENS: Everybody who knows me knows I love teen culture (to be more accurate, I love the culture that fully-grown adults attempt to peddle to teens as if it were teen culture). TNBC, Cruel Intentions, Real World/Road Rules Challenge, slutty-era Xtina -- these are my specialties. My favorite slice of this genre is teen-oriented TV fiction, which shares a rigid set of rules with kabuki theater and full drag: stylized costumes and garish colors, characters that are little more than reified tics and impulses; exaggeration of emotion and certain human weaknesses; ritualistic pantomime and performance. The acting us usually pretty comically wooden too. I eat this stuff up.
Over the last couple of weeks, freed from obligations to supposedly better TV, I tuned in to two teen shows that I hadn't seen before. Superficially, these two shows -- Smallville and DeGrassi: the Next Generation -- bear a lot of resemblance to each other (and to another of my favorite teen dramas, Just Deal). They are shot cheaply in Canada with a lot of local actors and extras, and they follow -- frequently with a 10,000 Maniacs-like focus on the social ill of the week -- a bunch of teens around their high school.
Don't be fooled. These shows are the exact opposite of each other. DeGrassi shows teens as they are: pimply; frequently stupid; awkward; fucking up in ways glorious and mundane. Characters you're supposed to like do reprehensible things. You have to admire the balls of a show that builds a special Christmas episode around breakups of two long-term relationships after dual infidelities. That's the holiday spirit, Canada! I have two chief complaints. First, there are about 100 regular characters. Are there that many people in Canada? Second, the kids are not attractive enough for TV. I don't mean they're midwestern-state-fair ugly; just Canadian unattractive. (Have I ever mentioned that I have infallible Canadar?) That kind of look has its place (Canada), but I live in California, people! We have standards. It's a serious breach of the teen-kabuki rules.
In total contrast, as far as I can tell the principal plot arc in Smallville is that impossibly, unbelievably, mind-alteringly hot teens (or teen-ishes) bounce around until their clothes fall off. I cannot for the life of me explain what happened in the episodes that I saw -- something about magical Gatorade and forgiveness and turning people scaly with a kiss -- but I can say that Kristin Kreuk, ostensibly Canadian but looking like if she stepped on the set of DeGrassi it would instantly cease to exist out of deference to her magnificence, has huge green sad-clown eyes and rosy cheeks and should never under any circumstances try to act. Erica Durance's breasts flounce around solving mysteries, foiling malfeasors but being foiled -- barely -- by the valiantly straining threads of her tops. And lest you think the eye candy is only the fairer variety, Clark Kent has apparently joined a football team comprised of ambisexual A&F Quarterly models whose uniforms consist entirely of sweat and towels and who conduct all team business in an overheated locker room. In short, there is not a single actor from DeGrassi anywhere near hot enough even to play Ugly Bystander on this show.
So why is DeGrassi more watchable?
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