Drew passed out? I’m taking bets on how many penises get drawn on his face

TeenNick’s has started promoting its summer plans, which consists of more water than the Pacific Ocean (H2O and new show Alien Surf Girls).  The good news about TeenNick’s “Psyched For Summer,” which begins on Tuesday May 29th, is that there will be sneak peeks of Degrassi Season 12 scattered throughout the next several weeks…so those of you who have TeenNick keep your eyes peeled!

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This post is a collection of all the key information about Degrassi Season 12 as of 5/21/12:

Degrassi Season 12 Premieres on Monday, July 16th at 9PM EST

Unless stated otherwise, MuchMusic and TeenNick will broadcast the episodes at the same time.  The summer telenovela block is 4 weeks long with a new episode every Monday-Thursday, for a total of 16 episodes.  Below is the broadcast schedule for the summer block:

SUMMER BLOCK WEEK 1
7/16, 9pm EST: Come As You Are Pt. 1
7/17, 9pm EST: Come As You Are Pt. 2
7/18, 9pm EST: Walking On Broken Glass Pt. 1
7/19, 9pm EST: Walking On Broken Glass Pt. 2

SUMMER BLOCK WEEK 2
7/23, 9pm EST: Got Your Money Pt. 1
7/24, 9pm EST: Got Your Money Pt. 2
7/25, 9pm EST: Say It Aint So Pt. 1
7/26, 9pm EST: Say It Aint So Pt. 2

SUMMER BLOCK WEEK 3
7/30, 9pm EST: Closer To Free Pt. 1
7/31, 9pm EST: Closer To Free Pt. 2
8/1, 9pm EST: Waterfalls Pt. 1
8/2, 9pm EST: Waterfalls Pt. 2

SUMMER BLOCK WEEK 4
8/6, 9pm EST: Rusty Cage Pt. 1
8/7, 9pm EST: Rusty Cage Pt. 2
8/8, 9pm EST: Never Ever Pt. 1
8/9, 9pm EST: Never Ever Pt. 2

Below is a complete list of the known episode titles for Season 12:

1201/1202: Come As You Are
1203/1204: Walking On Broken Glass
1205/1206: Got Your Money
1207/1208: Say It Ain’t So
1209/1210: Closer To Free
1211/1212: Waterfalls
1213/1214: Rusty Cage
1215/1216: Never Ever
1217/1218: Sabotage
1219/1220: Scream

Season 12 is slated to have 40 total episodes, so after the summer block the remaining 24 episodes will be split into two blocks that will air during Fall 2012 and Spring 2013.  SPECIAL NOTE: Episode 1223 will be this Degrassi series’ 300th episode.  Episode 1226 will be the 400th episode in the history of the Degrassi franchise, dating back to the debut of “Ida Makes A Movie” in 1979.

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NEW CHARACTERS

Name: Luke Baker
Grade: 11
Actor: Craig Arnold – https://twitter.com/#!/thecraigarnold

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Name: Becky Baker
Grade: 11
Actress: Sarah Fisher – https://twitter.com/#!/SarahFisher28

NOTE: Luke and Becky are siblings:

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Name: Campbell
Grade: 10
Actor: Dylan Everett - https://twitter.com/#!/DylanEvz

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Name: Mike
Grade: 12
Actor: Demetrius Joyette – https://twitter.com/#!/SLsJoyette

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Episode Descriptions/Storylines

The overall theme of the summer telenovela is a showdown between Degrassi and a new team that arrives at Degrassi.  It’s basically been confirmed that it’s a hockey team, given that Degrassi filmed hockey scenes on 5/14/12:

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So over the last couple of weeks of Season 11.5, TeenNick posted some episode descriptions for Hollaback Girl and In The Cold Cold Night that made no sense whatsoever.  Now that Season 11 is over we can safely assume those descriptions were actually for Season 12 episodes, and had been released by accident.  There’s no way to know which episodes these descriptions are for, but you can read them below:

Unknown Episode #1, Part 1: When anti-gay slurs appear on several lockers, Simpson can’t find the culprit, so the students take matters into their own hands. A conflict between Alli and Eli puts Clare in a difficult position. Fiona embarks on her first-ever job search.

Unknown Episode #1, Part 2: Simpson institutes a peer mediation program to help resolve recent conflicts, but it gets off to a rough start. Clare is so overwhelmed by relationship, school, and family stress that she develops insomnia. Clare without sleep? This could get messy.

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Unknown Episode #2, Part 1: When Marisol’s insults become harsher than ever, Mo’s self-esteem reaches an all time low. Tristan and Maya bond while working on a history project, and Tori tries to sabotage their new friendship.

Unknown Episode #2, Part 2: Mo refuses to leave the house, and Marisol’s attempt to help only makes things worse. Katie won’t graduate unless she improves her math grade, so she hires KC as a tutor. When he starts spending time at the Matlin’s, Katie develops feelings for him — but so does Maya.

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If you’re not sure as to what’s going on, this coincides with what Munro said in a recent interview about how a new team arrives at Degrassi and starts causing trouble:

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Degrassi returns on Monday, July 16th at 9pm EST.

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PLOT A SUMMARY: After learning about Katie going off to rehab, Fiona and Imogen see this as the perfect time to get revenge by stealing the student council reins from Marisol.  Meanwhile, Eli figures out that Fiona has a crush on Imogen, but Fiona downplays it because she doesn’t think Imogen is interested.  Fiona comes up with a plan to one-up Marisol and pitches her plan to Principal Simpson: she wants to create a holiday carnival.  Fiona wants to withdraw money from her trust fund to cover the cost of the carnival, but her mom won’t let her for reasons she refuses to explain.  Fiona writes a check anyway and begins to coordinate the carnival with Imogen.  Fiona returns home one day to find the police and her lawyer in her loft.  Her lawyer informs her that her mom was arrested because of pending financial issues with her mom’s foundation.  Fiona chats with her mom, who is under house arrest, via skype.  Her mom tells her that their assets are frozen and she wants Fiona to move back home to New York.  She also sent Holly J to stay with Fiona for a few days and help her pack.

Fiona starts feeling the pressure as Simpson wants her to scale down the carnival and she doesn’t have the $11,000 she needs to pay toward the carnival, all while Marisol is gloating at Fiona’s impending failure.  Fiona takes out her frustration on Imogen, telling Imo that she’s moving away and the carnival isn’t going to happen.  Imogen is upset that Fiona’s giving up so easily, so Fiona comes up with an idea to get the cash by selling all of her stuff.  Fiona raises the cash and ends up riding the Ferris wheel with Imogen, and Fiona finally confesses her feelings and ends up kissing her.  Imogen kisses Fiona back and tells her she feels the same way, but isn’t completely sure about her sexuality yet.  Fiona also plans to do whatever it takes to make sure she can stay at Degrassi.

Fimogen in this episode suffers from the same issue that has plagued them since their inception:  their development is rushed.  Fimogen’s chemistry as friends is strong and enjoyable.  The best thing about watching them is that fact that we get to see Imogen be her fun, quirky self.  But up until the moment where Imogen initiated a kiss with Fiona there was never a hint of where Imogen stood on the matter, let alone a reason as to why Fimogen should be a couple.  Everything about them has almost been completely one sided because we’ve only seen Fiona’s side of the story, and even that seemed to be a hodgepodge of randomness in this episode.  Her family’s money issues felt contrived and bled irony as Holly J was there as Fiona’s support system (If you’ll remember Holly J had her own money woes not once, but twice).

Even more random is Fiona magically selling her possessions to come up with the necessary cash for the carnival.  And that beef with Marisol? By the end of the episode it had been dropped like a hot potato. It’s bizarre that the only consistencies within this episode are the flat momentum and the inconsistencies within the story itself.

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PLOT B SUMMARY: With Katie out, Liam has decided to postpone the school paper for the rest of the semester.  Clare’s against the idea, and decides to find her own team of writers to help her put together the paper.  Clare asks Alli, Jenna, KC and Connor for help, but Alli scoffs at the idea.  KC and Connor eventually get on board, voluntarily creating the paper‘s layout.  Clare tries to apologize to Alli, who finally gets everything she’s been feeling about their feud off her chest.  Clare begs Alli to give her another chance, but Alli just walks away.  Eventually Alli and Jenna come around to help with the paper, and so does someone else from Clare’s past: Eli.

After Clare proofreads Eli’s article he asks her out to lunch.  She abruptly declines because she doesn’t think it’s a good idea.  Later Clare finds Eli in the memorial garden and apologizes for overreacting because she didn‘t want them hanging out to trigger his issues again.  Eli asks Clare if they could ever pick up where they left off before things went awry in their relationship and Clare accidentally spills soup on him.  Clare and the gang successfully complete their newspaper, and afterward she and Eli hang out at the carnival.  He asks Clare if she was really worried about them hanging out setting him off and she says “It wasn’t you I was worried about.”  As Eli walks away to meet his dad he turns around because he needs to know what Clare meant by that, and that’s when she kisses him.  Before Eli can say anything Clare tells him to hold onto whatever he’s thinking and they’ll talk about it when he gets back from winter break.

Everything involving the core group of Clare, Alli, KC, Connor and Jenna was simply fantastic.  Them coming together to work on the newspaper is one of those moments where truly appreciate them as a group because of the realization that they’ve drifted apart, and it’s been ages since they were together as a whole.

As far as Eclare goes, on one hand I enjoyed the way they ended the episode.  To me the kiss doesn’t signify their immediate reconciliation, but only establishes that they’ll slowly work on rebuilding their relationship in the future.  The one nagging issue though is Clare’s behavior…where in the heck did this come from?

Thinking back Degrassi does have a tendency to make certain major couples rekindle their relationship out of nowhere.  For the most part Cranny basically went a year without speaking to each other before Manny randomly started seeing Craig in a positive light (and Craig kissed her) in “Weddings, Parties, Anything.” Even though they hung out in the same social circle, Jimmy and Ashley literally went years without acknowledging each other’s existence.  Then not only does Ashley return to Degrassi out of the blue in “High Fidelity,” but she randomly tells Jimmy how amazing he is and kisses him.  Looking at the bigger picture of Season 11 Clare and Eli hadn’t talked to each other since the end of the summer.  With Eli we could always assume that he’d have lingering feelings for Clare, but we hadn’t received enough clarity on where she stood on things (besides her forever being overly cautious).  The way that Eclare got from “Point A” to “Point Kiss” is the direction things needed to go, I’m just disappointed that they packed all of this into one episode just to rush things along.

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PLOT C SUMMARY: Maya is getting bored with her music class because she’s far more advanced than the other students…she’s so bored actually that it causes her to talk back to Ms. Oh.  Maya can’t even practice at home because Katie needs her rest after long days at rehab, so Maya begins to feel like she’s losing her passion for music.  She wants to be bumped up to a more advanced class, but because she can’t Ms. Oh suggests Maya spend class time studying music theory.  While doing that she finds an ad in the paper for an Indie band looking for a string musician.  She tries to sneak out to the audition which is at a bar, but her dad catches her.  She tells him how she feels like music is no longer a challenge, and her dad tells her she has to find a way to make it challenging for herself.  Maya rejoins the grade nine band and has found a new way to challenge herself by taking up the trumpet.

Maya’s plight is very relatable, but ultimately forgettable in the scope of things.  People will remember Fimogen, Eclare, and the “old school niners” from this episode (none of them being overdramatic in any fashion), not the fact that Maya’s losing her passion for music and decides to start playing the trumpet.  Part 1 did a good job of setting things up, but then Maya’s plot gets lost in the shuffle of the episode’s big carnival theme in Part 2.  She’s still so incredibly likable and hands down my favorite of the niners, but there’s nothing that made this stand out to me.

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HOW DO YOU GRADE IN THE COLD COLD NIGHT?

You can now grade the plots in this episode by voting below!

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Today Degrassi is filming on location for an unknown Season 12 episode.  What’s the big deal about this? For the first time ever Degrassi held an open call for fans and the general public to participate as extras in today’s shoot at Canlan Ice Sports in York.  They’re only filming specific scenes at the facility today, and will shoot the rest of the episode back at the Degrassi set at a later date.  Degrassi’s always been very interactive with fans, but they’re taking it to an all new level in 2012: we’ve got this event today, plus a lucky fan in attendance today will win the opportunity to have an additional walk-on appearance in the episode they’re filming…that means they’ll get to go to the Degrassi set later this year to film that part.  Plus there’s also the current contest going on where you can win a behind-the-scenes visit to the Degrassi set (Canadian fans only).

And if you missed it over the weekend, MTV was busy not spoiling the finale for us this time on 10 On Top.  Could filming at Canlan Ice Sports today have anything to do with the “new team” coming to Degrassi? Personally my guess is that the women’s floor hockey team returns and so does Coach Liberty, red cape and all.

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TeenNick Promo

source: munrolove tumblr

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MuchMusic Promo

source: drewsbianca tumblr

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*Fiona and Imogen try to organize a Degrassi event; Clare is overwhelmed with a new project. (via Zap2It)

*Fiona and Imogen plot to end Marisol’s Student Council reign by throwing an unforgettable end-of-semester Degrassi holiday carnival. (via MuchMusic)

Yesterday the Degrassi cast spent the day shooting one of the most anticipated Degrassi videos every year: the TeenNick summer promo.  In 2010 we had the Shark In The Water promo, and last year’s promo was Steal Your Heart.  This new promo is directed by Randall Thorne (the same guy who directed the Shark In The Water promo), so I’m expecting it to be pretty good.  If the release of the first two summer promos are any indication, we should be expecting to see this new promo sometime at the end of May.

Some more pics from yesterday’s promo shoot:

On set at the 2012 TeenNick promo shoot

Aislinn Paul, Chloe Rose, Lyle O’Donohoe, Olivia Scriven

(front) Alex Steele, Olivia Scriven. (back) Lyle O’Donohoe, Sarah Fisher.

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DEGRASSI GALLERY SHOOT

Now today the cast is busy with the Season 12 gallery shoot.  Those are all of the pictures like this

and this

We won’t get to see these until later this summer, closer to the Season 12 premiere…but I wouldn’t be surprised if the official Degrassi tumblr posted some of the pics early between now and then.  Below is a behind the scenes pic of Aislinn and Jahmil at today’s shoot:

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Yesterday the Degrassi cast attended another readthrough, this time for the episodes Sabotage (Beastie Boys) and Scream (Michael Jackson).  Here’s an updated list of the Season 12 episodes so far:

WEEK 1
Monday July 16th: Ep 1201 – Come As You Are Pt. 1
Tuesday July 17th: Ep 1202 – Come As You Are Pt. 2
Wednesday July 18th: Ep 1203 – Walking On Broken Glass Pt. 1
Thursday July 19th: Ep 1204 -Walking On Broken Glass Pt. 2

WEEK 2
Monday July 23rd: Ep 1205 – Got Your Money Pt. 1
Tuesday July 24th: Ep 1206 – Got Your Money Pt. 2
Wednesday July 25th: Ep 1207 – Say It Aint So Pt. 1
Thursday July 26th: Ep 1208 – Say It Aint So Pt. 2

WEEK 3
Monday July 30th: Ep 1209 – Closer To Free Pt. 1
Tuesday July 31st: Ep 1210 – Closer To Free Pt. 2
Wednesday August 1st: Ep 1211 – Waterfalls Pt. 1
Thursday August 2nd: Ep 1212 – Waterfalls Pt. 2

WEEK 4
Monday August 6th: Ep 1213 — Rusty Cage Pt. 1
Tuesday August 7th: Ep 1214 — Rusty Cage Pt. 2
Wenesday August 8th: Ep 1215 — Never Ever Pt. 1
Thursday August 9th: Ep 1216 — Never Ever Pt. 2

Airdates TBD
Ep 1217 — Sabotage Pt. 1
Ep 1218 — Sabotage Pt. 2
Ep 1219 — Scream Pt. 1
Ep 1220 — Scream Pt. 2

Since “Sabotage” and “Scream” aren’t part of the telenovela, they probably won’t air until the fall.  No one at MuchMusic or TeenNick is talking about the Season 12 premiere date (there’s no reason to announce it when we’re not done with Season 11 yet), but it’s going to be on July 16th.

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The Case of the Random Episode Descriptions

This case is just as baffling as the “WHERE IS WESLEY” case!! Last week TeenNick’s broadcast schedule had some bizarre episode descriptions posted for Hollaback Girl:

They’re bizarre because none of the above happened in that episode.  Before you say “well maybe those descriptions are part of the finale,” we already have the descriptions for In The Cold Cold Night. They’re not going to overload a finale with 5 or 6 plots. Plus Katie’s conclusion in Hollaback Girl implies she’ll be nowhere near the finale and Maya already has a plot. So they’re either:

A) Defunct episode descriptions for Hollaback Girl (which would make sense since Mo does seem like he’d enjoy being a hollaback girl)

B) Descriptions for one of the Season 12 episodes (which will cause everyone at Epitome to deny it while secretly pooping themselves)

C) Descriptions someone at TeenNick made up as part of some sick joke…if it were me I’d make Morisol have sex, and make KC have sex with both Matlins. Tristan would have sex with Maya just to piss off Tori and I’d have everyone get pregnant and give birth in the same episode to Degrassi’s next NEXT NEXXXT generation of students! And Mo’s self esteem would still be so low that he’d adopt a couple of cats and name them Eli and Clare. “EClare’s poop is endgame in the litterbox!!” he’d say, then he’d cry himself to sleep.

I could go on all day lol.

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