Previewing Degrassi’s “Army Of Me”

Tonight’s episode of Degrassi will not contain any relationship drama.

APRIL FOOLS!!

Clare will try to set Drew up so it’ll keep them from getting too close, and keep her from acting on her crush.  I get what Clare’s going through.  I understand what the storyline is doing.  However, if I take a moment to jump into generic fandom eyes and view this as a “Clew vs. Eclare” issue as some do, I’m not seeing how Clew is a better option at the moment (most especially if the argument against is Eclare is that Eclare is an unhealthy relationship, while Clew is considered a stable option).  What in the world would be healthy about a relationship spawning out of Clare’s current mental state, having her fall into the arms of the closest guy around (aka Drew) simply because he’s there and her boyfriend isn’t?  At this point in time if one has to “choose,” the choice should be neither.

Actually, the first step should be for Clare to talk to Eli for once, and get that mess straightened out one way or another.

Do you remember what happened with Eli and Lenore?  We never saw the nitty gritty details that ultimately led to them kissing, but that’s what the show is essentially showing us now by having Clare go through the same thing.  We’re seeing Clare’s loneliness and distance, and we see her heart drifting. This storyline is so much more complicated than just choosing Eclare because it’s your OTP, or choosing Clew because they look cute together or because you hate Eclare and its fanbase and want to stick it to them.

However, if we’re just looking at this from the simple idea of Clew being a potential couple, Degrassi hasn’t convinced me of anything yet.  We know they spend a lot of time together, but a lot of it has happened off screen, and that’s the big discrepancy here.  It works if Clare suddenly has feelings for Drew that are unrequited, and it doesn’t go any further than that, because they’ve shown little things that Clare could easily cling to (ex: Drew helping Clare type her pitch when she had chemo brain).  But if that’s not the case, and Clew has a legitimate shot at being something real on both Clare and Drew’s end, then you have to show me that these two well-developed characters are romantically compatible by doing more than just showing a few instances of Drew being nice to Clare.

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During tonight’s episode of Degrassi, you will see two things:  terrorism accusations and lots of black guys.

As crazy as it sounds, that actually isn’t an April Fool’s joke.  Despite being around for over three decades, Degrassi hasn’t dealt with racism very much.  During the Degrassi Junior High days they made sure to tackle it with BLT in a couple of different ways, but in TNG the only significant time it’s been brought up was in the horrid season 7 episode Got My Mind Set On You.  Even then the racism Danny dealt with was no more than a sub issue within the main story.

The good news is that Army Of Me doesn’t have to do very much in order to be better than that.  Dallas is a strong, likable character, and I’m interested to see how he handles this situation.  And of course don’t forget Connor…I’m also excited to see how his character reacts to this as well.

There’s also the Bhandallas stuff…hopefully Jenna will continue to run interference since Dallas seems intent on pressing Alli for romance, despite her not really being all that ready to start dating again.

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