Going into tonight’s episode, Everything Is Everything, I was wondering how you all would answer the following questions:
1) Do you think Bhandallas will finally happen tonight? Would you be okay with it happening now?
2) Will Drew reciprocate feelings for Clare?
3) Is Yates’ behavior toward Tristan going down an inappropriate road?
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WARNING: The notes below may contain spoilers for tonight’s episode.
1) Bhandallas: I’ve been a big fan of the social backdrops the show has used over the past few years (dances, plays, summer camp, etc). I’m even more of a fan of one like the current science fair, because we actually see characters at school doing academic work for once! Tonight Dallas and Alli will be at the science fair, and a winner will be determined. The entire point of Dallas helping Alli with the science fair has been to get close to her because he wants to date her.
Things could go horribly awry with Dallas’ aggressive encounter with a judge, or Alli could win first place, leaving Bhandallas free to finally jump all over each other. However, has enough time passed since Alli’s breakup with Leo for fans to comfortably jump on board with Bhandallas at first? We’ve all known Bhandallas is going to happen at some point; it’s been plain as day since 13A, when over the summer Dallas still had feelings for Alli despite timing for a relationship being poor for them in season 12. Nine episodes over the course of two months in real time have separated Alli’s breakup and tonight’s episode. One thing I’m not sure is how much time in the Degrassi universe has passed in between 1318 and 1328.
That weird, possible discrepancy in real time and Degrassi time leaves me unsure of where I stand on this. If Bhandallas does happen tonight I know people will complain that Alli’s “jumping back into another relationship so quickly,” even though the show waited 10 episodes to pull the trigger…10 weekly episodes is a long time to drag something out in TV land.
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2) CLEW: Not everything has to be spelled out with dialogue. Subtle clues, glances, can work wonders in conveying strong emotions. With Drew, I feel they’ve done a better job of setting him up for a Clew pairing than Clare. This has nothing to do with the situation Clare is actually in or her feeling of desperation (becoming distant from her boyfriend), but it’s more how they’ve chosen to show us that she’s interested in Drew over a span of several episodes.
One thing I think that’s made Clare’s position feel “off” is the fact there hasn’t really been a stable buildup on her end. At the end of 1316 (Spiderwebs), Drew looked Clare’s way, and the look on her face was one of embarrassment and guilt that she made a mistake, not that she suddenly had feelings for Drew. In 1317 (The World I Know), Drew tried to “let her down easy,” and she showed absolutely no interest in Drew romantically. Four episodes later (1321, No Surprises), after having interacted with Drew in 1318-1320 multiple times with no incident, Clare suddenly freaks out about being around Drew.
Now, let’s look at Drew. Clare kisses him in 1316. He’s not really into her, but by 1317 he’s interested in making her jealous because she flipped things around and rejected him. If Zoë hadn’t come around, we might’ve seen Drew (who was emotionally unstable himself at the time), chase after Clare. Clare doesn’t start acting weird until 1321, and in 1322 (Basket Case), there’s a specific scene that uses Drew’s facial expressions to indicate an interest in Clare, which has been established earlier in the block.
Based on Drew jumping in to cover for Clare in that scene as she lied to Eli, Drew knows (and still knows going into tonight’s episode) that Clare harbors secret feelings for him, and he knows she’s afraid that her secret feelings will come between her relationship with Eli.
I still contend that if we’d seen any hint of Clare being interested or at least wavering during either 1317 or 1318, her feelings from 1321 on wouldn’t feel as if they went from zero to sixty. When it comes to Clew, of course the show wouldn’t jump through all of these hoops only to have Drew say “Nah I’m not interested in you Clare…you’re not my type.” But maybe once Clare’s feelings are put out in the open, maybe the aftermath will be better than the buildup (kind of like how Alli’s relationship was miles better after the Paris portion).
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3) Tristan and Yates: The more I think about it, the more there’s no doubt in my mind that things between them will become inappropriate. I guess a better question is, how do you want this storyline to play out? I’d kind of like to see it be consensual at first, but then when Tristan tries to get out, Yates uses his power and authority to intimidate Tristan into staying in a relationship.
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Kary's Degrassi Blog 
Everyone keeps saying the “build up” for Clare’s feelings has been sudden or non-existent. Well, a long time ago (in a galaxy far, far away), I, too, was a teenage girl and sometimes… it doesn’t make sense. I had a number of crushes throughout my pre-teen and teenage years, and many of them were for reasons that made zero sense. My freshman year in high school a guy in marching band told me my eyes were a pretty color and boom! I was in love, although previous to that moment I couldn’t even tell you his name. Hormones make things confusing and weird and yes, sometimes sudden without any reasonable explanation. It’s not weird for Clare to suddenly develop feelings overnight for Drew, it’s actually kind of normal.
TL; DR: Teenage girls and their hormones are sometimes driven to make decisions that make zero logical sense to anyone around them.
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Believe me, I’m very well aware of girls making decisions that make no sense whatsoever..I’ve felt the consequences of it many times. However, when you’re telling a story, you can’t just jump from Point A to Point F with nothing in between.
Take Alli and Leo. It made no logical sense that she would want to stay with a guy who beat the crap out of her (she would’ve gone back to him if Jenna and Clare hadn’t intervened). Though her thought process technically didn’t make sense, I was still able to get it. Alli always falls into the trap of choosing boys over books. Does it make sense? Logically no, but I get it. Clare kind of developed feelings for Jake out of nowhere and then was suddenly “in love” with him. It didn’t make logical sense, but again I get why she did. With Clare in this current situation, it’s just poor telling of the story. Even with the Eli stuff things have been kind of sketch. She’s obviously been torn up over Eli since before 13C, but they went quite a few episodes here in 13C without even referencing anything.
The idea that girls’ actions makes no sense is a reality. But if you’re telling a story where we’re getting a limited point of view to begin with it can also be slippery slope, one where the show could just go around doing whatever it wants and justify crappy writing with that idea. If tomorrow Maya woke up and was suddenly in love with Tiny, are people going to just shrug their shoulders and accept it because girls do things that make no sense? No, fans will ask the writers if they’ve been smoking crack.
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I totally see what you mean from a storytelling standpoint. I guess its easier for me to make that jump because in the past I’ve been the girl in a relationship that was sort of falling apart who developed a crush on another guy for seemingly no logical reason. If you can identify personally with the situation, I suppose it makes it easier to overlook the faults in the chronology of the story.
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1) I have no idea if Bhandallas will finally happen tonight, but… I think that assigning a time frame to when it’s too soon to start dating again is one of those arbitrary things. With the way Alli was talking to Dallas last episode, it seems like she wants to move on and that’s what should matter. So I guess what I’m wondering is, are fans going to be mad about the concept of a new relationship happening so quickly after an abusive one, or are they going to be mad just because it’s Alli and she tends to jump from boy to boy to boy? In any case… I’ve never really liked Alli that much, but I’ve actually kind of been like her in that sense- never really willing to be single and being book smart but not boy smart. Her storyline during the summer affected me because my long term relationship was ending with a restraining order… but at the same time, I met someone else during the whole ordeal and I’m happier than I’ve ever been. I grew a lot during that time and realized a lot of things about life.. but “how to be single” wasn’t one of ’em. So the idea that she should avoid dating an awesome guy like Dallas just because “it’s too soon” seems silly to me.
2) You bringing up Clare’s awkward facial expressions reminds me of when you talked about the “look” Eli and Clare shared at the end of Lose Yourself Pt 2… you saw discomfort in Clare’s face and interpreted that as her not being interested in Eli anymore, and you saw her embarrassed look at the end of Spiderwebs as meaning she wasn’t interested in Drew. In both instances, I saw it as something more- so I wonder if this is mainly because of a difference in perspectives, or if Aislinn isn’t that good at portraying emotions through facial expressions.
I tend to see it as Clare fancies herself to be a very loyal person and can’t deal with having romantic feelings for more than one person at a time. She won’t accept it, and I feel that the divorce of her parents has probably made her more determined to make whatever relationship she’s in work. I think she did feel embarrassment and guilt about kissing Drew, but I don’t think that necessarily meant she didn’t have any feelings for him. I think she was just very conflicted, and that makes her deny the feelings she sees as wrong more strongly. So when we saw her next interaction with Drew, we saw a Clare who was very much in denial and determined to live up to her moral standards. But as Eli continued to let her down, Clare’s determination started to waver.
3) I do not know what the hell is going on between Tristan and Yates. I feel like I won’t be sure why Yates “tested” him until after it plays out. Is he trying to make the other students think he doesn’t really like Tristan so they won’t suspect that he *really likes* Tristan? Is he trying to gauge just how desperate Tristan is (i.e. how easy it will be to manipulate him)? Is he just a weird kind of guy and not actually a creeper? But I think the way you’d like to see it play out sounds good to me, I don’t remember Degrassi really going down that road and I think it’d be good to portray how a relationship like that can start as consensual but turn into something else.
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Yeah I think we just saw that scene with different perspectives, especially with Spiderwebs. I just saw it as her feeling guilty because she’d been angry at Eli for cheating, then she kissed Drew (which I’m guessing in her head was her being unfaithful, even though she was mad at Eli at the time). I also think that in 1317 her turning down Drew could be seen as her being in denial, but I felt like the show chose to leave it open to interpretation. If in that scene they’d shown without a shadow of a doubt that she was in denial (all it would’ve taken is a look), I don’t think I’d have an issue with how everything else has played out on Clare’s end.
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What did Drew mean when he said “The ball is in Annabella’s court?”. He either said that or something similar when the table scene between him and Clare ended. I’m not quite good with relationships yet, particularly because I haven’t been in one or got involved with my friends’ boyfriend dramas, so can someone “clew” me in?
Ok that was lame…I know. :)
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Lol!! Drew likes Clare, but he doesn’t want to make a move on her because she’s still in a relationship. Basically Drew meant it’s up to Clare to decide whether or not she wants to try dating him or keep dating Eli.
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I will never EVER be on board with Bhandallas. Alli needs to graduate high school single. 99% of her issues involve guys.
Clare also needs to remain single. The girl has had guys worshipping her in every single season she’s been a regular on the show. The writers really need to stop putting Clare (and all of the Emma types) on a pedestal. She isn’t that amazing and she’s coming across as Mary Sueish. Not to mention the fact that she’s going from one cheater to an even worse cheater.
The Tristan storyline has the potential to be really interesting. Hopefully the writers won’t blow it.
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I’m with you on the ally opinion and a little bit with the clare opinion
I do like clare but now you say that cheater-thing…. it has got me thinking: she was with KC who dumped her for jenna, jake was according to her with jenna and eli cheated on her with lenore….
it seems to me that alli isn’t the only girl who can’t be with the right guy.
but maybe we’ll be Lucky and maybe clare and drew come togheter and maybe they’ll be only seen as happy couple or for their college application on screen . Now I mention college : IS NONE OF THESE SENIORS EVEN THINKING ABOUT THIS?!
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Ikr. I haven’t even heard the word college mentioned this season. Last season, we at least had a few mentions of college apps and such. Of course, this might be because of the whole splitting 13 up, with this season being semester 1 of the school year, and season 14 being semester 2. Of course, I might be totally off in what I’ve heard, so if I was in any way wrong about my previous statement…sorry:)
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