Degrassi Recap: I Wanna Be Adored

The Best Ship is the Friendship

Alli and Clare are in charge of organizing this year’s prom, but Clare’s very been distant lately.  Alli thinks Clare’s ready to move beyond their friendship and live a perfect life with Eli and their baby, until Eli tells Alli that Clare lost the baby.  Alli excludes Clare from prom planning in order to give her a break, but the move upsets Clare once she learns Alli knows about the baby.

Clare tells Alli the reason she didn’t say anything is because she didn’t want to be treated differently.  Alli successfully pitches hosting prom on a boat, and then heads to Clare’s to apologize.  Clare says she feels Alli has everything while she has nothing; Alli says they’ll always have each other, and the two make up.

QUICK GRADE: B
QUICK REVIEW: Clare isn’t obligated to tell anyone about what happened with the baby until she’s ready, but I also understand how Alli feels.  It would hurt to feel like you’re being kept out of the loop of your best friend’s life.  In the season 10 episode 99 Problems, there was a point where Alli felt like a total loser and compared  her lame life to Clare’s wonderful, activity-filled one.  Years later it’s as if the tables have turned, with Clare feeling as if she has nothing while Alli’s life has finally come together (bright future at university, great boyfriend, etc.).  Thinking about Alli and Clare’s time on the show makes me appreciate this plot.  There’s so many times where friendships on Degrassi are portrayed through characters playing the role of support for another, so it’s nice to see a moment where the story focuses in a little deeper on the friendship itself.

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Zig Moves In

Zig finally moves in with Vince and Tiny, and the move has an immediate impact on Zig’s behavior.  He gets sucked into a night of drinking and playing video games instead of sleeping.  He winds up getting late to rehearsal for the musical and Imogen lets him have it, telling him he needs to draw a line with his roommates and not let them get in the way of his role in the musical.  When Tiny and Vince want to go out for dinner, Zig tells him he has to practice for the musical.

Vince asks Zig to perform in front of him, and is impressed.  Afterward, Zig has a quick facetime session with Maya before someone claiming to be the cops bang on the door.  It turns out it’s one of Vince’s dealers dropping off a shipment of Molly.  While Vince is fine with Zig living there, he expects Ziggy to help him prepare the drugs to sell.

QUICK GRADE: B-
QUICK REVIEW: “…you’re an idiot…You have it good here and you just had to kiss her,” said Jose, Zig’s social worker.  Yes, Zig is being stupid by risking jail/death for love, an idea that even Jose laughs at.  Zig seemed confident he’d be able to move back home with his mom, but she’s not interested upon hearing Zig was around when Tiny was stabbed.  Does Zig really believe himself when he says everything will be fine when staying at Vince’s?  Meanwhile, watching Vince is interesting.  We know he’s a bad guy, and the general perception is that bad people behave like bad people 100% of the time.  However, Vince welcomes Zig into his home and is cool about Zig wanting to put the musical first.  The chill, brotherly dynamic between Vince and Tiny lull you into briefly forgetting what Vince does.

Reality sets in when the “cop scare” happens, and now Zig is pulled back into helping Tiny with his drug operation.  “Sounds to me you’ve got to start having your own back, know where to draw the line,” Imogen says.  While that might work in regards to Zig preparing for the musical while at Vince’s, it’s easier said than done when it comes to that gang life.  We’re watching Zig go from one step forward to two (and soon to be ten or more) steps back, a ridiculously frustrating pattern to deal with in reality.

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Tristan Moves On

Miles asks Tristan and Zoë if either of them want to go to a concert, and Tristan rejects him cold.  Tristan thinks by the way Miles is upbeat these days that he’s moved onto someone else, so Zoë suggests Tristan do the same.  Tristan is on the dating app Teendr, but Grace and Zoë think his current profile is lame.  In order to get the hot guys to notice him, he updates his profile to make himself look like a buff guy who likes rock climbing.  He gets a match and ends up going on a hiking date with a guy named Gage.

Tristan barely makes it through the date, and Zoë tells Tristan he should come clean to Gage.  When the two meet up again, Tristan tells Gage he lied on his profile.  Gage is cool with it and says he enjoys other things outside of physical activity.  The two end up bonding over the difficulties of being gay in the dating world.

QUICK GRADE: B
QUICK REVIEW:  What kind of wizard is Zoe Whittall?  The type who made Tristan a bearable character for the first time ages.  His rap sheet of jackass/over-the-top behavior when it comes to romance is a mile long, and while he fell back into old habits briefly, in the end it felt like he finally gets it.  I like how Tristan finally met someone who understands how he feels when it comes to his fear of being alone, and Tris didn’t just blindly dive into the water head first.  He definitely wanted to, hence suffering through the hike, but it seems like the breakup with Miles helped him realize he needs to chill.

Tristan’s conversation with Gage also points out a general difficulty in online dating, where it’s hard to summarize yourself such a tight space, and people end up exaggerating who they are to be the type of person they think people desire (even Grace told Tristan his Teendr profile wasn’t good enough).  P.S. I’m choosing to ignore that Ziles stuff.  “Tenner Roulette” is striking again, but for all we know Mig and Moë could end up being a thing before this block is over.

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