Teen shows are all really, really fucking awesome bad. I find that I watch a lot of them, on the more ridiculous side of the spectrum like, Gossip Girl and Degrassi: The Next Generation. These shows are not good, Fact. But like most bad shows people watch them obsessively.

The first thing I noticed about Degrassi was that all the kids were ugly. I love it when shows or music videos decide to be “realistic” and cater to the masses by having ugly people. Simply so that the chubby girl with a nautical fairy t-shirt can be all “OMG THEY’RE JUST LIKE ME I WILL HAVE TO WRITE FAN FICTION ABOUT THIS SHOW ON LIVE JOURNAL.”

The second thing I noticed was that it was Canadian. Nuff said.

Degrassi is a show with an extremely large cast of diverse kids which started out with them in junior high but progressed to high school and even college. The reason I bring this up is because I think Degrassi is a great example of why most shows, almost always start to suck after a while.

Degrassi was a simple show that got complicated. It was a very easy to write Issue of the Week show for the first two seasons. As the kids got older the issues got more “intense,” and so the show had to get complicated as a result of this. The third and fourth seasons of Degrassi are truly it’s best. The character’s personalities had been developed in the first two seasons and so now they were free to move about without needing so much exposition, this is usually when shows get good.

When you have an established sense of what you are dealing with, writers can cut all the “fat” out of things because they already have set their parameters of what you can expect. Good shows are consistent, but still surprising. This is where things get tricky. How do you change without changing? You have to create a contiuum.

Degrassi started to suck somewhere in the 5th season which was expected to be the last but several of the prospective graduated ended up getting held back out of the blue. Everything after this felt forced and by the seventh season half the cast was gay, half the cast had cancer, half the cast was still in high school, half the cast had been raped, drugged, suicidal and half the cast had been pregnant at some time. Everyone certainly had dated each other at least twice.

Why not just end it? Nope, people love the train wreck and I still watch just to see how much continuity they can destroy. Degrassi is an extreme case but this happens to every show.

The last season of lost was by far the worst because the formula had changed from flash backs to flash forwards. Lost was a show that started out complicated and only gets more so with each episode, the series only opens up more questions with out providing any real answers. Presumably with it soon coming to a close, I will expect that there will be one loosey-goosey answer.

Weeds, another good show that is falling apart. Things got too complicated and so the writers completely threw out their old formula. This not only alienates the fans, but it’s simply not the same show. The plot is similar, but the way it is executed is completely different and it just sucks.

What I mean to say is. Just end it. Please God just end on a high note, yeah we’ll hate you for it, but just do it. If you want the show to change that blatantly then just write that show instead because it is another show completely.

If you enjoyed the sass, please subscribe KTHNX

Read more »

Posted: July 15th, 2008 under rant.
Comments: 6