Degrassi Online

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The Toronto Star

February 27, 1989, Monday, FINAL EDITION

SECTION: ENTERTAINMENT; Pg. C5

LENGTH: 948 words

HEADLINE: Is Degrassi Jr. High gone forever?

BYLINE: By Greg Quill Toronto Star

BODY:

Tonight's episode of Degrassi Junior High (Channel 5 at 8.30) leaves no

doubt about the future of this award-winning independent Canadian TV series; it

has none.

Not in this form, anyway. The concluding episode of the successful series,

which also airs on the Public Broadcasting System in the United States and is a

sequel to the earlier Kids Of Degrassi Street, ends with quite a bang.

The school in which the adolescent cast has for the past two years acted out

the troubles, triumphs and anxieties of average Canadian kids, goes up in flames

during the graduation dance. The show, titled "Bye Bye Junior High", has a

doubly bitter taste of finality to it; the graduating class, among the most

popular kids on TV, is apparently disappearing from the screen with the series

end, and the familiar halls and schoolrooms in which they were nurtured and

taught seem now to be gone as well. Break mold

But appearances are deceptive. CBC will run out the season with Degrassi

Junior High repeats, so the end isn't quite nigh.

Still, it's clear that producers Lynda Schuyler and Kit Hood of Toronto's

Playing With Time Inc. mean to break the Junior High mold. They and the cast

have been purposefully tight-lipped about the possibility of a third sequel,

despite rumors that Degrassi Junior High is scheduled to begin production in

the spring with the majority of the current series' principals in a new lineup.

A spokesman for the producers said last week that no decisions about a sequel

have yet been made. Schuyler and Hood are, in fact, holidaying in the Caribbean,

wrestling with the possibilities of continuing the show. And other sources say

negotiations between Playing With Time and the CBC and PBS have not been

concluded, although it's difficult to imagine either service would abandon the

highly rated series if it was extended in some form.

So, taking a page from the "Who Shot J.R.?" chapter in the Dallas book of

epic TV cliff-hangers, Schuyler and Hood have left Degrassi fans out on a

limb, not just with respect to the continuation of the show itself, but also

with respect to the resolution of the dilemmas that still perplex many of the

young characters. Blames daughter

Some ends are tied up nicely in tonight's show. We learn which of

Degrassi's Grade 8 and 9 students pass their final exams, and how many are

likely to remain among their peers in the coming years.

Wheels (Neil Hope), who missed too much school following the death of his

parents earlier in the series, is convinced he's about to fail. But his comeback

effort proves more valuable to his teachers than his actual grades. Spike

(Amanda Stepto), on the other hand, finds the demands placed on a teenage mother

are too great a burden and viciously blames her tiny daughter for all her woes

before deciding to continue her academic life as a correspondence student. From

that we can infer that Spike won't be a major player in the sequel, if there is

one.

As for Joey (Pat Mastroianni), who's repeating Grade 8 and figures a pass is

a shoo-in, things don't go quite according to plan. His cockiness and

unreliability infuriate his girlfriend Caitlin, and it's only at the last

minute, in a touching scene that shows just how much Joey has matured in recent

months, that their relationship is saved.

In fact, "Bye Bye Junior High", one of the most sincere and heartwarming (no

pun intended) episodes of the current series, shows just how much the

crew and cast themselves have matured in the past year.

Even if the old alma mater is burned to a cinder, it would be a real shame

not to have these characters and some variant of this worthy TV show around

again next year, and the year after that, and the year after . . .

* TV Talks Back: More and more new TV shows are about TV. The phenomenon,

which began with The Mary Tyler Moore Show and manifests itself now in Newhart,

Murphy Brown and TV101, may be a form of industrial navel-gazing, or a serious

observation about the influence TV exerts on contemporary life.

What's Alan Watching?, premiering tonight at 8 on Channel 9 and Buffalo's

Channel 4, tries to have it both ways. For the hero, 17-year-old Alan Hofstetter

(Corin "Corky" Nemec), TV provides both an escape from his normal (in the sense

that satirist Jules Feiffer uses the word, as the ugliest of ugly epithets)

suburban family and a living electronic link to other worlds - real and

fantastic.

It's a complex, layered show, loaded with absurd visual jolts (a girl

advertising shampoo on TV decides Alan could benefit from a slow strip-tease

while she's in the shower), social satire (his sister, Gail, is a hopeless

gold-digger, her fiance a manic, overstuffed TV carpet salesman/celebrity),

biting commentary and black humor (singer James Brown is brought to absurd life

by the show's producer Eddie Murphy in a hilarious made-for-TV musical called

Soul On Ice) and irony (TV itself is mercilessly spoofed in a documentary series

about Mr. Ed that features vignettes by comedians George Carlin and Shelley

Berman).

Whether viewers will stick with this whacky, stacked TV in-joke remains to be

seen. But if tonight's 60-minute pilot is any indication, What's Alan Watching?

is rivetting, daring stuff, as irreverant and disquieting as its unwitting

forebear, Leave It To Beaver, was conservative and calming.

* At Last: Harry Anderson's alter-ego, Judge Harry Stone, will finally meet

his idol, crooner Mel Torme, Wednesday in the "Strange Bedfellows" episode of

NBC's Night Court. Torme has had several Court guest shots, but due to weird

circumstances, Judge Stone has never come face to face with him.