By emily

Grade: B-

Oh, you poor poor children of the 90s. Not only do you have to get over being named, like, Jack and Seamus and Emaleigh and Skyden, you have to be entertained with such bland, stupid, third rate pop culture. What will you do if you don’t think Anne Hathaway and Jennifer Garner are adorable? What if the filmic oeuvre of Hillary Duff and Chad Michael Murray leaves you cold? What possible alternative do you have to Everwood and 7th Heaven and the Uncle Jesse’s Wife Beach house Show?

Well, you kind of have the N, but even it is not all that. It is mainly notable for the program ‘Degrassi: The Next Generation,’ which is superior to the major networks’ Millenials-themed offerings for a number of reasons. In keeping with the tradition of journalistic excellence that we strive to uphold here at the Universal Review, I have only ever seen about half of an episode of this show. But I did an extensive interview with my cousins (ages 7-14) about it. They appreciate the fact that the show doesn’t shy away from real-life issues, such as abortion, parental gayness, and dressing goth. The only problem is that even though the show is stuck in perpetual Very Special Episode-mode, you can’t take anything too seriously because the characters all have silly Canadian accents. Degrassi, like You Can’t Do That On Television, never overtly mentions its Northern provenance, but if you were to play a drinking came where you drank every time a character said ‘soorry’ or ‘aboot,’ you would get hammered. (Let’s!)

Another reason Degrassi is better than The OC is that the teenagers on it are played by actual teenagers and they lack that Aryan Nation symmetrical-faced blandness (translation: they are dogs, especially the main character girl). This is a step in the right direction. I for one am sick of everyone on tv having the vapid, Midwestern-pretty aspect of those models you see lost on the subway sometimes, clutching their model books and staring vacantly at their reflections in the windows. I feel that having ugly Canadians on tv is better for young people's self-confidence. Maybe I will watch an entire episode of Degrassi sometime.