Some thoughts on the Degrassi documentary
Hi…. so I got to attend the world premiere of the Degrassi documentary tonight. Overall I was really impressed. They (mostly) did a great job telling the Degrassi story from start to finish (it was in chronological order). There was only one part at the end that I had an issue with, but otherwise I thought it was basically perfect.
Here is a random collection of my thoughts in terms of what I liked and the 1 thing I didn’t like. Putting this under a cut in case people don’t want spoilers
- Firstly I have to talk about the lawsuit, since it was in the back of my mind through the entire documentary. I actually thought Linda was portrayed in a positive way? Which makes the lawsuit even more disappointing/confusing. I kept waiting for some bombshell that would help me understand why she did this, but there was none. It makes the lawsuit even more of a bad look since she’s just bringing more attention to some of the issues the doc raises. I honestly think that if she didn’t initiate this lawsuit, nobody would even notice some of these negative things. She (and Stephen) obviously did not attend the premiere and their absence was noticed imo.
-I loved how the doc really focused on the Canadian perspective. Often with Degrassi, everyone just wants to focus on how successful it was in the US. But this doc is a Canadian story from start to finish. One person I was surprised to see was Ivan Fecan (former CTV exec who greenlit TNG). He had some great insight. They did not interview anyone from PBS/The N/TeenNick which was good imo since it kept the focus on what the show means to Canadians
-There was also a lot of people on the creative team who were interviewed, which I was happy about. I thought a lot of them were going to be excluded, so I was happy to be wrong about that. People like Phil Earnshaw, Yan Moore, Eleanore Lindo (I gasped when I saw her lol). It was nice to see that the focus wasn’t exclusively on the cast. That being said, there were a lot of notable absences. I would’ve liked to see writers like Aaron Martin, Matt Huether, Sarah Glinski. On the cast side, the most notable absence to me was Adamo. He is so integral to the history of the show, so it’s really unfortunate that he didn’t want to be in it
-I also loved how much time was spent on DJH/H. The doc was in chronological order, and I was shocked by how long it took until we got to TNG. I was worried that TNG would take up like 80% of the doc and that was definitely not the case. So kudos to the team for that
-In terms of Drake’s involvement, he’s definitely a very prominent voice but I was glad to see that he didn’t take over the documentary. He actually had some really interesting insights and he said a lot of nice things about the show. But this definitely isn’t The Drake Documentary, which was a huge relief to me since this is what the press was making it seem like it would be
-Another thing I liked was how they told Neil’s story. He’s introduced early on and then at the end they talk about his death. It was done in a really sensitive, respectful way. Unfortunately they don’t mention Jahmil at all, which I understand to a certain extent (they barely talk about anything after 2007..). But that was still a little disappointing
-And now for my rant lol. my main criticism is how they talked about Next Class. I am a Degrassi Next Class truther, so this really hurt the doc for me. The doc talks about Next Class in an extremely negative way. They explain how the show was cancelled and then saved by Netflix. But they don’t mention any of the improvements that Next Class made from previous generations. They include a very brief clip of Stefan talking about how with Next Class they were taking an entirely new approach. But then everything else is about how bad DNC was. There is this section where Lyle is talking about how out of touch the writers were and how the cast tried to speak up to tell them that the show was terrible, but that the writers and producers never listened to them. I absolutely hated this because (1) this is categorically untrue. Next Class had 6(!) LGBTQ characters and it was the first time that the majority of the cast were POC. Next Class S3 is one of the best seasons of Degrassi ever. So it was just very disrespectful imo. There are bad episodes/storylines throughout every generation, but none of them were trashed the way Next Class was in this doc. And (2) they did not have any of the Next Class writers on to explain or defend themselves. They just basically said the writing was terrible and none of the writers ever listened to the cast or did any research on young people. But then they don’t allow the Next Class writers to tell their side of the story. Also this idea that the Next Class writers never did any research is factually incorrect since the writers actually spent a week in a Toronto high school to prepare for one of the seasons. So overall I was really disappointed to see how one sided the (very brief) section on Next Class was since they just completely ignored/excluded any other perspective (such as one of the reasons for Next Class not having the success that they hoped was bc Netflix never promoted it so many people didn’t even know about it).
On the topic of Next Class though, soooo many DNC cast attended the premiere. Which is hilarious bc Amanda & Lyle were the only 2 who appeared in the doc (and they’re only in it for about 0.5 seconds). But I think they were probably the generation most represented at the premiere which was hilarious. It was cool to see so many of them still supporting the show despite the blatant disrespect this generation has always gotten
So those were my overall thoughts 🫶 I’m so happy I got to see it, and I can’t wait to rewatch it once it inevitably gets released via streaming. If you have any questions, please feel free to let me know.
