 I used to work at this convenience store, and on Sunday mornings the only thing that kept me from gutting the customers in a sleepy rage was Degrassi Junior High  See, I had to put the papers together,
and I did it while watching double episodes of Degrassi on PBS - which
might explain to the gentry of Leonardo, New Jersey, why they so often had to
return to the store for missing sections of the paper.The far superior precursor to the
Stateside Beverly Hills 90210 (sorry Shannen) revolved around a high
school in Toronto, where a mixed bag of ethnicities dealt with teen sex, child
molestation, wet dreams, abortion, animal testing, divorce, braces, and bras -
always intelligently, and never in a condescending fashion.I've often tried to figure out why
I liked it so much. I thought it might have been due to all the teenage girls with
pert breasts and cute accents ("what are you talking aboot?" was a fave-rave thing
for some time), but in the end, I think it had something to do with high school in
general, a time that - until Clerks took off - I assumed were the the best
years of my life. The show calls to mind an era when one's largest crises were
wondering when you were finally going to get to third with a girl, or the possibility
of a shitty grade in gym.And any program that helps you forget you're
jockeying a register - even for an hour - has to be brilliant TV.
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