Degrassi: Next Class provides fun and farewells in its best season yet

I always worry about a new season of Degrassi: Next Class, because I constantly wonder whether this will be the one where its streak of quality ends and it slides into teen soap mediocrity, but I was especially worried about season four going into it.  After all, this was going to be the last season for the seniors (or Grade 12s, to use Canadian parlance) -- the first time Next Class has had to send off graduating characters.  Is the show, in its current 10-episodes-per-season incarnation, capable of sustaining this kind of arc?  Will storylines for the non-graduating characters fall by the wayside in service of wrapping things up for those who are?  How will they lay the groundwork for the show's future after parting with half the cast?  These were the questions on my mind as I queued up the premiere episode.

Degrassi: Next Class tackles the Syrian refugee crisis and surprise boners in its terrific 3rd season

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My 20 Favorite Television Shows of 2016

It has become a ritual now to talk about how there's too much TV at the beginning of these year-end lists.  You would think the bubble would burst eventually on the amount of content there is out there, but it hasn't yet.  But while the amount of networks and original programming continues to increase, my personal watching bandwidth has finally started to taper off.  After regularly watching 125 shows in 2015, my numbers were down slightly to 115 this year.  Overall, it has had a positive effect though.  I may have watched less TV in 2016, but it mostly just meant that I watched less shows that I thought were okay or even actively bad.

Even still, my plan for 2017 is to watch even fewer shows by cutting down on series I'm getting sick of.  That means after its head-scratching second season, I'm giving the axe to Fear the Walking Dead.  I've been hesitant about dropping Arrow and The Flash because I feel like I need to watch them for DC completionist reasons even though their obnoxious melodrama reduced me to watching every episode at half attention, but I've finally made the decision after their mid-season finales that I'm removing them from my life.  I'm even considering nixing something like Bojack Horseman, which I've tuned into out of critical obligation, since everyone goes nuts over it, but I don't enjoy very much.

I'm not sure how well this will fare for me, since my TV-related fear of missing out is overwhelming. After all, I just got finished cramming Sweet/Vicious and Crazyhead into the last week of the year because people I trust said they were good and I wanted determine if they were eligible for my list.  Watching less TV is just going to lead to more potential instances of me passing up a show and then hearing it gets great, or quitting a show right before it turns things around.  That terrifies me!

All of this is a way to say that TV is in a wonderful place right now, and trying to manage your intake and still devote enough time to movies, music, and living life is a good problem to have.

The rules: Shows are considered for this list based on the episodes they aired in 2016.  This is a pretty plain and simple rule for cable dramas, where full seasons usually air within a single calendar year.  However, it gets slightly messy when considering network shows, which usually air the first half of their season in the fall and the second half starting January of the next year.  So something like, say, Black-ish would be judged based on the second half of its second season (which aired at the beginning of the year) and the first half of its third season (which started in the fall of this year).  As for what constitutes a TV show, anything that airs on, you know, a TV station counts.  But shows that air exclusively on streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon count too.  The line is getting more blurry every day, but I'm still counting out independent YouTube webseries (though I recommend the excellent Pantheon University anyway).  Okay, everything clear now?  Good, let's get this list started...

Degrassi is back, baby!!!

There were high expectations for the second season of the new Netflix exclusive series Degrassi: Next Class, at least for me.  The first season was so special that it caused me to write over 2000 words about it, and returned me to full-on Degrassi obsession after not having watched it for 2.5 seasons.  (I've since gone back and watched the 60+ episodes I missed because Degrassi is my life now.)  Even in my glowing review of the first season, I voiced some concerns about whether the show could maintain its quality or if it would lapse into the same kind of over-the-top melodrama that caused me to stop watching a few years ago.  But it looks like I can put my worries to bed for now, because the 10-episode second season that dropped this weekend is just as excellent as the first.

Rekindling my relationship with Degrassi

Almost everybody in my generation has some sort of connection with the Canadian teen drama, Degrassi.  The constant "every episode ever" marathons that The N/TeenNick used to air pretty much ensured the show's cultural osmosis.  We all have shared reference points in the show's biggest moments like Paige's rape, the school shooting that gave us Wheelchair Jimmy, or JT dying in a pool of urine.  But you're likely to get a laugh of recognition from people in their 20s if you make a passing mention to smaller things like Cokehead Craig or that time Manny wore a thong too.  Degrassi: The Next Generation was for teens what General Hospital is for housewives and also my brother.  It wasn't always good, but its juicy soap operatics made it an easily digestible and oddly satisfying watching experience.

Most people I know drifted away from the show after JT's tragic death in season 6, which is actually when I really started getting into it.  Of course, I had seen every episode in scattered order from those aforementioned "every Degrassi episode ever" marathons, but post-JT-dying-in-a-urine-puddle was when I first remember watching the show in chronological order on a weekly basis.  It's a shame that many of my peers never experienced the handful of seasons that followed, because they actually have their own unique charm, to the point where I almost have more affection for them than the "golden years."  Primarily, the next era is notable for the introduction of Holly J Sinclair, the greatest character to ever attend Degrassi High School.  A majority of Holly J's greatness can be attributed to an entertaining and highly sympathetic performance from Charlotte Arnold, one of the only members of the cast who seemed like she had the skills to progress beyond teen soap operas.  In her hands, Holly J evolved from a blatant attempt to recreate Paige to the show's folk hero, the beating heart that gave life to every storyline she was involved in.

A show like Degrassi lives and dies on the strength of its ensemble, so its revolving door nature always makes things dicey.  Once Holly J left the show at the end of season 11, there were hardly any characters worth watching anymore.  And when you don't like any of the characters on Degrassi, you can get annoyed with the writing very quickly.  It didn't help that season 12 was a low point in that regard, full of storylines that were both over-the-top and incredibly boring.  So with the show at its worst and missing the character I cared about the most, I decided to quit somewhere near the end of that 12th season.  Occasionally I'd feel remorseful about leaving behind a series that had been a part of my life for so long, but never enough to put myself through the pain of popping back in on it.

After the show was cancelled by TeenNick at the end of its 14th season last year, it was picked up by Netflix, and the producers chose to use the revival as an opportunity to do some rebranding. Thus, Degrassi: Next Class was born.  And though the series mostly features characters that debuted in the last two seasons of its previous incarnation, the writers spoke about their desire to go back to basics and capture the spirit of the early years.  In that sense, Next Class functions both as season 15 and season one.  I saw a few tweets from TV critics I follow praising this new Netflix season, which was enough to finally convince me to watch.  Because I never watched seasons 13 and 14, I didn't really know the backstories of some of the characters, but the dialogue does a good job of giving you the gist, which makes it easy to jump back into.  And I recommend that you do so immediately, because the new season is absolutely incredible.