This year Degrassi: The Next Generation is turning 20 years old, which means that I’ve been watching Degrassi for 2 decades (nearly 2/3 of my life!). Throughout that time I’ve gone through so many ups and downs, always with Degrassi by my side. Degrassi has always been there for me, whether as a distraction, form of entertainment, community, or comfort.
Today I’m doing something they I’ve never done on this blog before, and that is sharing my experience as a Degrassi fan from the first episode I watched to present day. I’m doing this for 2 reasons: (1) to show how special Degrassi is and how it has impacted people such as myself, and (2) to document all of my memories so I can look back on them for years to come.
How I Found Out About Degrassi
I first heard about Degrassi when I was 11 years old. In my grade 7 ‘physical education’ class, our teacher made us watch an episode of Degrassi Talks. For those of you who don’t know, Degrassi Talks was a documentary series which featured actors from Degrassi Junior High discussing social issues that teenagers dealt with. Degrassi Talks originally aired in 1992, but I saw it in the year 2000. At the time I had no idea what Degrassi was, so I thought Degrassi Talks was nothing more than a cringe-y educational series made for schools in Canada.
The following year, Degrassi: The Next Generation premiered on CTV. This was the first time I really started to learn about Degrassi. The first episode titled ‘Mother and Child Reunion’ aired on October 14, 2001. I was 12 years old and in Grade 8. I remember watching that episode live with my family. My parents were both big fans of Degrassi Junior High, so they were excited for Degrassi: TNG. I watched the episode for no reason other than it was on and I happened to be in the same room. And if I’m being honest, I didn’t think much of it at the time. Because my parents were into it, it seemed like it was more of a show for old people than someone like me. I enjoyed the first episode, but I did not watch the rest of Season 1 live. I actually forgot about Degrassi for about a year.
Falling in Love with Degrassi: TNG
The following year, I transitioned to high school and I gradually started watching Degrassi more regularly. It still wasn’t my #1 favourite TV show yet, but throughout season 2 I would catch the odd episode here or there. I remember watching certain Season 2 episodes live like “Dressed in Black” and “How Soon Is Now” and I really liked these episodes. Degrassi slowly started to feel like it was for me instead of my parents (side note – this experience is also why I am somewhat hesitant about including TNG characters in current iterations of the franchise because I feel that it is a deterrent to new, younger fans who will think that the show is for old people).
Season 3 of TNG was when Degrassi really blew up, and like so many teenagers in North America, this was when I started watching Degrassi religiously. I would tune in to every episode live as it aired. I remember going online and learning about how popular Degrassi was in the US. As a Canadian, this made me feel so proud because there weren’t very many Canadian TV shows with international success. It was also around this time that I started to learn about Degrassi fan sites. I had so much admiration for the fans who created the early TNG fan sites like Degrassi-tng.com and Degrassi-Boards.com. I dreamed of creating something like this one day.
TNG Season 5 and Degrassi’s 25th Anniversary
By 2005, I was 100% addicted to Degrassi. I was also going through a lot of difficult experiences in my own life. I was in grade 12 and trying to figure out what I was going to do for university. I also got my first job, and without going into too much detail it was not a positive experience. But through all of that, Degrassi felt like a friend who was always there for me. One of the things I was most self-conscious about as a teenager was the fact that I had to wear glasses. So to see Liberty Van Zandt (someone who looked like me) get such a huge storyline in Season 5 meant the world. Watching Liberty made me feel less alone.
I also specifically remember that in those days, Degrassi would air Monday nights on CTV. I usually had to work Monday after school, so I would record the episode on a VHS tape and then watch it as soon as I got home. I dreaded Mondays because I hated my job, but knowing that the new episode was waiting for me gave me something to look forward to. As bad as things were, I would tell myself over and over again that if I got through this I would soon be able to go home and watch a new episode of Degrassi (and then re-watch… as I usually would watch the episode over and over throughout the week).
2005 was also the 25th Anniversary of Degrassi, and because of this there was a lot of Degrassi content like documentaries and books that came out. At this point, I knew what Degrassi Junior High was, but I’d never seen it and I didn’t know any of the storylines other than Spike having Emma. Because I was such a huge fan of Degrassi, I consumed every piece of Degrassi information I could get my hands on. And it was then that I learned about the history of the show. To this day, my favourite thing about Degrassi is its history. I was so inspired by Linda’s story, and how she was a local teacher who created this huge brand and helped all of these people (including me!). My love for Degrassi now extended beyond just enjoying certain characters or episodes. I was in love with the brand and the Idea of Degrassi as a whole.
Going to University with Degrassi
I graduated from high school in 2006 (the same time as Paige, Marco and the rest of the original TNG gang). That fall, I moved away from home at the age of 17 to attend university. This was the first time in my life that I’d ever been away from home other than the occasional sleepover. I was very nervous about where my life would take me. I also started to wonder if I would lose interest in Degrassi now that I wasn’t in high school anymore.
…That never happened. If anything, I became even more obsessed with Degrassi when I was in university. I had more freedom in terms of how I wanted to spend my time, and I also had my own laptop for the first time. This meant that I was free to make my own Degrassi content whenever I wanted instead of having to rely on my parent’s PC (Social media was still in the very early stages at this point). I also still really loved the show and storylines. I would watch Degrassi in the common room at my dorm. I remember feeling embarrassed watching Degrassi in front of people, because it was a high school show and I was in university now. But I would still do it because my love for Degrassi outweighed any feelings of awkwardness. In those days, Degrassi was still a show that you would primarily watch on television. But I do remember that CTV started posting the episodes on their website the morning after they aired on TV (I never wanted to wait until the next day… so I always made an effort to try and catch it on TV).
My first year of university was also when I met people from Degrassi for the first time. There was a film festival in the city where my university was located, and as part of this event they decided to host a Degrassi panel on campus. Stefan Brogren, Adamo Ruggiero and Linda Schuyler were all in attendance. I remember being so excited, because this panel was literally happening down the street from where I was living. Prior to this there had been lots of Degrassi events in Toronto, but I was always too young to attend because I couldn’t go to the City by myself. So this was my chance! I remember showing up early and getting a seat at the front row. I even recorded the panel so I could share it with other Degrassians online after. There was also a Q&A portion, and the question that I asked was “Why did JT have to die?” (note – this panel took place like a couple of months after Rock This Town which devastated me because I was such a huge Liberty fan as I explained earlier). After the panel, I took pictures with Adamo and Stefan and I got them to sign my Degrassi Generations: The Official 411 book. But the biggest thrill for me was meeting Linda. Her inspirational story was still such a big part of why I loved Degrassi. I remember waiting in line to talk to her while the guy in front of me asked her all these intelligent questions about the Canadian television industry (he was a film student). But then I went up to her and quickly blurted out something like “Thank you so much for Degrassi… it has meant everything to me… it has helped me in so many ways.” I was really shy and awkward, but I remember she just looked at me and said “Thank you, this is why I do what I do.”
Creating Degrassi-Fans.com
By 2008, it became apparent that university storylines for characters who graduated from Degrassi weren’t working. As a university student myself, I was initially excited to following the characters in university because I thought it would be similar to how we experienced things together in high school. But in reality, the university storylines weren’t very good. The main character of Degrassi has always been the school, and when you take the school away it just doesn’t feel like Degrassi anymore. The Degrassi producers realized this, and we knew going into Season 8 that things were about to change.
As someone who considered herself a fan of the Degrassi brand and franchise in general, I was wholeheartedly in favour of introducing new, younger characters and essentially re-booting the show again. However, I think I was pretty much the only person in the Degrassi fandom who felt this way. In those days, the mere mention of a new character would freak everyone out. The fans loved the TNG characters so much, and I think they saw the new characters as a threat. It was also around this time that a lot of fans started to move on with their lives. The old Degrassi message boards that I used to frequent were getting quieter. A lot of the original TNG fan sites that I admired so much as a teenager were starting to shut down. It made me feel sad because I felt like there was a lot of negativity around Degrassi, but I still loved the show and the brand so much.
(Side note: I’m not sure if anyone remembers this, but there was a prominent TV writer/critic in Canada who would always share Degrassi TV ratings and complain about how Degrassi should end because the ratings were declining. I used to always visit his blog because I was interested in knowing the ratings. But it was depressing because he was always so negative. If I’m remembering this correctly, I think later he visited the set and changed his mind… lol)
Because of all of this negativity in the Degrassi universe, in the summer of 2008 I decided to finally commit to creating my own Degrassi fan site. I had wanted to do this for years, but now I finally had the time and maturity to make something that I could be proud of. Degrassi-Fans.com launched on October 4, 2008 (about a week before Season 8 premiered). My original idea was to create a fan site similar to the ones that I grew up with, but more geared towards new, younger fans of the show. I was very excited by the fact that there was about to be an entirely new generation of Degrassi fans who would fall in love with Clare and Alli the way I fell in love with Emma and Manny. I wanted to give those fans a positive place on the internet where they could keep up with the latest Degrassi news without having to sift through commentary from old fans who just wanted to complain all the time.
Degrassi-Fans.com originally started out as a fairly simple website in which I would post news about the show. Whether it was an interview with a cast member or a new promo, I would describe in a couple of sentences what the news was and then share a link where fans could learn more. I soon discovered that because I lived near Toronto, I could also attend Degrassi events and share stories and photos with fans who maybe couldn’t attend because they lived too far away. The first big Degrassi event I attended was the Degrassi Goes Hollywood premiere screening, which took place at an old movie theatre in Toronto. The event was super casual, because the fandom was so small by this point. They allowed the fans to hang out in the lobby and talk to the cast members (there was no lineup or official autograph area). And pretty much every Degrassi cast member was there, from the newbies from Season 8/9 like Sam Earle and Jessica Tyler to the original TNG group like Jake Epstein and Lauren Collins. I took a lot of pictures and shared my experience on Degrassi-Fans.com. This drew a ton of traffic to the website from other Degrassi fans who wanted to have this experience as well.
The Clare Generation and the Rise of Social Media
In June 2009, I (as Degrassi-Fans.com) joined Twitter. I mainly used the platform to share links to recent posts on my website. There weren’t very many Degrassi fans on Twitter back then (I remember being very excited when I passed the 300-follower mark), but it was a great way to be able to connect with other fans and bloggers.
By early 2010, we started to realise that things were changing for Degrassi. Unbeknownst to us at the time, Degrassi was actually temporarily cancelled in Season 9 (this was revealed in Stephen Stohn’s book Whatever It Takes). Then in the lead-up to Season 10, we weren’t receiving a lot of information. I remember Melinda Shankar mentioned in an interview that Degrassi was filming 40 episodes. This was very confusing to us, because Degrassi always did around 20 episodes per season up to that point. And because the show didn’t seem to be hugely successful anymore, we didn’t understand why the networks approved to double the episode count. Of course now we know that this was all part of Degrassi’s new strategy to position the show as more of a ‘telenovela’ with daily new episodes instead of weekly.
In the summer of 2010, everything changed in the Degrassi fandom. The new strategy immediately paid off, and Season 10 rejuvenated the Degrassi universe. At long last, an entirely new generation of young fans were introduced to Degrassi. I think this was mainly due to the compelling storylines and characters as well as the chemistry between Munro Chambers and Aislinn Paul. But another big reason was Degrassi’s new digital presence and marketing strategy. They started to embrace social media. They created exciting promos like the Shark in the Water trailer. And with episodes airing almost every day, fans always had something new to talk about on social media. During this time there were so many fans who got into Degrassi because they saw other people talking about it online. For me, I was lucky because by 2010 I already had all this content on Degrassi-Fans.com readily available. When people were searching for Degrassi content on websites or on Twitter, Degrassi-Fans.com was one of the top results. My follower count increased dramatically.
One distinct memory I have was a Degrassi event that took place in September 2010. As part of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), the cast of Degrassi was participating in a photo opportunity where fans could meet and get a picture with them. By this point, I had attended many Degrassi-related screenings and autograph signings, and usually it was always the same fans who would show up each time. For the TIFF event, my friend and I got there about an hour before it was to start thinking this would give us a good spot in line. Needless to say we were very wrong. The crowd was unlike anything I’d ever seen for Degrassi in Canada – there was so many people there and everybody was screaming and crying. This was the moment when I really understood the huge popularity of the Clare generation. As someone who had now been watching Degrassi for 10 years, it was so exciting to see.
Visiting the Degrassi Set: A Dream Come True!!
Another exciting thing that happened in 2010 was when I got to visit the set of Degrassi for the first time. From 2011 – 2014, it became more common for fans to visit the set. But when I did it, I’d never heard of another fan who had been there. For me it was a dream come true.
The reason I got to visit the set was because I won a contest. As part of the contest, you had to submit a post about why you were the Ultimate Degrassi Fan and you had to get other fans to vote for you. I was super fortunate, because I already had a big platform on Twitter and with help from other bloggers like Kary and Degrassi Nation, I was able to get a lot of people to vote for me. Because of this, I wasn’t shocked that I won, but when I got the phone call I was still jumping up and down screaming in my living room because it felt too good to be true. To have the opportunity to see Degrassi in real life when it had literally BEEN my life for so long at this point – it was incredible.
I won’t go into the details of everything that happened. I made a post about my experience which you can read if you want to know the whole story. But the part that stands out in my memory was just how nice everyone was. Not just the cast, but the crew as well. I really got the sense that everyone who worked on Degrassi was so proud of be there. So many of them knew who I was, and they knew about Degrassi-Fans.com. They told me how they visited my website, which blew my mind because I always assumed that all of my traffic was just from other fans. They asked for my opinion about the show as well as other TV shows I was watching, because they genuinely cared what we liked and how to make Degrassi better. The cast of Degrassi always talk about how Degrassi is a “family,” and while that may sound cheesy it’s actually really accurate. And it’s such a big reason why I stuck around even when other TNG fans had already moved on by this point.
Falling Out of Love with Degrassi… and Then Coming Back (Season 13)
Degrassi-Fans.com eventually became Degrassi Online (i.e. the website you are reading this on right now). To make a long story short, Degrassi-Fans.com was being hosted by an organization that supports fan sites. I wanted to bring it under my control, but because it had gotten so big and the domain was actually worth a decent amount of money, the organization didn’t want to let me do this. So I saved all of my data, created a separate website, and changed all my socials to @DegrassiOnline.
I had a couple of good years as Degrassi Online, but by 2013 my interest in Degrassi started to wane. It’s hard for me to pinpoint the exact reason why. I still loved Degrassi as a brand and everything it stood for, but it was getting harder to keep up with the fandom. By this point, I graduated and I had a full time job, so I had a lot less time to spend on Degrassi.
I also never fully connected with the Clare generation. I haven’t told very many people this, but the truth is that while I appreciate the “A” characters from the Clare generation (i.e. Clare herself but also Drew, Eli, etc) for everything they did for the franchise, I personally didn’t relate to them as much as other fans did. My favourite character from this era was Fiona (who to this day remains my #1 favourite Degrassi character of all time), but I didn’t feel a strong connection to the others. This has nothing to do with them as characters. It’s more that because of my own personality and life experiences I wasn’t super invested even though I still loved Degrassi as a whole.
By the time Season 13 came around, I was focused on so many other things that Degrassi stopped being at the top of my priority list. I watched the Paris episodes of Season 13, and I thought they were fine. I liked the Tristan and Maya friendship stuff, but Clare was starting to feel like a tired character and they were definitely running out of storyline ideas for her. I also was very upset with Adam getting killed off, and to this day I strongly believe that was the wrong way to write off his character (that’s a whole other post!). When Degrassi came back in the fall, I watched 1 episode and then I stopped. It wasn’t even a conscious decision. The next week when another episode came out, I put off watching it and then next thing I knew I’d missed like 20 episodes. To this day, this period during Season 13 is the only time I didn’t watch Degrassi live since Season 1 of TNG. I also pretty much disappeared from the fandom as I stopped updating Degrassi Online and its social media accounts.
However, after about 6 months or so I came back!! And when I came back, I fell head over heels in love with Degrassi with a fervor that I hadn’t experience since the early years of TNG.
The story of how I came back to Degrassi is as follows — The Season 13 episode “Hypnotize” had just aired and I was seeing a lot of Degrassi people talk about how great this episode was on Twitter. I was intrigued because (1) Tristan had the A plot, and he was always one of my favourite characters, and (2) Imogen and Jack had the B plot, which meant that the queer characters on Degrassi had BOTH plots. Degrassi has always been great with its LGBT characters, but to see a whole episode that was only about them was very exciting to me. I randomly decided to watch it, just to see what it would be like.
I immediately loved it. This encouraged me to go back and watch all the other episodes from Season 13 that I missed. For the first time in a LONG time, my craving for Degrassi was back. I felt like I was falling in love all over again. I connected with the Maya generation in a way that I never connected with the Clare generation. I became obsessed with Zig and Maya as well as the Hollingsworth family. It was so exciting to have Degrassi back in my life, and to really love it to the point of needing to know what was going to happen to these characters next. I also found myself watching Degrassi from a different perspective. In the past, it had always been really important to me that Degrassi be a “good” show (i.e. consistency, good acting, character growth, etc). But when I started watching again, I had no expectations. I didn’t care whether it was good or not – I just wanted to be entertained. This made the experience of watching Degrassi so much more enjoyable because I was able to just sit back and enjoy the episode, instead of feeling like I had to be critical of every little thing.
By the time Thunderstruck aired, I was all caught up. I attended the parking lot screening of Thunderstruck, and this became one of my favourite “Degrassi Event” memories. I remember it was pouring rain in Toronto, which was ironic because the episode was also about a big storm. We were sitting on the pavement huddled under umbrellas trying to watch this hour-long episode. It was a great episode, and a great way to end Season 13. What stood out to me the most was the Tristan and Miles storyline. I remember thinking about how bold it was to make Miles queer when he was clearly being set up to be the leading male character on the show. Even on Degrassi, we had become to accustomed to all of the “A” characters being straight, and the gay characters were usually “B” or “C” level characters. For that reason, Miles and Tristan was so exciting to me. It really proved to me that Degrassi was still a leader when it came to LGBT diversity on teen television.
To this day, Season 13 is one of the most interesting seasons of Degrassi for me. It is not the best season, but I think they did a good job solidifying the Maya generation. There are definitely some episodes of Season 13 that are not very good, but also there are others that I really enjoy going back to watch. The dichotomy of it being both the season when I lost interest in Degrassi AND the season that made me fall in love with Degrassi again is so fascinating.
The 2015 “Cancellation” of Degrassi
My renewed love for Degrassi continued right through Season 14. I understand why some fans do not like Season 14, but I still loved the show. I agree that certain plots were maybe not the best (I’m looking at you Degrassi Nudes), but I still really loved the new characters and the dynamic between them. During this time it was really fun to be watching Degrassi live and getting excited for it with everyone. By this point, Degrassi seemed to have a lot of LGBT fans and it was so great to be able to watch and discuss the show together.
For that reason, when Degrassi was “cancelled” in 2015 I did not see it coming. I remember being at work and I got a notification from Twitter that was like “@KaryDegrassi and 11 other people are talking about Degrassi getting cancelled” and I was like “whaaaaaat????” I immediately got on Twitter and read up on everything that was going down.
My initial reaction was that of suspicion, because at first it was only Viacom that released a statement. I thought that as long as CTV Bell Media was still on board, that maybe they could find another American broadcaster. But when Bell released their statement a few hours after Viacom, I thought it was all over. To be cancelled by both networks at the same time was devastating and I didn’t see how they would be able to come back from that.
(On a side note, to this day I still don’t really understand why CTV/Bell cancelled Degrassi at the same time as TeenNick. Why couldn’t Degrassi: Next Class have been on Netflix but stayed with CTV/Bell in Canada? Was it a coincidence? I would love to know more about the Canadian side of what happened one day).
As the day went on, I started to become more hopeful. It seemed very odd to me that we hadn’t received any statement from Linda or Stephen. Then in the late afternoon Degrassi sent out an email to various parties that basically said in a very generic way to “stay tuned” for what was to come. I remember when I saw this statement, I was overjoyed with happiness. Because I KNEW that this meant that Degrassi wasn’t over. Everyone else in the world still thought it was over. Every news outlet was reporting that Degrassi had been cancelled. But this statement signaled to the fans that that wasn’t the case.
What happened in the following days was stressful, but also it was kind of fun? We as a fandom basically became investigative journalists, because actual journalists weren’t reporting anything other than what Viacom and CTV Bell Media released in their statements. I remember fans were finding things online like Degrassi filming schedules from the Directors Guild of Canada, and this further proved our conviction that Degrassi was in fact not cancelled. Nobody else believe it but us.. and it turned out that we were right! The #SaveDegrassiForSavingUs hashtag was so iconic and fun to follow. I also remember the Degrassi team posted the Degrassi History video on YouTube which made it so obvious that something was happening behind the scenes. It sounds funny, but I think this week was one of my all-time favourite Degrassi memories. No matter what fans thought about Season 14, nobody wanted our show to end this way. We really came together as a community.
When Degrassi announced it was moving to Netflix with Degrassi: Next Class, I was completely overwhelmed with emotion. At the time, I thought this was the best thing that could’ve happened to the show. I knew that Netflix would allow Degrassi to be what it wanted to be, and tell stories that they weren’t able to tell with TeenNick. I was also so excited for the fact that the show would become so much more accessible. And the idea to reboot the show with a new title and reset it back at Season 1, I thought would definitely bring in new fans who were maybe intimidated by the high number of episodes to catch up on. From my perspective, the future of Degrassi seemed very bright.
Why I Love Degrassi: Next Class
Degrassi: Next Class premiered in January 2016. This was a very exciting time to be a Degrassi fan. From my perspective, the show felt fresh and relevant, and I was convinced that it was only a matter of time before other people realized this too. There were so many great things about Degrassi: Next Class. The show was more diverse than it had ever been, and storylines on topics such as sexual consent and online bullying felt so relevant. Since the latter half of Season 13, I had been a huge fan of the Maya generation and I was thrilled to finally see them take centre stage. Degrassi: Next Class was everything to me.
Despite enjoying the series itself, I started to worry when Next Class didn’t seem to explode in popularity the way I had hoped. While we never got any indication about ratings, you could tell by looking at the views on Degrassi’s YouTube Channel that the show was doing okay but it wasn’t hugely successful. Most people in the online fandom were the same people who were around during the Season 10 era. There didn’t seem to be a big influx of new fans the way I hoped there would. Then in the fall of 2016 a little Norwegian teen web series called Skam exploded online and became hugely popular amongst young adults on platforms such as Twitter and Tumblr. I felt like Skam stole Degrassi’s thunder in a way. Both shows are very similar in terms of content, but Skam had this new innovated format of airing the show in “real time” and integrating character social media accounts into the story. Degrassi: Next Class seemed kind of childish in comparison.
Another challenge with Degrassi: Next Class was this frustrating misconception that Netflix had made their own version of Degrassi completely separate from TNG. Any dedicated Degrassi fan knew this was untrue, as Next Class is made by the same people and at the same location as all previous seasons of Degrassi. Degrassi: Next Class is literally just Degrassi: The Next Generation Season 15 & 16 with a different title. But millennial fans just couldn’t understand. Degrassi was so famous for being “the Drake show” at this point that it became really hard to talk to new fans and make them understand that Degrassi was way more than one episode that aired in 2004. As an example, I remember searching Degrassi on Twitter a few weeks after Degrassi: Next Class Season 4 came out and the top tweet was someone complaining about TNG not being on Netflix. This despite the fact that Degrassi: Next Class Season 4 had only just been released!
Even though I loved Degrassi: Next Class with all my heart, another issue was that it was a very lonely fan experience in comparison to previous generations. The thing with Degrassi is that it’s never really been a “good” show in that it’s not going to be winning Best Drama at the Emmy Awards anytime soon. The appeal of the show has always been that it’s essentially a soap opera. What makes it so fun is getting to watch characters over a long period of time and discussing with other fans what is going to happen next. When Degrassi moved to Netflix, we lost that aspect of the show. Live tweeting the show became impossible, because we were all watching at different times. And instead of getting to enjoy the show and the fandom for weeks or months at a time, we essentially just watched these 4-hour Degrassi movies every 6 months by ourselves. The Degrassi community slowly started to fade away.
Watching Degrassi fizzle out these past few years has been a very painful experience for me. I almost think it would have been less cruel to cancel the show because this would have given us an opportunity to mourn. Instead, this Degrassi hobby that I’ve had since I was 12 years old just gradually disappeared from my life without any closure. The lack of information made me angry. I don’t know whose fault that is – whether it’s Netflix or Wild Brain (DHX Media). I understand that there may be legitimate reasons for why they weren’t/aren’t able to tell us anything. But at the same time, as someone who has been loyal to Degrassi for 20 years, it feels like a slap in the face. Degrassi always treated its fans with so much respect. They were in constant communication with us (think Stephen Stohn’s now iconic “Shooting Season 3” thread to their willingness to talk to us on social media). They allowed fans to do things like visit the set (something that no other TV show would ever do!). The silence seemed to contradict all of that.
Degrassi: Next Class was a beautiful show, and the final episode of Season 4 was perfect in so many ways. If this is the end of Degrassi, I think I can live with it because it was a really good ending. But as I look back on my life with Degrassi, there is a sense of sadness that I feel. 20 years is a long time, but it also feels like it went by too fast. I sort of wish that I could rewind time and do it all over again. That being said, I will always hold out hope for Degrassi to return. Degrassi is too special to end without telling the fans anything. There has to be more to this story. When that happens, I’ll still be here supporting my all-time favourite show. ♥