So by the time the first Degrassi High season ended, I was either not watching PBS in the afternoons anymore, or they had changed their schedule. I think it’s alittle bit of both, because there came a point where channel 13 began running Ghost Writer and Wishbone in the weekday timeslot and showed Degrassi on Sunday mornings. Therefore, this is why I missed the entire second season of Degrassi High. Sure, I would eventually get the entire series on VHS (through someone making me a tape) and DVD (through legitimate means), but after “Stressed Out,” I would only see two more episodes, and that is why this is the penultimate Degrassi post.

Anyway, remember that first season episode of Beverly Hills 90210 with the sleepover where “secrets are revealed”? “The All-Nighter” is that, except that friendships actually do suffer instead of a random nobody character showing up just to cause trouble becoming a nicer person because the West Beverly gang was good to her for an evening.

It’s an easy episode to summarize because there really are only two plots. You have a group of girls getting together for a sleepover party and a group of guys getting together for an all-night poker game. The latter is the funnier storyline. Yick invites Arthur, whom he’s maintained a sort-of friendship with even though Arthur is a total nerd, and Luke’s a total asshole to Arthur, but Yick deserves credit for trying to build some sort of bridge. Besides, Alex can’t make it because he is going to pull an all-nighter for a paper. Joey’s there as well because Wheels is driving him nuts (this is just prior to Wheels getting kicked out for stealing money). The poker game ends with Arthur hustling everyone, and I have to say that even though I find him kind of irritating, I was rooting for him because all Luke ever is to Arthur is a dick for no real reason.

The girls, on the other hand, smoke pot at the sleepover and it leads to a game of truth or dare where Melanie spills every secret that she knows about Kathleen. This is what I remembered seeing when it first aired, because at one point, Melanie brings up Kathleen’s eating disorder, her alcoholic mother, and her abusive boyfriend, and I think I literally said out loud, “Oh, I remember that!” To either my sister or nobody in particular because we were the only people we knew who watched the show. Anyway, Kathleen storms out crying because if your best friend had just spilled everything about your life without your permission, you’d be pretty missed as well.

For as simple as this is, it’s actually not a far-fetched look at what happens when immature teenagers get intoxicated. The girls are very goofy and silly when they start smoking and Melanie’s tone when she tells everyone Kathleen’s secrets is not malicious because she probably thought Kathleen would laugh at it as well. Granted, Degrassi had its fair share of death and dismemberment when it came to the use of alcohol, but I have to say that I remember many nights in college* where people would do stupid crap or get into massive fights because they were high or drunk. Obviously, this has to do with inhibitions falling to the wayside in these situations, but back in the heyday of “Just Say No” and D.A.R.E., television rarely seemed to depict drug use in such a nonviolent way (or if it did, it was because Punky Brewster decided to just take a stand right then and there and lead a Just Say No parade instead). Hey, maybe they did, but my memory seems to be that the message was one toke and you’d either wind up in a body bag. These two longstanding friends now have to deal with a genuine betrayal of trust and the real consequences.

I’m not sure if this is followed up, byt he way. While they appear in other episodes and Kathleen is at the reunion (the actress who played Melanie has been more or less living a private life, especially after being stalked by a fan in the early 2000s), I don’t remember a scene of them actually being friendly to one another after this (they may have been seeing talking in the background of an episode, though). That makes it important, even if it’s not a landmark episode of the series. Heck, even I only remembered it because I saw the pot smoking scene when I was flipping channels one Sunday morning. But considering that the first few episodes I saw and remembered involved Arthur, Yick, Melanie, and Kathleen, it was a solid goodbye for them.

Next Up: My last episode recap, and it’s all about the return … and exit … of Claude (pronounced Clow-de).

*I didn’t drink or smoke pot in high school. I’d like to say it’s because pot was never for me, and while that’s true, the real reason is that I had no life.