At long last! This week’s Degrassi episode, “I Want It That Way, Part 1,” brought us the much-awaited return of Fiona and Imogen.
At the food court in the mall, Fiona rambles to Imogen about how nervous she is of making a bad impression on Imogen’s mom, Natalie. Sweetly, Imogen assures Fiona that she’s always cute, which I’m sure was immensely helpful advice. I would further add that I always find the mall food court is the perfect atmosphere for meet-the-parents type situations.
Natalie takes a seat with her food, and the conversation flows smoothly until Fiona’s mother — and her lack of a physical presence at Fiona’s loft — comes up in the conversation. Fiona tries to downplay the house arrest, saying that the IRS is “always over-reacting when tax fraud is involved.” A compelling line of argument, for sure.
Imogen’s mom is more concerned that Fiona has no parental supervision, though, and that her roommate is a boy… at which point Imogen cuts her mom off, Fiona unsuccessfully tries to break the awkward with the promise of ice cream, and Natalie ends the meal, dragging Imogen with her.
Fiona calls Imogen afterwards, worried that Natalie now hates her, but Imogen says the only thing her mom hates right now is the renovation work on Imogen’s new bedroom — anything but comforting given Imogen’s mixed emotions about moving in with her mother in the first place.
The main repercussion of the meal is that Imogen can’t hang out at Fiona’s unsupervised loft anymore. Fiona’s crushed, seeing that as a rejection of her and bemoaning the importance of having a good relationship with Imogen’s mom. “Why?” Imogen asks. “I barely do.”
Bianca agrees, though, as Fiona discovers when she interrupts Bianca and Drew mid-movie to discuss her frustration. While Drew is under the impression that it’s awesome Bianca no longer has a relationship with Mama Torres, Bianca admits that it sucks — now she has no one to go to for help, family dinners, or game nights. And Fiona loves board games.
“Audra was like a substitute mom,” Bianca says, and Fiona walks away even more determined to fix things with Imogen’s mom so they can become Trivial Pursuit buddies.
Fiona bombards Natalie at work (hospital doctors have lots of down time, right?) to explain that she’s a good person, even if she has an odd situation on her hands with her mom’s house arrest. She and Imogen are a good fit, and she just wants another chance to show Natalie that.
Fiona’s more stubborn than Natalie is busy, so eventually Natalie takes down Fiona’s number with the promise of a shop-and-bond experience when her schedule clears up. Still new to the whole actively-being-Imogen’s-mother thing, though, Natalie pauses to double-check with Fiona that Imogen actually likes shopping. “She’d sleep at the mall if they’d let her,” Fiona responds, thrilled with her success.
Now the question is: does Imogen know about Fiona’s yearning for a “substitute mom” and how does she feel about that desire? We’ll find out soon enough!
