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“Degrassi: Showdown” Week 4: “Rusty Cage” and “Never Ever”

For those of you who have felt this season to be lacking on Fiona/Imogen, it seems Degrassi has heard your pleas! This week brought us plenty of their relationship threaded into individual storylines for both of them, as well as a potential(ly harmful) love interest for Adam.

Despite it not being her birthday, Fiona kicks off her storyline by waltzing into Degrassi and declaring it “Happy Fiona Coyne Day,” which obviously calls for a movie date with Imogen. She suggests they hang out at Imogen’s place for once, but Imogen is cagey about having Fiona over.

Since Drew will be out for the evening anyway, they settle in for the evening at Fiona’s place. Fiona’s movie selection could be appropriately titled “50 Shades of Olivia Wilde,” but, distracted by a tickle-turned-make-out-session, they never make it as far as selecting a movie.

When Drew comes home from work early, an annoyed Fiona accuses him of being a messy and terrible roommate. To her surprise, Drew takes her criticisms to heart — kind of.

She walks in to find that he has cleaned “his half” of the apartment, but not hers. Upset that her whole life has turned upside down, she breaks down, revealing that she herself doesn’t actually know how to clean an apartment. With Drew’s guidance, Fiona successfully cleans her half, including unclogging the drain. As the two of them bond over the fact that they’re supporting each other through these changes, Fiona accepts a hug from him… and puts the knot of hair from the drain down the back of his shirt. Just like any good friend, she removes the knot from the back of his shirt, but only after he promises her and Imogen a date night in which he actually stays out late.

Meanwhile, as Fiona has been cleaning, Imogen finalized her set design for Romeo and Jules. She shows off her ridiculously elaborate and detailed plot to her forgetful dad, who has most recently left his keys in the crisper, and then she presents the design to Eli.

“It’s an insane amount of work,” he tells her. “I’m insane about working hard,” she counters. Impressed but out of funding, Eli tells her she can build it if she finds someone to fund it.

Imogen, in fact, knows just the person. With the help of Fiona — who oddly puts in Imogen’s contacts for her — Imogen steels herself to talk with her partially-estranged mother, Natalie, who left when Imogen was younger and has a new family now.

Imogen seeks her mother out for lunch, at which she asks after Imogen’s father and whether he remembers to make her breakfast these days. “I’m 17,” Imogen retorts coldly. “I make my own breakfast.” Even in the face of Imogen’s hostility, her mom reiterates that she is happy to help in whatever way, so Imogen pounces on the opening to say that she designed a set for the school play but can’t build it without her money. Her mom sees it for what it is and writes her the check, but she asks Imogen to please come to dinner with her family the next night and to not come visit just because she needs money.

As Fiona greets Imogen in the theater the next day with a kiss, two other students come in laughing about a crazy guy in a robe outside the school. “An ex-boyfriend from your hetero days?” Imogen teases Fiona, but when they go to the window, Imogen realizes that the “crazy guy” is her father.

Insisting that the behavior isn’t weird for her dad, Imogen continues to brush aside all the signs of dementia that her dad is experiencing — everyone does those things, right?

She decides to bail on dinner with her mother and in order to invite Fiona over for dinner and show her what their father-daughter dynamic is truly like, and, witnessing their dynamic as they cook dinner, I suddenly understand how Imogen is who she is…

As they prepare dinner at their house, Imogen notices that their dog, Volta, is missing, so she and Fiona set out to find her. When they do, it’s at the end of the driveway, in a puddle of blood underneath the car. Imogen tries to make excuses for why her dad wouldn’t have remembered that Volta liked to lie at the end of the driveway, ignoring Fiona’s concerns for him. Even when her mother shows up, worried by the last minute dinner cancellation, Imogen refuses to even to see that anything is wrong.

Annoyed that her mom, of all people, is trying to talk to her about not walking away from commitments, Imogen puts her foot down when her mom suggests that Fiona should make herself scarce for their argument. Fiona is her girlfriend, Imogen reveals to her mother, and she’s not going anywhere.

“I didn’t know you had a girlfriend. Or that you were a lesbian,” her mom says, shaken but not unkindly. Imogen responds bluntly, “Well, Natalie, there’s a lot of things you don’t know about me, and I’d like to keep it that way.”

After a moment, her mom simply nods and walks back to her taxi.

The next morning, as Imogen worries about her father’s ability to take care of himself, she hears other students making fun of her dad, and she snaps, smacking one of them with a book and getting sent to the office for it. In the principal’s office — adorably sitting cross-legged in the chair — Imogen jumps to have the principal call her mom, who’s not listed as a guardian in her file, instead of her dad.

When Imogen’s mom shows up at the school, she reveals to Imogen that she’s been helping her father through his doctor’s appointments for the early onset dementia with which he was recently diagnosed and about which he had not yet told Imogen.

Despite her protests, her mom tries to explain the course of the disease and how he may need a caretaker soon. “Just because you abandoned him doesn’t mean I will,” Imogen bites back. She calls home to make sure her dad’s okay, and he tells Imogen that he can’t find Volta to take her for a walk.

As she stands there, heartbroken with the truth of her father’s illness, Eli comes in yelling that he knew the set would be too much for her. So she quits. When a worried Fiona finds Imogen hiding out at home, Imogen finally admits that she was in denial. Her solution is to look into a correspondence program in which she gets her diploma from home while taking care of her dad, but Fiona tries to reason that she can’t handle this on her own forever.

Frustrated at the broken record of advice she’s been getting from her mother and from Fiona, Imogen snaps that Fiona doesn’t understand what this kind of parent-child relationship is like. Then, Imogen eerily bids Fiona goodbye, kisses her on the cheek, and walks back inside to her dad, closing out the rest of the world.

Everything changes, however, when Imogen’s father calls her Natalie, her mother’s name. Surprised and upset, Imogen runs to her mother for help and comfort.

Finding Fiona and Eli at school, Imogen admits that, as it turns out, her mom isn’t such a terrible person. In fact, she hired a caretaker for her dad so that Imogen doesn’t have to do it all by herself, and, by her father’s request, Imogen might even live with her mother every other week to get to know her better. She tells Eli that she hopes she didn’t ruin the play with her elaborate set plan, and, to her surprise, Fiona shows her the set, completed in her absence. Touched, Imogen wraps herself around Fiona’s arm once more.

Meanwhile, Adam has volunteered to help Eli sell tickets for the musical. However, when he arrives to set up the table in the school lobby, he finds new student (and resident conservative Christian) Becky already there, fundraising for a cause of her own.

Adam, having reserved the table with the main office, has priority on the table, so Becky rants to her brother about why people would put on a musical when there are people to help. Which, you know, she may or may not have been one of those people trying to put on the musical before Romeo and Juliet became Romeo and Jules, but you know, those are just details.

Her brother reminds her of her super annoying superpower: being loud and making people listen. So, over the oh-so-innocent voice of Becky singing, Adam continues to try and sell tickets for the musical. When he calls to students, though, she reminds them that their money could feed a whole family instead.

Adam, being Mr. Generosity, walks over, and hands them some cash. In exchange, he asks if she could tone it down, but she argues that in the economic downturn, there’s only so much money to go around, and Eli deserves none of it — he’s finally getting what he deserves. Surprised, Adam calls her out on using charity for revenge instead of just being happy to raise money for a good cause. “That’s low,” he tells her. “I didn’t think you were a hypocrite.”

Defeated, Becky admits to Adam later that week that he was right about her intentions. He tells her that he knows she’s mad at Eli, but he also knows she must be at least a little bit curious how the play has turned out, especially since she seems “like the romantic type.” She gets bashful, and he smoothly takes the opportunity to suggest she come see it with him, but doesn’t wait for an answer before walking away.

Later, Becky relays the conversation with Adam to her friend Jenna. She’s flying high with his praise as one of the nicest and the funniest guys around.

Jenna muses that she played poker with him once, and Becky freaks out for a moment that he might have a gambling problem. Baffled, Jenna voices her confusion that Becky wouldn’t be okay with Adam gambling but is fine about him being trans. In turn, a baffled Becky first understands trans to mean transient, believing Adam to be homeless for a moment. But when she realizes what Jenna actually means, she legitimately freaks out, concluding their storyline for the week.

Did you all find Imogen’s storyline and Fiona’s support for her this week as touching and heartbreaking as I did? And what do you think of a potential Becky/Adam relationship? Only one more week for the loose ends from this half of the season to get tied up!

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