Silly me. Here I am, studying away at university, hitting the books and getting far too familiar with pig cadavers during scavenging invertebrate experiments (I notice you never see Grissom on CSI lose his footing and end up with a mostly liquefied porker all over his favourite windcheater… but I digress). Well, either I’m going about this whole ‘study for a degree’ thing all bass-ackwards or I need to become an exchange student to the nearest US college post haste, because, according to all the cool college kids, university is all about joining a fraternity, killing your liver with booze and then nabbing another one from the medical wing’s cadaver freezer when no-one’s looking, and shagging anything with a pulse (no pulse? that’s not necessarily a deal breaker…). So let’s all put on our mortar boards (and nothing else), have an unrequited, drama filled crush on our straight dorm-mate, slap on a hockey mask and stalk the sorority girls and get the sour milk and ping pong paddles ready for the next batch of fraternity pledges as we haze the bejeezus out of the new exchange student, GREEK (Fox8- Wednesdays).
For reasons lost in the mist of history (but probably revolving around something to do with getting drunk and getting laid) College Fraternities (boys) and Sororities (girls) are organised via the Ancient Greek system. No, they don’t wander around in togas , play sport naked or indulge in same sex orgies (not until exams are over, anyway); rather, Frat and Sorority houses are named after characters in the Greek alphabet- so you could have Alpha-Beta-Cappa house, Cappa-Alpha-Theta house, Alpha-Sigma-Sigma house and so on. That’s all I can interpret for you without requiring you to have a working knowledge of the Enigma Code Breaking Machine and a degree in Latin and Aramaic, but fortunately it’s pretty much all you need to know to understand the central conceit of GREEK.
GREEK is a teen drama (just think the final season of DAWSON’S CREEK when they were all at Uni, only with less close-ups of a weepy Katie Holmes and absolutely no emphasis on anyone keeping their virginity). Set at the fictional American college of Cyprus Rhodes, we are introduced to Casey and Rusty Cartwright (Spencer Grammar and Jacob Zachar), siblings and polar opposites. Casey is a popular, smart, pretty girl and a political science major with her sights set on becoming a successful businesswoman (basically she’s the type of college girl who becomes Prom Queen, everyone loves her and you want to beat to death with a rusty claw hammer- or is that just me?). Rusty is a shy, socially awkward misfit with a minor in an engineering and a major in living in his successful sister’s shadow (basically he’s the kind of guy who, if he attends the prom at all, will be the one getting showered by a bucket of pig’s blood).
Casey quickly becomes the darling of the popular Zeta-Beta-Zeta (ZBZ) Sorority, and sets about majoring in becoming a Stepford Wife. Rusty, to Casey’s horror, and my delight, becomes popular at Kappa Tau Gamma (KTG)- renowned as a party fraternity. Throw in the fact that Rusty quickly gets mentored by the KTG President, Cappie (Scott Michael Foster) who is not only Casey’s ex-boyfriend, he’s also about as studious and academically inclined as an orangutan mainlining speed whilst juggling fireworks, and you have an interesting twenty-something soapie that doesn’t break much ground Dawson didn’t already break (possibly using his ginormous forehead).
Where GREEK really surprises and comes into its own is when we’re introduced to Rusty’s friend Calvin, a sweet, hunky African-American guy on athletic scholarship and pledging for admittance into Omega-Chi-Delta. (No, he doesn’t have OCD, and yes, everyone makes that joke). Despite the fact that they’re from rival frat-houses, Calvin and Rusty get along well, and Calvin confides in Rusty his big secret- he’s gay. That’s right folks- almost 2010 and we finally get a (sort of) out, gay character of colour as a regular on a prime time television show.
When first we meet Calvin (Paul James) he’s hiding his sexuality from his potential Frathouse as he doesn’t want his sexuality ‘to become an issue’. Three guesses as to how well that, er, comes out?! Calvin is initially involved with Heath/’Dopey'(Zach Lively from HEROES) a pretty but stupid guy who somehow manages to be not only pre-med, but in the top 5% of his class. That relationship eventually spontaneously combusts over the strain of being Secret Boyfriends. Calvin then meets Michael, a Teaching Assistant in his French class, and they start dating, despite their age difference and the fact that that a TA shouldn’t be getting T n A with a student. In the last few episodes of the current season in the USA, Calvin enters a character arc where his new room-mate, Grant (Gregory Michael- Kevin from the Gay supernatural soapie DANTE’S COVE) confession an attraction and the two finally become an item, fittingly, on the University’s Open Day. Given that Grant is played by someone from Dante’s Cove, I’m assuming a coven of gay vampire witches will descend onto campus any time now, but at least they’re getting their Greek Love on for the moment.
Amusingly, GREEK, which deals with issues such as homosexuality, teenage drinking, teen pregnancy and such, airs in the US of A on the ‘Fox Family’ Network, a broadcaster that usually doesn’t have dramatic conflict more complex than someone wearing a Dora the Explorer t-shirt and Blues Clues socks at the same time. When some members of the American Religious Rong got in a predictable kerfuffle about ‘such content’ being shown on a ‘network for families’, the writers and team behind GREEK made my day by not only telling the Right-Whingers where to go and what to do with their horse when they got there, but also started selling GREEK with the tagline ‘a new kind of Family’.
Buffy actors guest starring (Charisma Carpenter has an extended cameo soon), hot guys and girls, popular people being taken down several pegs (without the use of projectile weapons for a change), cute geeks and the first major black, gay character on television since SPIN CITY (2002)? Pledge to this fraternity, already!
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