"The first of the three episodes (episode 420, a very appropriate number for a show that features Jay and Silent Bob), “West End Girls,” was my introduction to the characters. The show, written by Shelley Scarrow, brings Kevin to Canada, looking for locations to shoot his new flick. He stops by Caitlin’s community TV show, Local Heroes. But really, this first episode is all about the current characters—prom is coming up, and a couple of the Spirit Squad rivals, Paige and Manny, are fighting over, well, everything rival girls in high school fight about. Meanwhile, bi-polar high-schooler Craig (who lives with Caitlin and her boyfriend/Craig’s set-dad Joey) and his girlfriend Ashley are planning to perform at the prom. But then Craig runs into Kevin while on the set of Caitlin’s show. Next thing he knows, Kevin’s given him the number of his music supervisor—he wants good, angst-y music for his movie. While Craig is debating going off his stabilizing meds, Kevin is a bit interested in Caitlin and makes sure she knows. He even goes so far as to set her up with a job offer to take her old show, Ryan’s World, to Los Angeles. There are some big decisions for some of the characters to make.Caitlin is having a tough go of things—her producer wants her piece on Kevin to be more gossipy, more of a fluff piece with attention-getting sound bytes. She doesn’t—she and Kevin had talked craft, so she pushes for things like his comments on his work to be in the piece, not his offhanded comments about politics or anything else. Meanwhile, at home, things are strained with Joey and Craig, too. She turns to the one place she can turn, Kevin. Out at a bar, the two “share a moment,” as they say. Then they share a kiss.The drama between Paige and Manny isn’t really the focal point of these episodes, as things concentrate instead on Craig and Ashley—should he follow her to England? Will the over-protective Joey let him? Will Ashley even want him there?—and also on what’s now become a Caitlin-Joey-Kevin triangle."
"While working on the movie, Smith meets Caitlin Ryan (Mistysyn) and things get very interesting. Ever the opportunist, Smith pursues Caitlin, and in turn threatens her relationship with Joey (Pat Mastroianni). All the while as Degrassi hurtles to its season finale, life at school continues to be interesting for it's students. Craig (Jake Epstein) continues to struggle with manic-depression as he deals with the impending summer apart from Ashley (Melissa McIntyre), and the catfight continues between the very competitive Paige (Lauren Collins) and Manny (Cassie Steele)."
"The final episode has a whole range of emotions. Yes, you will cry (even I can't help crying when I see it, and I've seen it a million times). But you will probably laugh out loud more than you ever have in any other Degrassi episode, there are some hilarious moments, starting with the very first scene!!! We're already working, as you know, on 501/502 AND you don't know that we are also working on a SECRET project very closely related to Degrassi... BUT we won't know if there will officially be a Season 5 of Degrassi until CTV orders us, which is unlikely to happen before mid-February, and may take as long as the beginning of March!!! In the meantime, there should be some interesting Canadian press about our final episodes of this season, starting to show up in a week or so and continuing through to the airing of 422 on Valentine's Day!!
"Currently The-N is intending to start broadcasting Instant Star in early July (but of course broadcast schedules change a lot!)
In Canada of course the broadcasts will start Sunday January 23 on CTV (7:00 pmthe first Sunday, because two episodes will be shown, 7:30 every Sunday after that) Speaking of broadcast schedules changing, there is a thought that on January 31st (by which time Degrassi will have switched to MONDAY nights on CTV) there might be TWO episodes back-to-back, 419 and 420. This would mean than 421 would run Monday February 7, and 422 would run Monday February 14--Valentines Day!
And those of you who tried going to the Instant Star site will notice that it isn't up yet--it might be up sometime this weekend, or if not hopefully on Monday. The hardest of the technical difficulties have been solved, so now it is up to the hamsters to do some final tweaks! If you want to try it is www.instantstar.ctv.ca (well www.instantstar.com will work too!) If you just get a single page then the site isn't up yet..."
"Wow. We must finished the sound mix of 421/422 and it is awesome. Can't wait till you see it!!! That pretty much wraps up the work on Season 4, although there's still at least another month of packaging and getting the international versioning of the show done, but certainly Linda and I and the writers can now focus on Season 5 and any other special Degrassi projects we might have up our sleeves!!!"
"Just to be clear: even though we are writing episodes 501/502, that doesn't mean that we have been ordered yet for Season 5 or that Season 5 will definitely happen. We may not know until as late as February or early March whether we have been ordered for a new season, and if so for how many episodes. But because we would need to start shooting in April, if we don't plan ahead and start the script-writing process now we would be way behind if we waited until we were actually ordered. So it could be that we will have spent a lot of time and money getting prepared for Season 5 and we don't get ordered--that's just the way it is in the tv world!!! I'll let you know officially if and when Season 5 is confirmed by CTV, the moment I know you will know!!
The mansters are runing into some technical probelms with the Instant Star site, so it may be the probelms can be resolved quickly in which case the site will be up later this week, or maybe the problems will take as long as a couple of weeks to solve...
Yesterday we had the music sessions for the season finale of Degrassi (421/422, which by the way we may change from "Crying Over You" to "Going Down The Road" in honour to an early great Canadian film of the same name) and these are going to be the greatest Degrassi episodes of all time!!!! "
ABOUT JAKE AND LAUREN ON RFR ((not DEGRASSI!))
"Yes, we filmed the season finale to season 4 in September. That brings us to 52 episodes in total. We film 26 episodes in one block. It is the network that divides them into two 13 episode seasons. I have no idea why Degrassi does what they do. That's between them and the network! I don't know the specifics of our overseas sales but I do know we are very popular in France, Norway and Poland. Jake shows up quite early in season 4 and Lauren Collins is in two episodes later on in season 4."
"Today was mostly an Instant Star day (now that we have completed filming of Degrassi for this season)--we had a meeting about the Instant Star website which will probably go live in about 4 weeks--it's looking great. A ton of work has already been done on it. There will be lots of contests, and if you are registered on degrassi.tv (which of course you are, otherwise you couldn't be reading this!) then you will be automatically registered on instantstar.com using the exact same name and password... and it will be easy to go back and forth between the two sites.
Then this afternoon we completed the sound mix for episode 105 of Instant Star--meanwhile back at the studio we were shooting episodes 111 and 113 of Instant Star (we're shooting out of order, so we will shoot 112 at the end).
BUT that doesn't mean we're not working hard on Degrassi!! We are holding brainstorming sessions already to start the stories for 501/502, and we're still editing and doing all the sound and music design for the final Degassi episodes of this season... AND working on some secret Degrassi projects for next year!!
Looking forward to getting our American friends back to seeing new episodes of Degrassi..."
"Must say the scene today with Kevin Smith, Jason Mewes and Alanis Morissette was awesome and very funny. Alanis was terrific. Jay and Silent Bob are facing her in the principal's office and she ends up knoocking Jay over with a hockey stick--very silly and very funny!!!!"
"Yes, since eTalk has already announced it I can confirm it's true.
Alanis Morrissette will be playing the role of both herself, and of herself playing the Principal at Edmund Fizgerald High School which is the made-up high school that Jay and Silent Bob go to in the film-within-a-tv-show that is the final episode of Degrassi Season 4. Pretty fun stuff!!"
"It was a different kind of wrap to filming this year... Degrassi finished shooting a couple of weeks ago, but because we needed to switch around the schedule so that Alanis Morissette could be in the final episode, the last scene was shot in the morning while we were shooting Instant Star, so it wasn't like previous years when it was later at night and all the cast came back for it.... also of course it was not a wrap for the crew because they were still working on Instant Star!. The crew wrapped at about 10:30pm this past Friday when we shot the final scene of Instant Star--then there were tears and hugs and all the Instant Star cast came to be with us for the final shot and the the A.D.'s shout: "It's a wrap!!"
Earlier in the day we had the crew photo with everyone from both Degrassi and Instant Star and all the crew.
And now on an indisclosed date sometime this week at an undisclosed location somewhere in the free world we will have the combined Degrassi and Instant Star wrap party--there will be about 500 people there and it should be a blast!!!
And of course this week in Canada CTV broadcasts Secrets Part 2, and then in the U.S. The N broadcasts Time Stands Still Part 2!!
And coming up this weekend it is the Gemini Awards in Canada! (Please remember to keep voting for the Most Popular website!!!)
Hope everyone has a great week this week!!!"
((some are old news//ordered-newest first))