By: Aleks Chan
I’ve kept up a long, slobbery love affair with the fantastically imperfect ABC Family dramedy GREEK. This modest little show about the relationships of students in the Greek system at the fictional Cypress-Rhodes University is comprised of pieces both unremarkable and occasionally brilliant – I’ve found myself cheering along as often as I’ve recoiled in frustration. The show kicks off its 10-episode final season tonight, and after a tonally bizarre premiere (one that I’m almost tempted to suggest you skip altogether), a promising endnote is in the making.
And like someone who paid to see either of the Sex and the City movies while in theaters (especially the second one), I am overcome by an unwarranted need to explain myself: God help me, if this show doesn’t come across as incriminating as hell. That its first season print campaign featured the principal cast swimming in a giant red plastic cup didn’t help. But I’m glad GREEK has played out the way it has, itself an almost transcendent accomplishment: its boldface stab at crafting a smart bildungsroman inside those claustrophobic, beer and puke-stained frat houses and sorority palaces is at the very least venerable. While it has never sufficiently made Pan-Hellenic internal politics interesting, it has unspooled some well-done relationships that have maturely, humorously, and sincerely found legitimate, reasonable stakes during a time in young adults’ lives difficult to dramatize.