Showbituary: Greek

Hi everyone! Sorry for the late post – I had exams last week, so that’s a valid enough excuse, right?

Here we are, though – the moment I’ve been dreading. (Kidding. But not really.) There are few shows I have watched from the very beginning – as in, watched the Pilot on the day it aired and continued all the way through – but Greek is one of them. Greek started when I was a junior in high school and ended last Monday, exactly a week ago, as I am ending my junior year of college. Without sounding too dramatic, it is sort of like the end of an era.

Most people didn’t watch Greek; it did get cancelled, after all -- but my friends and I watched it religiously, which is why it feels so very much like something is really ending for us. Greek was about Casey, Rusty, Cappie, Evan, Ashleigh…it was about their lives. But somehow, it was about ours, too. And isn’t that what makes a TV show good? That while Mad Men is about the 60s, Don and Betty’s broken marriage could mirror any today? Or while Walter White cooks meth, he eerily reminds you of your high school science teacher? A good TV show has to be about the human experience, no matter what character or situation it chooses to focus on. They need to feel the things we feel. So while Greek was about Greek life at college (all main characters were in fraternities or sororities), it was really just about being young. I am not nor have I ever been involved in Greek life, but the creators were smart enough to make it just one factor of the show. In fact, Greek was probably the only show for young people over the past few years that was about things we experience because we are young. No saving Bass Industries or attending galas every week like Gossip Girl, no murder mystery like Pretty Little Liars, not even the ridiculous music video director storyline on 90210. (I still love you, 90210.) Being young, yes, you do have to make some big decisions.  But mostly, it’s about feeling like 1) the world revolves around you and 2) everything that happens is either the best thing that ever happened or the worst thing that ever happened. “It’s not the end of the world,” Dale has to hilariously remind Rusty one episode. “Don’t you read the scriptures I leave on your pillow? There will be signs!” But I have to give the show credit for showing the non-dramatic, purely optimistic part of youth, too. For showing what it means to have so much hope for the future, to have faith that things can be better, that things can be as good as you had dreamed. 

Speaking of Bass Industries, do you think you’ll ever see Chuck have enough depth to give up his trust fund so he can be independent from his parents and their ideals? Because that’s what Evan did, the show’s resident golden boy. Yes, like most shows on TV, Greek is a cast of beautiful kids with white-people-problems, but not one of them is one-dimensional, and together, they’re something of a rag-tag bunch. They go to a school in Ohio, and much like my high school experience, they spend a lot of time trying to find things to do. But there are always hijinks and they are always peppered with generation-appropriate pop culture references. (“Can we all be mature and just say what we're really feeling? How the hell could they cancel Gilmore Girls?”) But perhaps my favorite part of the show is that of the relationship between Casey and Rusty – sister and brother.  In the very first episode of Greek, she pretended not to know him.  Her two-year boyfriend wasn’t even aware she had a brother. But his one request? “I just wanna be part of your life.” And eventually, he is. Rusty ended the series on Monday by telling Casey that thanks to her, he has “a whole universe.” And Cappie tells Casey in one of the last scenes, “You should’ve seen Rusty today. You would have been proud.” Her response? “I already am.”  Creator Sean Smith explains it as such: “The focus of the series, to me, was always about this brother and sister coming together. If he hadn’t gone to Cyprus Rhodes, they might not have this good relationship. And they’ve now gone through this adventure together and are always going to be there for each other. And that’s what I always thought was so winning about that relationship; for Rusty, part of him wanting to be in the greek system was him wanting to be closer to his sister.” 

“Coming together” is what I see as the overall theme of Greek. The best episodes are when all of these sworn enemies because of their house loyalties come together because they are really all each other has. Last season, all of the kids spent Thanksgiving together at the KT house, and just a few episodes before the finale, they spent the night at Dobler’s during a snowstorm. Whether you love or hate the people you meet in school, they know you. You have a history. And that is what outweighs everything.

What else is there to say about the last episode? The writers blew me away one last time. I like shows that have scenes in their series finales that echo their early episodes, because it’s a wink to the viewers and a sort of thank-you-for-sticking-with-us-through-everything – think Sorkin watching Jimmy Smits get sworn in the West Wing finale and Claire getting a new car in Six Feet Under. Greek had a bunch of those moments. Casey drives away with Cappie instead of Rusty, Casey kisses Cappie at the bar instead of Evan, the reappearance of Jen K and Wade, the Casey and Rusty staircase conversations, and so on. The most gorgeous (albeit painful) scene was probably the tearing down of the KT house. From the shots of the heartbreakingly empty main room to Cappie’s look of relief and gratefulness when Evan joins him in the protest, everything was so on point. Katherine was brilliant as usual, and is perfect paired with Beav. Rebecca and Dale’s friendship was very sweet. Seeing Cappie with the loudspeaker, the leader of his house, was surprisingly emotional. Even Evan looked proud of him. And I was even more emotional when Cappie told Rusty, “you are my legacy,” and Evan and Cappie finally made up. Side note: Scott Michael Foster was really the heart of this series. Any way, when Evan sees Cappie and Casey kissing as I mentioned earlier, Evan tells them that it’s “as it should be.” Which is what the finale was representative of as a whole. Those who should have ended up together did, and those who were still growing and didn’t really deserve happy endings yet didn’t have them. The KT house still got torn down, but Dale got a girlfriend.

Greek was one of the most underrated shows I have ever watched, and a show that helped ABC Family get to the place it’s in now, with a larger audience and an identity as an up-and-coming cable TV network.  A commenter on Entertainment Weekly a few weeks ago mentioned that they began to watch Greek as a guilty pleasure, but the more they watched it, the more it turned into something real. I couldn’t agree more. I started watching it as a guilty pleasure as well, but the show grew and so did the characters. It was quite a run, and I am incredibly sad to see it go. It was time, I suppose, but it is never really time.