Going Greek

Greek returned last night for its third season, and so I return, once again, to ABC Family. But where I wept and gnashed my teeth over Secret Life of the American Teenager, parts of 10 Things I Hate About You, Ruby and the Rockits, and reveled in the complete absurdity of Make It or Break It…I come to you today from a more positive place. Because, I cannot lie – I thoroughly enjoy Greek.

Like most other ABC Family programming, Greek’s primary operating procedure is to drench everything in a thick syrup of unreality. Everything is bigger, more dramatic, more implausible, and much sillier than a life any of us would recognize. The show is about life in the fraternities and sororities at the fictional Cyprus-Rhodes University in Somewhere, Ohio, and nowhere has a Greek system ever had so many themed parties, annual competitions, rivalries, ancient fraternity origin stories, or inner sorority political catfights. The scrappy, good-natured, slovenly Kappa Tau house features a masterpiece of fraternal ingenuity – Vesuvius, a house-sized volcano that makes the skies rain down beer. Meanwhile, over at the prissy, supergirly Zeta Beta Zeta sorority house, girls gather in the pinker-than-pink dining room every morning for freshly baked low-calorie muffins and coffee served from shining silver samovars. Real life college living need not apply.

The morning after at Kappa Tau and Zeta Beta Zeta

So how is that Greek wins my love where Secret Life makes me nauseous?

First (and I recognize this point is particularly suited to my personal taste, but this is my blog so Hah!), unlike any other show on ABC Family since the tragic demise of The Middleman, Greek is completely, hilariously self-aware. Any show that casts Alan Ruck (aka Cameron from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off) as the university dean and then writes in a scene where a student explains to the dean why she thinks Ferris Bueller is the Great Gatsby of her generation gets an A in my book.

Greek is also surprisingly liberal, given the usual bent of the network’s traditional-family focused shows. I’ve written about how problematic the Christian plotlines are on Secret Life, but the bigger point is that teenage pregnancy is so shocking and earth-shatteringly amoral that it fuels an entire season with outrage and dismay. Unlike Secret Life, Greek features college kids hooking up, drinking and generally being rowdy without any suggestion of judgment or shame, an absence which frees the show to focus on character development rather than moral indoctrination. And those characters are also much, much more diverse: the main character, Rusty Cartwright, has two best friends in his year – Calvin, a preppy, athletic gay guy from his rival fraternity, and Dale, his super-Christian, conservative, academically driven roommate. Understandably, Calvin and Dale start out hating each other, but by the time the third season has rolled around, they hang out together with friendly equanimity, despite their ongoing disagreements. You could almost think you were watching a workplace diversity training video, except that it’s also consistently funny. Dale listens to recordings of Q from Star Trek reading from the Bible, which Rusty and Calvin grow to find calming. Calvin loves teasing Dale about the latent homoeroticism of his purity pledge group. Rusty, Calvin and Dale all ban together to study for finals. It’s heartwarming, endearing stuff.

Calvin and Dale

It’s also just hard to argue with a show as cheerfully fun-loving as Greek. Rusty may be the show’s central character, but the true heart of the Greek lies in Cappie, president of Kappa Tau. A stereotypical seventh-year senior, Cappie is the show’s Bacchus, always planning the next prank or party. He’s also surprisingly thoughtful, sincere, a loyal friend, and a great leader. Greek may not resemble anyone’s actual college experience, but with characters like Cappie as the organizing principle of the show, I almost wish my undergrad years were more like Cyprus Rhodes. (Almost.)