I got a B minus?!

I’ve been trying to figure out how to update my initial post about ABC Family’s 10 Things I Hate About You adaptation, and then yesterday Jezebel came along and helped me out. In this post about the show (which is full of episode clips, if you’re interested), Jezebel’s Dodai Stewart writes about the way Kat’s feminism has influenced the plot and dialogue, to the extent that recent episodes have revolved almost entirely around Kat’s feminist consciousness. Dodai suggests that the episode, which features Kat turning in a paper about discovering Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, effectively deals with issues of feminism and teenagerhood. Kat learns that her highbrow, liberal values don’t necessarily translate into quality work if she doesn’t put in the effort of emotional investment, and that just because she’s right doesn’t mean she’s not also “preachy.” I’m happy to agree with Dodai on this – being socially conscious does not preclude being self-obsessed. Compared to the average episode of The Secret Life of the American Teenager, 10 Things I Hate About You is positively philosophical.

One reason that’s been possible is the near complete excision of the actual plot of Taming of the Shrew. The character meant to be Kat’s love interest, Patrick Verona, lurks in the background, but without the financial incentive from the original plot, he’s lost his entire motivation for pursuing her. There are a few scenes where Kat finds him mysterious and possibly attractive, but he actively avoids her, thus freeing Kat to figure out how to convert her car to biodiesel. Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew inevitably ends with a Tamed Shrew, finally recalled to her feminine duties by a powerful male protagonist. On this new adaptation, Kat’s left to tame or not tame herself as she sees fit.

So that’s all well and good, right? It’s a show about strong female characters! It’s feminism that promotes confidence and self-reliance but not the nasty man-hating, anti-leg-shaving bits! Except that Dodai’s post on Jezebel doesn’t address the episode’s other main plotline, the shenanigans of Kat’s sister Bianca. While Kat’s off learning about compassion and emotional honesty, Bianca and her friend decide to star in a sexy internet show in order to earn money to buy purses. I know, you’d think I was playing that up for effect to make it seem even worse than it is, but I’m truly not. They start a subscription internet show to make money, and quickly realize they’ll get more viewers if they make out with each other. So they do. And they only get shut down when Bianca’s dad finds out.

Bianca and Dawn's web show and their avidly viewing audience

Okay, okay, I get it, that’s the whole point of the show. Kat’s the feminist/shrew/intelligent one, and Bianca’s the popular/attractive/shallow one, and they both need to learn how to find fulfilling relationships. But isn’t there a difference between shallow popularity grabs and selling oneself on the internet for designer accessories? Shouldn’t Bianca’s dad have gotten way more angry about her willingness to prostitute herself than the chance a college admissions officer might one day see her doing it?

This is why I took so long to update my impressions of the show as it’s developed, because even after six episodes I still can’t decide whether it’s a worthwhile endeavor gone awry or something too complicated and poorly conceived to ever succeed.

Last night, ABC Family aired the first episode of a television adaptation of the 1999 film 10 Things I Hate About You. As partially demonstrated in my previous post on The Secret Life of the American Teenager, my feelings about ABC Family are mixed.¹ On the one hand, there are shows like that one, which are almost unbearably awful. On the other, though, there are shows like Greek, which is actually quite entertaining, or last summer’s completely amazing and inevitably short-lived The Middleman. Allow me a moment to mourn the loss of that silly, well-written, clever, hysterical, earnestly fun-loving show.

Right, moving on. Given ABC Family’s track record, I was concerned about the whole 10 Things I Hate About You project. How to extend a plot beyond its original Taming of the Shrew scope? How to fully express that movie’s insouciant, tongue-in-cheek, intertextual tone? How to improve on Julia Stiles and Heath Ledger?! I was pretty certain it was going to make me claw my eyes out.

10 Things I Hate About You: The New School (from left, Bianca, Kat, Patrick and Cameron)

Not so! Listen, it’s not great. Several of the minor characters are ridiculous, the writing doesn’t exactly sparkle, and it’ll really depend on how they develop all of the characters and work out a whole season’s worth of plotlines. But it could have been worse. One of the early notable shifts is from a largely romantic-driven plot to something more like Gossip Girl, where much of the drama comes from locker-side politics and the infamous guillotine known as cheerleading tryouts. By flipping the introductory figure from Cameron, who is the new guy in school in the film version, to Kat and Bianca as the new girls in the television show, the focus shifts onto their attempts to adjust to school rather than an unnatural insta-romance. (The film version memorably sells that “love at first sight” moment by establishing Bianca’s beauty in a standard slow-mo, hair-flipping shot and then having Cameron/Shakespeare sigh, “I burn, I pine, I perish.”)

This sets up both interesting possibilities and easy pitfalls for the future direction of the show. I understand the need to establish a storyline outside of the original Shakespeare, and building a foundation of high school backstabbing is a reliable way to form a sort of perpetual motion plot machine – fights and friendships go back and forth, back and forth. But if that’s all it will eventually be, it’ll deflate quickly.

As Jezebel pointed out today, the real opportunity is the main character, Kat. In the course of the pilot episode, she can be spotted reading two different books, debating healthcare at breakfast, listening to NPR, and comparing the head cheerleader to Kim Jong Il. There’s certainly a dearth of high school-aged feminist icons on television right now (rest in peace, Veronica Mars), and if 10 Things I Hate About You manages to create a semi-believable, politically engaged female protagonist without then making her crumble under the force of dark brooding stares, it will have made something worth watching. Fingers tentatively crossed.

Feminists read! And also have awesomely snarky air fresheners.

^{1 I realize this blog has so far been entirely SyFy or ABC Family- focused. This is entirely accidental, and I blame summer television programming.}