Karma's a bitch. And so's Emma.

My Degrassi expectations have plummeted to a new low. Apparently for Emma, one of the stages of grief is Rancid Bitch. Still reeling over the death of JT and rocked by the revelation that Manny’s parents want her to come back home, Emma focuses her anger on Manny and the Spirit Squad. Apparently they’re not supposed to move on and perform in their first city-wide competition because the mascot’s dead.

Since he goes to the same school, Emma blames Damian (AKA the first guy since JT to treat Manny like anything but a collection of orifices) for JT’s death. TeenMom insists that Damian is actually friends with the stabber, but we’ll see if anything comes from that claim.

Looking back, the idea of watching Emma handle her misplaced anger had a lot of potential, but he execution was clunky and painful to watch. It was the worst episode since Sean found out Emma went down on Jay and lost all capacity for reason.

On to Instant Star...
I’m not sure how long it’s been since Tommy left, telling Jude he didn’t think he’d be coming back, but since then, Liam has also fled G Major to find himself in South America and Jamie’s gotten seriously cuter.

We begin with Jude judging the new Instant Star finalists. She’s eager to shed the “instant” part of her label and grow up as an artist, distancing herself from the show that made her a household name. Darius is surprisingly supportive, but then the drunken pictures of her from last season’s finale surface with a blackmail note. Jude tries to handle the situation on her own, but she tells one of the IS finalists, Karma, about the blackmail in a spontaneous act of bonding. The newbie rats her out to Darius in the name of “Instant Star sisterhood.” And Jude soon finds herself performing on the IS finale and Darius handling her problems for her.

The night of the finale, Tommy shows up with the little girl we saw in the last episode. Jude jumps to the same conclusion as the rest of us, assuming he has a daughter with Portia. She ignores his plea to listen to him, throws a tantrum in her dressing room and refuses to perform. Jamie comes in and demonstrates his own maturity, gently telling her that she's the only one to blame for always ending up the victim. She cries and he holds her, but doesn’t back down, telling her that it’s time to grow up.

Jude performs a killer new song, rocks the finale and then tells Darius that she didn’t pull it together for anyone but her fans. She’s a pro and he’s going to have to start treating her like one. She walks home through the rain as we see Karma named the new Instant Star. Back at home, Jude uploads to blackmail photos to her own webpage and says goodbye to her good girl image.


In the second part of the premiere, Jude deals with the aftermath of everyone seeing the blackmail pics. Darius tells her that she has to address her possibly alienated fans at Karma’s first press conference. Jude apologizes for offending anyone and tries to deflect attention back to Karma, who sweetly says that when she looks at the pics, she sees a talented artists who’s not afraid to be real. Bitch. Then she underlines the differences between the two performers: Jude’s into punk guitar riffs and in addition to having a soft spot for ballads, Karma’s a virgin. The members of the press collectively look to our 17 year-old protagonist and ask if that means she’s not. The look on D’s face is priceless.

Jude declines to comment and then finds out that she’s been pulled from performing at a Bar Mitzvah, which was part of her Darius-prescribed penance. Seems the kid’s record exec father want someone a little more pure, like trashy Karma with her tats and faux-chastity. Jude decides to crash the party with Punk Rock Patsy to tell the man that it’s not cool to judge women based on their sexuality. She ends up playing dueling diva onstage after Karma claims Jude couldn’t make it due to her “struggles with promiscuity and the bottle” and then launches into one of our girl’s songs. As usual, Patsy is hilarious, spitting out the virgin drinks and flashing her boobs in an attempt to gain entry to the party.

When Karma insults Jude onstage, Patsy shoves her into the giant cake and Karma reaches out, pulling one side of Jude’s top down with her. Then Patsy gets the classic line: “Jude. Your boob’s out.” So if you’re not keeping track, Jude has now shown the public drunken pictures of her rolling around on a hotel bed, made her fans question her virginity and accidentally flashed a bunch of tweens. Luckily, the party made headlines and Darius seems okay with his young star’s “wardrobe malfunction.”

In star-crossed lovers land: Kwest and Sadie have a tentative relationship and Kwest and Tommy have tension based on the young sound engineer moving up as a producer. At the Bar Mitzvah, T sees the new couple kissing and after Sadie leaves to check on Jude, he rips into Kwest about guy code. Kwest points out that Sadie’s not even the Harrison sister that Tommy wants and says that if Tommy ever did get Jude, it would be the worst thing that ever happened to her. Tommy punches him and Sadie comes back just in time to think the fight is about her.

When Jude finally finds out that the little girl she saw is Darius’ kid and not Tommy’s, she apologizes and he insists that she’s not off base in thinking that he’s a mess. Is it me or does he owe her an apology for being cryptic and leaving her hanging for no real reason? She doesn’t seem to think so and when he calls her a kid, she points out that she’ll soon be legal. Awesome.

In the land of tarty hypocrites: After flirting with Spiederman all episode, we see Karma gather her clothes and leave Jude’s rehearsal space while Spied’s still naked and asleep on the floor. Meanwhile, when pushed by Sadie to reveal who she slept with, Jude admits that she’s actually a virgin.

Next week: Karma moves in on Tommy and bitch better step off if she doesn’t want to see how scrappy Miss Harrison can really be.