Greek (2007)

Greek, ABC Family's new series about college fraternity and sorority life, has a very teeny, winsome dash of Freaks and Geeks and a decent swirl of Mean Girls. At exclusive Cyprus-Rhodes University, brainy freshman Rusty (Jacob Zachar) arrives sweet-faced, windbreaker-sporting, and ready to rush — much to the dismay of his sorority-queen sister, Casey (Spencer Grammer). That's about all you need to know: Other campus types emerge, including the shallow, image-obsessed girls (first bulimia joke comes at about 10 minutes), the partying, laid-back cool guys (whose rush is an ode to Animal House), and the cute, rich jerks (an ode to pretty much every '80s college movie). The bad guys and girls are pretty predictable in their ickiness — bratty senators' daughters and spoiled jocks. It'd be nice to see a misogynistic emo dude or a horn-rimmed, comics-loving bitch on TV for a change. (Rusty's roommate is a Southern, Christian nerd with a sharp tongue — they seem to be aiming for Dwight Schrute and achieving something marginally offensive instead.) Zachar, on the other hand, is veritably Apatowian in his nice-kid nerdiness, and Grammer (daughter of Kelsey) manages to be both totally awesome and genuinely likable. Greek lacks the acidic one-liners that mark great satires like Heathers, but it strains against its conventional boundaries just enough to be enticing, as when Casey returns to her cheating boyfriend because the golden boy is key to her bid for sorority president — no lesson learned there.

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