Greek: Chapter Three

Written by Pirata Hermosa

For those of you who haven’t watched Greek before, it’s a television show that airs Monday night on the ABC Family Network. You’re probably thinking that it’s just another kids’ show. That’s kind of what I was thinking, but I was surprised to find out it’s a very adult show. It didn’t seem very family-friendly to me. The show is about a bunch of young adults in college and their experiences in Greek fraternity/sorority life. This includes everything from drunken parties, sleeping around, and just general debauchery.

The story focuses on two siblings. Rusty Cartwright (Jacob Zachar) is a geeky freshman who excels in science and engineering. He’s finally made it to college and has decided that he wants to experience more than simple academics. He wants to be a member of a fraternity. And the one he becomes a member of is the KTs, the biggest party house on campus. His sister, Casey (Spencer Grammer), is the president of the university’s most popular sorority the ZBZs. She’s a junior and everything she does is always prim and proper, that is until her younger brother shows up. As soon as Rusty arrives everything starts to crash in Casey’s life. He catches her rich boyfriend, Evan Chambers (Jake McDorman) sleeping with the Senator’s daughter and future ZBZ pledge, Rebecca Logan (Dilshad Vadsaria). So immediately there’s an instant love triangle and a lot of animosity right from the beginning.

To add to the drama they also throw in:

Cappie (Scott Michael Foster), president of the KT house, former best friends with Evan, and ex-boyfriend of Casey whom he is still in love with.

Dale (Clark Duke), Rusty’s roommate, who hangs the confederate flag and talks of abstinence and purity pledges.

Calvin (Paul James), who becomes fast friends with Rusty but ends up in the rival fraternity as Evan’s frat brother. He is also the one gay character in the show and has to learn to deal with his own identity issues as well as the reactions of others.

Frannie (Tiffany Dupont), who was the ZBZ president until she was kicked out of the sorority. She is desperately trying to get back in and run again for president.

Ashleigh (Amber Stevens), Casey’s always-positive sidekick.

You can see just with all these character types and conflicting interests that the storylines can get rather involved, much like a soap opera.

The Chapter Three DVD is the first ten episodes of the new season and starts where season one ended. The gang is back from Spring Break and has to deal with the consequences of what happened. Rebecca found out her father had an affair, so she is on a rampage and entered a wet T-shirt contest. Of course someone with a cell phone has posted it on the Internet. Cappie and Casey kissed. Rusty and Calvin have patched up their friendship, which was on the verge of crumbling, and Evan has given in to the pressure from his parents and decided to join forces with Frannie.

In the first season the story seemed to be more about Rusty and his fitting in, but now it’s more about Casey who struggles for power with Frannie as they both try to win the presidency of the sorority. It also follows Casey’s love life as a new man enters into the picture, Max (Michael Rady). He’s Rusty’s R.A. and almost as geeky. The over-focusing on Casey’s life has dragged the show to a slow crawl in this chapter.

It also doesn’t help that Evan and Rebecca are no longer such villains. It’s somewhat a catch-22. You need that friction between characters to keep things exciting, but at the same time they are so well written and fully developed that you really like them. You want them to come to their senses and be friends with the others.

I’m hoping they’ll introduce a new character in season three, which premieres August 31, one we can all hate who will breathe some new life into the show.

The Special Features on the DVD include:

20 Questions with the Cast of Greek – the questions are loosely based on the show and episodes: Are you anything like your character? Have you ever been on a pity date? Which character would you like to be friends with in real life? Those are just some of the questions. It’s a little awkwardly done with the cast split up in different rooms and the responses aren’t terribly exciting.

Blooper Reel – A very basic blooper reel mostly filled with flubbing lines or laughing in the middle of a scene. The bloopers are edited so quickly that it loses all context and comes across very flat.

There is also cast and creator commentary on the episodes: “Brothers and Sisters,” “The Popular Vote,” and “Hell Week.”