During my blog hiatus, I got hooked onto a new brand of CW branded crack, right after I kicked my Gossip Girl addiction, unfortunately. But that crack, was the cheerleading themed soap Hellcats. Like One Tree Hill before it, it seduced me with promises of being something vaguely different. It seemed like it was going to be like the original Bring it On movie, but a show. It quickly spiraled into a standard "anything can and will happen to these people but they'll all rally around something innane to get through these nutso situations," kind of show. Just like One Tree Hill, actually.
But really, what I'm grateful to Hellcats for doing is giving us the character of Savannah, played by Ashley Tisdale. First of all, I've always felt that Ashley was kind of underrated. Yes, I did used to refer to her as "That blonde from Zach and Cody with the unfortunate nose." But now she's a brunette and got a nose job, and now that she's dealing with slightly more grown up material, she's doing really well. I'm glad to see it. But it's not just Ashley's bloom that makes me happy about Savannah.
Savannah is a devout Christian, and it's a key part of her character. She's saving sex for marriage, puts her trust in God, and oh, did I mention she's not considered, crazy, weird, preachy or stupid. She's the captain of the Hellcats cheerleading squad, on a scholarship to college, was dating a nice guy, goes to parties and is a normal and functioning human being.
As someone who considers her faith paramount to her identity, and gets increasingly frustrated at how people of faith, particularly women of faith, are portrayed, usually as one of two categories, idiots and hypocrites and they're all shrewish and overly opinionated and set to convert the world. But Hellcats is giving us neither, they're giving us a fully fleshed out character, or as fully fleshed out as anyone on The CW is. Last night's episode cemented it. Because as the rest of the squad whined about how they were going to lose everything when Marty revealed that football star Jake robbed a pharmacy and framed her law professor's client causing him to be convicted of his "third strike" and put in maximum security prison for like ever or something. (See, I told you anything and everything!) Savannah insisted that whatever happened was God's plan and then got on her knees to ask Him for guidance, in the privacy of her dorm room, without pushing this element on any of the other Hellcats. It's too bad that not that many people are watching.
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