"10 Things I Hate About You" is funny summer fluff

So what happens when you take a cult classic teen movie and turn it into a weekly sitcom? Disaster or gold? In the case of 10 Things I Hate About You, on ABC Family, you end up with fun, campy teen goodness, and some of the best one liners on TV.

The basic principle here is simple – Walter Stratford and his two teenage daughters, blond Bianca, and raven haired Kat, move from the Midwest to California and are the new girls in school.

Kat is the anti-social slacker, but their overprotective dad trusts her to always do the right thing. Bianca is the social climbing butterfly, desperate to be popular in her new school like she was in her old one. Her dad subjects Bianca to random home drug tests. Sisterly tension is front and center.

Bianca misses curfew by two minutes, so she gets breathalyzer and drug tested.

Bianca picks up the loser with the puppy dog eyes, Cameron to be her lackey in her quest to be popular. And naturally Cameron is totally head-over-heels in love with her, even though he can never have her. It’s your basic high school plot.

For love, Cameron will hide in the lockeroom and read swimmer's Speedos.

Last night was the fourth episode, with Bianca faking a relationship with an “older guy” to make herself seem more grown up and dangerous to the cheerleaders. Cameron, forever being coached by his best friend, Michael is told to get the girl, he needs to “peacock.”

“Peacocking” is evidently what you see the preppy celeb doing – think Justin Timberlake with his scarves and hats, the layers. Cameron starts with a scarf, and while he has his doubts “Are you sure it doesn’t make me look like a…choreographer?” a quick compliment from Bianca has him remarking “This peacock needs more feathers.”

Does this scarf make him look like a...choreographer?

Bianca quickly lets her story of an older man get out of hand, to the point where when the dreamy young faculty member asks her to stay after class, the rumor spreads in a matter of hours she’s having an affair with her teacher. She finds herself in the principal’s office with a creepy psychologist telling her to “point at the doll where he touched her.”

Yes, they cast Mary Cherry as the school psychologist.

Cameron keeps adding feathers – at this point he’s in a skin tight pink print t-shirt, knit scarf, and a fedora, wondering if his nipples are supposed to get Bianca’s attention. Michael assures him “your nipples are too young and baby smooth” to attract a fast girl like Bianca, who’s hot for teacher.

"Do girls like to see your nipples?"

As they converge in the hallway, the police are dragging out dreamy teacher in handcuffs, Bianca’s screaming that she made it up, that she’s not having an affair with the teacher, to let him go, when another girl comes flying down the stairs, screaming at teach for cheating on her with “this two-bit slut” – so Bianca tries to keep her street cred by calling him out for two-timing her.

The teacher was getting extracurricular with a student, just not Bianca.

It all ends in the school quad, as Bianca and Cameron synch up their stories – almost. Because Bianca’s tells Cameron just how great it is to have her own “GBF – Gay Best Friend” and hugs him. They don’t resolve this little misunderstanding, so I’m guessing it plays out next week.

Cameron loves that he was just named Bianca's GBF publicly.

There’s a B-story that runs each week with Kat, and her low-key obsession with bad boy Patrick, but thus far hasn’t delivered on the wit, or gay sensibility, of the main story.

Kat hasn't tapped a gay sensibility yet, but this good girl has her own temptations.
Patrick's belly got her to buy a fake ID through a glory hole.

Overall, the show’s a piece of fun summer fluff – and it stocks in a decent amount of hoyay with actors that are just enough older than their characters that you don’t have to feel guilty about it. The writing is quick and fun.

It’s also a brilliant example of how to do some gay humor without resorting to tired, mean clichés – the people writing this understand “laughing with” very well. 

Anybody else tuned into ABC Family Tuesday nights at 8pm?