Our Hero is a critically acclaimed television show on the CBC from 2000 to 2002. It ran for 26 episodes over two seasons, and was syndicated in the U.S. and U.K. The title character was teenager Kale Stiglic who created a zine about her life in suburban Toronto, with her friends Ross, Mary-Elizabeth, and Dalal. Each episode was named after an "issue" of her zine. Plot segments were interspersed with quirky animated sequences narrated by Kale, with the animation reflecting the illustrations used in that issue's zine.
Episodes
A still grieving Kale is continuing to live in her memories, which causes her to seclude from the rest of the world even more. In order to help Kale move on with her life, Mary-E attempts to convince her friend to attend a zine show. There Kale has the shock of her life when she is visited by an old friend. Meanwhile, Ross begins to freaks out and becomes a nervous wreck when he comes into contact with his long time crush, George Lagogianes who is covering the zine show.
With Bill again intruding in different parts of Kale's life by attempting to spend a lot of time with her mother, she attempts to be free of him by departing Toronto for the weekend with her friends. Everything seems to be in order for this mini-vacation as they have finally acquired a car, but there is one problem. An activist/zine writer named Malachi has handcuffed himself to Kale's car to protest air pollution.
An ""Our Hero"" reader sends Kale a naked picture of himself wearing cowboy boots. She gets a kick out of it and decides to bring it to school to show it to her friends. Unbeknownst to her, she accidentally loses it along with one of her zines. The picture falls into the hands of Mr. Minetta who reports Kale to Ms. Terzik-Sykes who in turn calls her parents. At home, Kale was expecting to be punished by her parents for what happened, but is shocked to find out what her parents really think when she receives another hilarious and embarrassing talk from them. Joey and Mila tell Kale that it is ok for her to look at porn because they do and it helps them with their love life. Things go from bad to worse for a freaked out Kale as Joey decides to protest the punishment the school has given to his daughter. He wants to make a speech at a parent teacher meeting to discuss the right to free speech by defending and preaching the merits of porn with the assistance of visual aids.
In an effort to have more excitement in her life and feel like she is making a difference, Kale joins Malachi and his activist friends in building a park in the middle of an intersection to protest the lack of green space. Kale makes the mistake of leaving her palm pilot with all the names and numbers of Malchi's friends, which the police use to apprehend some of them due to the park incident. Meanwhile, happy go luck Mary-E is feeling down due to a cranky clerk at her favorite story refusing to smile and be nice. In order to counter this and brighten the day of many people, Mary-E gets permission from Ms. Terzik-Sykes to have a niceness day at school. Dalal and Ross race against time to put a stop to this niceness day as the two believe that Mary-E's feelings will end of being hurt if this event backfires.
Kale heads to Bill's house to find out whether he was doing drugs while he was sleeping with her because she needs this information to donate blood with Malachi. At his home, she meets his new girlfriend Kayla who seems to share a lot similar characteristics with Kale, two of them being looks and clothing. Fearing that Bill will treat this girlfriend the same way that he treated her, Kale becomes obsessed and consumed with breaking the two apart. She discovers that this was a big mistake when she sees a side of distraught Bill that she had never seen before. Meanwhile, Ethan decides to use Kale's basement against her wishes to hold his own comedy workshop to teach aspiring comedians.
Kale's perspective, So our generation is supposed to be liberated, right? I mean, we're so liberated that to us 'liberated' is this hugely outdated word that makes us giggle. HAHAHA. We look smugly back at our parents' generation and think - poor them having to grow their hair to make a statement and having to fight these really obvious issues like racism and sexism. Our world is so much shinier. People are so much more tolerant. Yay us! While all the above may be true in general terms, I'd like to point out that where the PC learning of our youth left off, the narrow-minded views of the ages have taken over. For instance, in the area of ""young women"" and sex, I have recently discovered that we're all just a bunch of red-necked yahoos, scratching our privates and making grunting noises at the people we don't understand. If women want to have sex a lot, that should be fine. If women want to have sex a little, that should be fine, too. If women want to save sex for marriage, what's the
When Kale begins noticing that Joey is being more lenient on rules with Ethan who seems to be taking full advantage of the entire situation, she senses something is off and fishy about this whole scenario. With the help of Ross, she seeks to find out what Ethan is holding over their father and discovers something that Joey is both embarrassed and really passionate about. Meanwhile, Mary-E and Dalal are freaking out over the fact that Mila has convinced their parents to volunteer to help out with the school auction. They both believe that the differences in personalities and certain beliefs will cause their parents to clash with each other, which will lead to trouble for their relationship.
Kale's perspective, So I was turning eighteen finally after what seemed like years of waiting, and I wanted it to be special. I wanted to have some kind of rite of passage or even a symbol-- I dunno, something to show for the fact that I'd made it through to adulthood without stabbing my brother six times in the throat. So I told Malachi about it, and that turned out to be what I like to call a ""poor decision."" First he fed me shots that he and Mary-E made up from leftover bits from the liquor bottles in her recycling bin, I think. Then we partied all night, which normally would've been fun... But then the next morning I woke up mostly naked with a tattoo on my chest in a hotel room on the outskirts of town with a similarly tattooed stranger showering in the washroom. Then things kinda went downhill from there. Happy Birthday to me. So let's just say, after the birthday I had, I'm holding a wee grudge against my boyfriend, Malachi… O.K. a medium-sized grudge. O.K. a plus-sized gargantu
Kale attempts to confront her burdening fears and anxiety that has been amassing itself since she was a little kid by helping her new friend Rollins teach special needs kids to swim.
Kale's relationship with Malachi begins to crack and split apart at the seams as she lets him work with her on the zine. Meanwhile, Joey tells an inappropriate joke at his job, which has major repercussions for the entire Stiglic family. More detail in our recap
Ross and Kale who are both interested in Rollins set out on a quest to investigate whether he is straight or gay. Meanwhile, a very excited Ethan sells a joke that will air in the opening monologue of ""The Mike Bullard Show."" In the midst of all that is going on, Mila isn't feeling well. So Joey is the one who gets to prepare dinner, and he has something terrifying in mind. The Stiglic kids are going to once again have a taste of Dad's dreaded chili.
The end of school is drawing near, and the whole gang is planning to work on fixing up the cottage that Ross' grandparents had recently purchased so they could stay there for the summer. Their plans are brought to a screeching halt when Mr. & Mrs. Korolus reject the idea when their imagination enters into the realm of the unusual. Besides worrying with her friends about not being able to have a great summer vacation, Kale struggles to keep her family from tearing apart due to the lawsuit as pressure from the side of the secretary increases. Also, Mary E. and Kale are shocked to discover the person who is manipulating the people involved in the lawsuit for their own benefit. More detail in our recap
While making summer plans, Kale rediscovers the joys of life in her city.
