Reaching HIGHER GROUND.

Jenipher confessed to me yesterday that she did something really, really embarassing over the weekend. While she and her husband were out, their TiVo, programmed to catch anything Hayden Christiansen is in, "accidentally" recorded a marathon of every episode of this old, cancelled FOX Family show called HIGHER GROUND.

It's apparently a Canadian family drama featuring Joe Lando from DR. QUINN: MEDICINE WOMAN as the head of a Christian boot camp facility that takes in misfit kids. Our hero, Hayden, plays the main misfit, a drug abuser with a secret past and an attitude.

Now, first of all, I don't know why Jenipher wants anything and everything featuring Hayden Christiansen TIVO'ed in the first place, but I was not at all surprised when Jenipher told me that she had not deleted the 30-odd episodes. Instead, she started watching them during her daily treadmill workout, pleased by the soapy nature of the show and its innate Canadian flair, and now she's addicted. The whole thing sounds like DEGRASSI-gone-awry.

"I love how everyone on the show is supposed to be a smoker, but the makers of the show don't want to show kids smoking cigarettes on TV," she told me yesterday. "Thus, everyone's beginning the act of smoking. The cigarettes are in their mouths, but they're unlit. Or someone's about to light a cigarette. But the show's too wholesome to show anyone actually smoke."

She e-mailed me this latest episode synopsis, which barely makes sense:

Hayden (Glue Sniffer/Acid Tripper/Sith Lord) confessed to That Guy From “Dr. Quinn” that he was a victim of sexual abuse by his hot stepmom. He whined and cried incessantly, then threatened to beat up every other student when they looked at or talked to his slutty girlfriend, Druggie/Almost Smoker Who Never Lights Up On TV. Bulimic grew closer to Stereotypical Mexican Who Used To Be In A Gang And Is Now The Only Minority At The Whole School, and they made out in the janitor’s closet. Suicidal Goth Girl remained depressed and in love with ‘Shroom Eater/Bleach Sniffer, who almost drowned when he fell out of a kayak. In the end, everyone learned an important life lesson and remained very, very Canadian.

Jenipher admitted that she found Hayden very cute but said she felt wrong about it, for he's so young.

"I feel so wrong, like I feel like his stepmom on that show," Jenipher admitted. "I mean, I was watching it, thinking, 'Oh, Hayden, I want to be your incestuous stepmom.'"

It's all very PAX-TV. I think Jenipher misses her 90210 fix.