EW critic Darren Franich’s take on Netflix’s new series ‘Everything Sucks!’
Freshman Luke (Jahi DiAllo Winston) has a crush on sophomore Kate (Peyton Kennedy).
Theyre both in AV Club; shes taller than him and is the principals daughter.
Credit: Scott Patrick Green/Netflix
Hes a teen film buff from the last age when a teen couldonlycare about movies.
He owns aMallratsposter, but also aCabinet of Dr. CaligariT-shirt.
He curates his videotape collection the way the next centurys kids curate their digital lives.
Lukes not subtle.Everything Sucks!isnt either, at the start.
All ten episodes ofEverything Sucks!stream on Netflix this Friday.
The first few feel off, like a colorful xerox over-faxed into monochrome fuzz.
Creators Ben York Jones and Michael Mohan were teenagers in the 90s, like me.
But that doesnt make any of us experts, and I sense a lack of specificity here.
Deep Blue Something,Ace Ventura, It makesSpecieslook likeFern Gully!
More damaging is the feeling that high school itself is a little synthetic.
Were in spoofville, and you feel youre watching a less-nastyNot Another Teen Movie.
Pleasant surprise:Everything Sucks!has one of the best new characters on television.
(Ah, the glory days of print!)
You start to feel something a little insidious in Lukes lovesick puppy act.
And youre aware that, circa 1996, Kate has no obvious path to follow.
Every teenager feels like a freak, but Kates navigating real fear in her self-realization.
another girl ask-insults Kate when she catches her looking in the locker room, and then the gossip swirls.
Kennedys performance is wonderful, introverted, and yearning.
Shes cool, confused, smart but un-precocious.
Theres a moment midway through the season when Kate goes to a Tori Amos concert.
She notices two women kissing on the balcony; the camera lingers in close-up on her face.
She smiles, realizing for maybe the first time that this world was built for her, too.
Whenever the show shifts attention to Kate, it becomes much better.
But there are other delights.
The nominal big plot of the season focuses on an alliance between the AV Club and the Drama crew.
They work together to make a science-fiction movie, fully of janky special effects.
So theres a vanilla quality to some of the teen interactions.
Even the shocking, period-specific casual homophobia recedes.
ImagineDariaremade with Disney kids
But some of those kids kids are all right!
The drama-club stars are Oliver (Elijah Stevenson) and Emaline (Sydney Sweeney.)
Hes the dreamboat with great hair and a bad attitude imported from young Ethan Hawkes most annoyingly sexy performances.
And Sweeney (soon to be inThe Handmaids TaleandSharp Objects) is a real revelation, half-swagger and half-desperation.
Kennedy and Sweeney locate a sensitive naturalism in their performances.
Stevensons over the top in the right way.
Some of the other young performers veer cartoonish.
ButEverything Sucks!gets trickier as it goes.
I can already hear the last song: Blink-182, Going Away to College.B
