'Everything Sucks!' brilliantly tackles topics that '90s shows never could
Everything Sucks! starts like a dozen other series about '90s teens coming of age in high school, rattling off trope after trope, but quickly reveals itself as something much more daring — more daring than any show could've gotten away with being in the '90s.
Everything Sucks! is a new sort-of comedy, sort-of drama series on Netflix about a group of 1996 teens figuring out who they are and who they love at Boring High School in Boring, Oregon (a real town). And yes, everything does in fact suck most of the time, but peppered throughout the series are glimmers of hope and moments of growth that make the show so satisfying to keep watching.
The show is unmistakably set in 1996, a fact that the show continuously reminds you of in not-so-subtle ways, using classic '90s tropes in its characters and some of its storylines along with a near endless supply of references and name-drops that are quintessential to the mid-'90s.
The start of the first episode of Everything Sucks! feels like a show that's trying too hard to be a '90s show and not doing enough to make itself stand out. Three nerdy boys join the A/V club in their freshman year of high school, and one boy, Luke O'Neil (Jahi Di'Allo Winston) ends up crushing on an sophomore girl, Kate Messner (Peyton Kennedy) who happens to be the principal's daughter. Womp womp. Meanwhile, the kids in theater club are doing their overdramatic theater thing and being the coolest kids in school.
But it's quickly revealed that Kate is a lesbian who is struggling with coming out about her identity and is being bullied by Emaline (Sydney Sweeney), a theater girl she has a crush on. On top of that, Kate's mother died from suicide recently and her dad/principal is having a hard finding happiness and a healthy new relationship.
Luke is dealing with his own (somewhat lesser) problems too, namely trying to understand his absentee father and find his place in life while falling for a girl who will never like him the way he likes her.
The other characters in the show — members of the A/V club and theater club — evolve from two-dimensional tropes into fleshed out and (mostly) endearing characters. Emaline in particular grows from a particularly insufferable teen into a kinder, romantic person who just needed to forget about her old boyfriend.
The relationships that develop between almost every character on the show (it wouldn't be a coming of age show without that, right?) are equal parts infatuating and awkward to watch. In a good way. There's the obvious awkwardness between Kate and Luke, even after Kate opens up to him, but the best awkwardness lies in the spark between their parents, Ken and Sherry.
Everything Sucks! lingers on that awkwardness just long enough to make the payoffs, whether good or bad, so satisfying.
Amidst the drama is healthy dose of comedy pretty specific to being a teen, like when a group of A/V and theater kids look up how to get high on dial-up internet and end up eating a bunch of nutmeg in the woods. Or the great-in-a-bad-way movie that the kids make in lieu of a theater production.
But at the end of the day, before the title card shows up at the end of every episode, everything goes back to sucking again with some new horrible development. It never disappoints, and keeps getting better and better every episode in the best and worst ways.
Everything Sucks! is now streaming on Netflix.
Topics Netflix
