On Feb. 16, Netflix released “Everything Sucks!,” a show about a group of high schoolers in 1996.
For some people, high school can be the best four years of their lives, while others can’t wait for those four years to pass. It is like that now, and it was like that back in the 1990s.
Netflix’s new show “Everything Sucks!” takes this idea and runs with it. Instead of setting the show here in 2018, it takes place in Boring, Oregon in 1996 when cell phones didn’t exist, and computers were just being invented.
“Everything Sucks!” follows three incoming freshmen as they learn the ropes of Boring High School, making new friends and finding first loves. These three freshmen, Luke O’Neil (Jahi Di’Allo Winston), Tyler (Quinn Liebling), and McQuaid (Rio Mangini), decide to join the AV club to make friends and attempt to fit in. In AV club, Luke meets Kate Messner (Peyton Kennedy), the principal’s daughter. Luke immediately develops a crush on her and decides to ask her out by making a music video for Oasis’ “Wonderwall.”
She, of course, says yes as the video was aired for the whole school, but upon Luke’s first attempt to kiss her, Kate pulls the fire alarm in the school’s theatre, destroying it in the process. This elicits the wrath of Oliver (Elijah Stevenson) and Emaline (Sydney Sweeney), the drama club’s lead actors. To appease the actors, Luke and his friends suggest making a Sci-Fi Romance movie to allow the actors to do what they love while the theatre is under repairs.
All the while, the principal Ken Messner (Patch Darragh) develops a relationship with Luke’s mother, Sherry O’Neil (Claudine Mboligikpelani Nako). It is both awkward and adorable as the two adults’ relationship grows over mutual life experiences.
This television show is full of memories of the nineties. The students wear their hair gelled or hair sprayed and teased. Scrunchies hold ponytails in different positions on heads or hair is rolled into top knots. Jeans and fishnets cover legs while flannels and shoulder pads are repeat offenders on the students.
The technology is very nineties as well, as there were no cell phones, only landlines in homes. Video cameras can’t be held with one hand because they are bulky, and they produce their content on VHS tapes, not the DVDs or digital downloads taken for granted in 2018. Newly invented personal computers take up half the desk area and are very slow as they work to pull up the World Wide Web.
Another cute remnant of the past is the use of the morning announcements the AV club produces for the school’s population. News had to travel somehow when cell phones didn’t exist, and back then, there was mostly word-of-mouth.
Any music lover would love the use of nineties music. Alanis Morrissette, Weezer, Oasis, The Offspring, Elton John, Tori Amos, and Deep Blue Something are just a few of the big names used and loved by the high schoolers.
Anyone who ever attended high school could find at least one of the students to whom he or she can relate. Whether it’s the popular one or the shy, awkward one, many emotions of one’s high school career get resurrected while watching this Netflix original. There are cliques, bullying, and weird moments in the cafeteria among other beloved high school clichés.
The high schoolers’ journey to find themselves and who they are whether this means dropping out of high school to pursue other dreams or discovering first loves and maybe experiencing heartbreak along the way. This also could mean hiding who they truly believe themselves to be, especially as a lesbian couple knows that their relationship would be shamed and judged.
This ten-episode series, each episode running about 30 minutes each, is rated TV-14. There is drug use and some sexuality, as well as mild profanity. Anyone looking for a cute, lighthearted show about high schoolers finding their way can log into Netflix because “Everything Sucks!” definitely fits the bill.
