The basics: Everything Sucks! is a high school dramedy that is set in the mid-90's and is jam-packed with nostalgia. Between all the references to technology, doodads, lingo, and the AWESOME soundtrack, the show makes sure to never let you forget what decade it is. It deals with some common themes (peer pressure, parental-teenager relationships, and cliques), and tackles others in a less-conventional (for TV) way (faculty-student interactions and [unrelated] sexuality). The setting is the town of "Boring, Oregon", which is something of an ironic running joke.
Truth be told, I haven't seen too many high school shows that didn't feature a laugh track. The Wonder Years and Malcolm in the Middle sort of qualify, but they were both arguably at their best when their main characters were in middle school. Glee suffered from getting progressively more ridiculous as time went on and also from using actors that would have had to flunk for about a decade to be considered "high schoolers". That last bit also applies to Friday Night Lights, but that show was so superb that the use of inappropriately-aged actors was but a minor distraction. Finally, there's Freaks and Geeks, which many consider to be the gold standard for high school shows. I guess you might say that I'm no connoisseur of the genre, particularly since I have not seen many of the critically-acclaimed shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer or My So-Called Life.
Still, Freaks and Geeks has a lot in common with Everything Sucks!, and I think that many will find the two shows comparable on plenty of levels. Both shows are set in a time period decades prior to their production. Both do a far better job of utilizing actors that look like they could actually pass for high school kids, which is actually a pretty damn big deal when you're trying to draw characters that seem relatable. And finally, both of them are excellent at cutting to the core of the adolescent psyche and showing reactions to life's problems (both the exaggerated kind and the serious kind) in a way that's completely understandable to someone who has moved on from that particularly confusing stage of life.
Everything Sucks! has two fantastic characters leading its ensemble in Jahi Winston's Luke and Peyton Kennedy's Kate. Luke is about as independent as a well-adjusted teenage kid can be; his dad ran out when he was seven and his mom is a flight attendant who's frequently away for days at a time (I particularly enjoyed Luke's joke about using a fake mustache to trick child protective services). Despite his confidence and proficiency at "adulting" that would be the envy of many a 24-year-old, Luke is still a 14-year-old kid, prone to letting the emotions of difficult situations get in the way of his better judgment and blind him to the way his actions affect others.
Luke joins the AV Club in his second week of school and meets Kate, to whom he immediately takes a liking. Kate is generally reserved and somewhat uncomfortable with attention, in part because she's the principal's daughter. Kennedy's the best of all the actors on the show, and her brooding, often cold mannerisms make for outstanding (and often heart-warming) moments when Kate smiles, laughs, or shows any sort of animation.
Luke's best friends are Tyler and McQuaid, whom at first seemed like surface-level replicas of Freaks and Geeks' Neal and Bill before the show developed a sense of what to do with them. The primary plot line of the season involves Kate, Luke, McQuaid and Tyler joining forces with the drama club (who are interestingly painted as the "cool kids" for the first few episodes before the show begins to essentially ignore high school's social pecking order) to create a movie. The lead actors of the drama club, Oliver and Emaline, reveal themselves to be more than just the stuck-up jerks they were at first and even develop surprising relationships with Tyler and McQuaid.
The principal, Ken, is also given a pretty interesting role and the show explores the complications involved with being both Kate's father and an authority figure at the school. Ken's wife has been dead for years and he's initially (okay, perpetually) painted as a dweeby dude whose lameness holds him back until by chance he gets another shot at love, and much of the season is spent watching him fight for that genuine feeling of happiness to match his oft-artificial cheery disposition.
The show is an incredibly quick watch; Season One has ten 23-minute episodes and you could cruise through the whole thing in the time it takes a playoff baseball game to reach the 8th inning (zing). I'm not much of a binge watcher (I start to get antsy after watching two consecutive episodes of almost any show), but Everything Sucks! was addictive (and digestible) enough to regularly disrupt my regular Cheers-watching schedule. The show is compelling enough for the first few episodes before it finds itself and the back half was too much fun for me to go to bed and save it for the next day. There's no shortage of show recommendations being hurled at people these days, so sorry for adding one to the list.
Season Grade: A-
The show is an incredibly quick watch; Season One has ten 23-minute episodes and you could cruise through the whole thing in the time it takes a playoff baseball game to reach the 8th inning (zing). I'm not much of a binge watcher (I start to get antsy after watching two consecutive episodes of almost any show), but Everything Sucks! was addictive (and digestible) enough to regularly disrupt my regular Cheers-watching schedule. The show is compelling enough for the first few episodes before it finds itself and the back half was too much fun for me to go to bed and save it for the next day. There's no shortage of show recommendations being hurled at people these days, so sorry for adding one to the list.
Season Grade: A-
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