Evening Latte

• Year Premiered: 2018
• Number of Seasons/Episodes: 1/10
• Status: Cancelled

Everything Sucks! had been on my To Watch spreadsheet for a while. I added it after seeing it on some critic end of year favorites list back in 2018. It was a victim of the classic Netflix “green light everything, then cancel it if it’s not a smash hit” methodology, so it never got a second season.

First of all, I’m glad I now know what it’s like to be the near-exact target demo for a show.

• Went to junior high/high school in the ’90s: check
• Was notably socially awkward as a teenager: check
• Have embarrassed myself by doing a grandiose “Hollywood” gesture to get someone to go out with me: check (didn’t work)
• Had to figure out my queerness (asexuality, in my case) without a mentor or even a friend who could identify with my perspective: check
• Have lived near in northwest Oregon: I live in Portland and have been to several concerts at the Aladdin Theater where they shot the “Tori Amos” concert

The show is set in Boring, OR in 1996 and follows two groups of high schoolers who quickly join forces: the AV club and the drama club. The setup is frankly pretty flimsy: because a member of the AV club panics during a romantic encounter, they cause the drama club production of Uncle Vanya to be cancelled. The drama kids are understandably miffed, but the AV kids bring a peace offering and pitch collaborating on a movie. Making an premiering the movie is the framework for the rest of the show.

However, one of the highest compliments I can give the show is it’s far more about the characters than the setting/story. Luke is a freshman boy who is carrying a torch for an probably-unavailable sophomore girl while trying to find his identity/passion by flexing his creative muscles for the first real time. Kate is that sophomore girl who is figuring out her sexuality while burdened with both the “principal’s kid” label and Luke’s aggressive romantic pursuits. Each of them has one present parent and one absent parent, and the two who are around are surprisingly good characters who get their own subplot.

I can’t say enough about Peyton Kennedy’s performance as Kate. Jahi Di’Allo Winston’s Luke is the primary lens, but Kate’s scenes resonate more for me. In the first couple episodes, she radiates vulnerability and hesitation during every interaction, whether it’s with the boy who is pursuing her, her father attempting to keep a connection with his teenage daughter, or the girl she might be attracted to. Everything from her eyes to her posture shows someone who was uncomfortable simply existing. Watching her confidence and sense of self grow is my favorite part of the show.

Luke is both endearing and annoying, probably because he’s written a little more accurately. At times, he quickly swings from over-the-top exuberance to deep cynicism (in general) and resentment (mostly directed toward Kate and his mother). He does care for the people around him, but he’s often so focused on the things that are happening to him that he sort of loses his empathy. Granted, he is going through some stuff: his first romantic relationship is more confusing than most, his mother is gone for days at a time for her job, and he’s still processing being abandoned by his father.

Kate and Luke’s relationship is the center of the show, and almost everything else revolves around that in some way. This is mostly a good thing since the relationship evolves significantly throughout the show, but in the middle-to-late episodes, it gets a little formulaic: Luke gets really excited about something and becomes overbearing, Kate goes along with some reluctance while building resentment, Kate eventually confronts Luke about his behavior, they say mean things to each other and sulk for a while before making up. I understand that’s a pretty normal adolescent pattern, but I think it’s used one or two times too many.

Rounding out the cast are Luke’s stereotypically nerdy friends (Tyler, McQuaid) and the main two drama kids (Emaline, Oliver) who are in an appropriately dramatic teenage relationship. Emaline is probably the only name on the cast list you’ll immediately recognize: a pre-Euphoria Sydney Sweeney.

Tyler is a nerd of the spazz variety who retains his childlike enthusiasm and humor, often to his detriment. There are a few lines that suggest he might have a learning disorder, but it’s never actually called out. McQuaid is more of the reserved, socially awkward nerd type that is now pretty widely acknowledged to be someone on the autistic spectrum. Leslie runs sound for the AV club and mostly plays for light comedy until the end of the season.

Luke’s mother, Sherry (Claudine Mboligikpelani Nako) and Kate’s father, Ken (Patch Darragh) are much more rounded adult characters than we normally get in teenage coming of age stories (overbearing father, mother who wants to live through her daughter, artificially naive, etc.). Both are single parents, and the show spends a decent amount of time exploring the difficulties of balancing their grief over lost partners, their pursuit of happiness, and the responsibilities of being parents of teenagers who are also dealing with significant loss. Ken in particular breaks way out of the stereotypical bumbling father routine shown in the first episode.

A fun meta thing is the kids trying to make a movie on a high school AV club budget within a show that seemed to be made with not much more. There are no big names (again, pre-Euphoria Sydney Sweeney), the sets and cinematography are very simple, and the sound (especially outdoors) is far from clean. But none of it is noticeable enough to be distracting, and lot of it probably feels more natural because of the parallels with the main story.

The “this show is set in the ’90s” winks are near-constant, including holding shots a little longer on iconic items of the era like a can of Surge (multiple times) and a Sony Discman. Luke, Tyler, and McQuaid get together to watch MST3K. There is a Cornholio reference. Someone connects to the internet using a dial-up model, complete with handshake sounds. I have to shout out Kate and Luke’s bedrooms specifically:

• Posters for Mallrats, Jonathan Taylor Thomas, and Rider Strong, Tori Amos, and Fiona Apple.
• VHS copies of Wayne’s World, ET, Hook, Space Camp, House Party 3, Sixteen Candles, and First Blood.
• Multiple poster-sized collages with words and pictures cut out of magazines
• A huge CD boombox that I assume was a Magnavox or Sony.

As noted, the show was unexpectedly cancelled. Things I assume were going to pay off in later seasons (minor spoilers):

• Tyler becoming morose because he feels all his friends have abandoned him to pursue girls and he was excluded from meaningful involvement in the movie-making process.
• Oliver abruptly leaving for New York halfway through the season.
• McQuaid feeling betrayed by Emaline.

Because this is a high school show that strongly identifies with a specific era, tries to be something more than a sitcom, and was cancelled after one season, the obvious comparison is Freaks and Geeks. However, that’s a little unfair since Everything Sucks! has a total runtime of just over 4 hours and Freaks and Geeks clocks in at a little over 13. That means Judd Apatow and a ridiculously talented cast had three times as much screen time to get into the nuances of their characters and tell more and longer stories. Everything Sucks! naturally has a much faster pace, isn’t as deep, and outside of a handful of scenes, has a much more lighthearted vibe.

But that same 4-hour runtime makes the show an easy recommendation and watch. I normally avoid binging shows, but all episode are between 22 and 27 minutes (with Netflix credits), so if you’re snowed in or sick, you could easily burn through the whole series in a day or two. But as always, I think most people will enjoy/remember it more if they watch at a slower pace.