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You remember 1996, don't you? You remember slap bracelets and Pogs and AOL chatrooms and Two Goddamn Princes? The 90s were loving great, because we were out of the neoconservative hell fog of Reaganism and Thatcherism and becoming aware of a bigger reality to the world. We were broken and angsty, but we were hopeful, because we were making powerful advances in technology and communications and it felt like computers were going to save the world. To put it mildly, that ended up not happening...but it was cool. And we remember it being cool. Or at least, Netflix is betting we remember it being cool because we sure as hell remember that the 80s were cool. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hf_YjzEvYeQ Where Stranger Things drew its 80s pastiche from Spielberg films and Stephen King novels, with little dashes of Carpenter and Altered States for good measure, Everything Sucks!—created by Ben York Jones (Like Crazy) and Michael Mohan (Save the Date)—takes inspiration from far more innocent shows like The Wonder Years, My So-Called Life, and Freaks and Geeks. The setup is fairly typical: Luke and his friends are nerds who are just getting started in high school in their small town of Boring, Oregon—that's literally the name, people drive up to take pictures at the sign and then drive off. They've been making movies their whole life, so naturally they link up with the school's AV Club, where he's immediately smitten by school news camerawoman Kate, who's a year above him. However, Luke is immediately warned off her by the AV Club's advisor because she's the daughter of the school principal. But he seems to be a goofy kind of guy, too laid-back for his own good, so maybe he won't have to worry about that. As we find out at the end of the first episode...well, he's not wrong. I've only seen two episodes so far, and I'll tell you this right off the bat; when it comes to 90s nostalgia, they go real hard in the paint. It's not at the point where the dialogue is "Columbia House Hypercolor Oasis? Star Wars Special Editions! Seinfeld Friends Super Nintendo Clinton," but it'll be close enough for some of you guys. But if the show doesn't have any shame about what period it's set in, it also doesn't put on a whole lot of airs, and goes all in on building a stable of strong, lovable characters, a few of whom are already starting to show some subtle layers. It's off to a fantastic start, and based on that trailer and the reviews it's been getting, it's only getting better. If you guys have a Freaks & Geeks or My So-Called Life itch that needs to be scratched, try throwing this on; it just went up. Meanwhile, here's a reaction thread. High school dramedies that don't rely on obscene plot twists involving characters from a beloved comic don't get a lot of traffic in these parts, but do us a favor and spoiler-tag your posts until the end of the weekend anyway. Thanks, and enjoy! DivisionPost fucked around with this message at 12:34 on Feb 16, 2018 |
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Feb 16, 2018 11:23
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Episode 5: I don't want to overstate how great that "Rocketman" performance was, because it was such a small, delicate moment, but holy poo poo that was great.
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Feb 16, 2018 13:00
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