Because nostalgia is at such a premium in the present era of wanting to escape into the past when it is not merely one’s imagination that “things were better then,” Netflix continues to try its hand at something that has worked very well for it of late: going back in time. Of course, one of its most successful shows, Stranger Things, takes place against a period backdrop integral to its narrative: the 1980s. And so, can anyone blame Everything Sucks! co-creators Ben York Jones and Michael Mohan for perhaps wanting to cash in on a formula that not only seemed foolproof, but also allowed for the opportunity to include a greater chance for the problems that a surfeit of technology has alleviated (e.g. having to use a pay phone instead of a smartphone to smoke signal your parent for a ride from the Tori Amos concert that you snuck out to see in Portland)?
With credits that even go so far as to mimic the My So-Called Life font, Everything Sucks! quickly establishes to its viewers that this is 1996 (the first episode commencing specifically on September 27), and in the Pacific Northwestern town of Boring, Oregon, the 90s are very much at their zenith, pop culturally and tonally. That Oregon was the site of key moments in grunge and alt rock is not lost on the viewer, nor are the many other ways in which Jones and Mohan choose to drive home the point that this show is very much contingent on the decade that it is set in–from “subtle” cuts to Surge cans and mentions of Jolt to one of the closeted lesbian protagonists’ cliche obsessions with the aforementioned Amos.
Jones, who previously wrote the screenplay for 2011’s Like Crazy, also makes an appearance as the overseer of the AV club, a Judah Friedlander type by the name of Stargrove that, in one of the most admittedly comical scenes of the series, looks as though he might jump out the window while driving his students in a short bus down to Dominguez Rocks with a cassette of Ace of Base’s “Beautiful Life” as the only source of music to fill the silence on repeat.
The central character of Everything Sucks!, Luke O’Neil (Jahi Di’Allo Winston), is a freshman just entering Boring High School (yes, set in real life Boring, Oregon). As is the usual model (per the Freaks and Geeks/Stranger Things trope), he has two fellow dweebs for best friends named Tyler (Quinn Liebling) and McQuaid (Rio Mangini), and is the first among them to try his hand at a relationship with a girl and succeed (well, somewhat). The girl in question, however, is Kate Messner (Peyton Kennedy), and just so happens to be the sophomore daughter of the principal, Ken Messner (Patch Darragh). Unfortunately for Luke, this isn’t the most complicated aspect of having a crush on her. As drama club drama queen Emaline (Sydney Sweeney) soon finds out with a little locker room torment, Kate is very obviously more same sex-oriented.
Try as she might to conceal it, her apparent fixation with gawking at Emaline’s body can’t be controlled. Getting a bit ahead of themselves, the hair and makeup team also decked Emaline out in full Gwen Stefani bun hair and bindi when that look wasn’t really solidified for her until her 1997 appearance at the Billboard Music Awards. In the interim of this budding romance between Emaline and Kate, Luke has started watching VHS tapes his since dipped out father, Leroy (Zachary Ray Sherman), made for his viewing pleasure that he’s only just now had the will to watch (this will also establish the opportunity for a requisite scene at Blockbuster). And yet, this is the extent of “complexity” in the characters of Everything Sucks!: they have a single parent–which, yeah, was a big part of being a latchkey kid in the 90s, but began long ago in the 70s and therefore really isn’t all that pitiable or helpful to the cause of empathizing with a protagonist. Other than that, Everything Sucks! relies solely on its “clever” references to the decade, as is the case with Luke making an extremely nauseating music video that splices together all the visuals from major videos of the time, including Alanis Morissette’s “Ironic” and Blind Melon’s “No Rain,” all as a means to ask Kate out over the morning broadcast bulletin (co-starring Scott Pocket [Connor Muhl], whose name was designed solely for the purpose of making Hot Pocket jokes).
While there are glimmers of what could make Everything Sucks! more worthwhile as a show separate from its relation to period, it is much too preoccupied with being allusive to the 90s to fully develop depth-laden characters. Cootie catchers, troll dolls, Doritos bags, slap bracelets, hackey sack players and Ring Pops would all be great for adding rich details to a narrative that’s already captivating to begin with, but, in the end, Everything Sucks! cannot stand on the leg of the 90s alone. If it wants to up its plot density, it better do it quickly in season two, or it might be just another forgotten pop culture blip, like Clone High.
