Speaking to us from the vantage point of having already endured “the shit” going down, there’s something very Easy A about the intro moments to Senior Year, during which Stephanie Conway (Rebel Wilson) goes on Instagram Live to explain her tale of woe. Or, more specifically, how she came to be so obsessed with popularity and status, even at the age of thirty-seven when she ought to have gotten over it by now.
In her defense, of course, she woke up from a twenty-year coma after landing with a thud during a flip at the pep rally back in 2002. The year she was supposed achieve her crowning goal of becoming prom queen as a senior. Now, she’s slightly more on the senior side no one wants to broach as she sits in her room, still decorated in the same millennial décor (that means beaucoup de Britney, obviously) from when she was in high school the first time, about to deliver her Instagram Live message.
“Okay, here we go,” she says, as we cut to 1999 and Bloodhound Gang’s “The Bad Touch” starts playing over scenes of the “coolest” place to be when Stephanie was fourteen: the bowling alley (Rock n’ Bowl). She continues, “When I moved to the U.S., I knew fitting in was gonna be hard.” So it is that she establishes where her initial fixation with being popular came from, already possessing an insecurity about fitting in because she wasn’t American. And in teen millennial time, being foreign—no matter how white that foreignness—was decidedly “uncool,” especially thanks to the Bush administration. Had Stephanie attended school as a Gen Zer, her popularity likely would have been secured entirely by her “foreignness”—what with everything non-American being seen as objectively superior in the present moment. Even “the world’s Florida,” Australia.
As Stephanie tries her best to have a good time with her “only” two friends, Seth Novacelik (Zaire Adams, later played by Sam Richardson) and Martha Reiser (Molly Brown, later played by Mary Holland), she can’t help but look over wistfully at the puka shell necklace and Abercrombie-wearing likes of Blaine Balbo (Tyler Barnhardt, later played by Justin Hartley) and his puta shell girlfriend, Tiffany Blanchette (Ana Yi Puig, later played by Zoë Chao). Bold enough to ask them if they want to join her “party,” Tiffany tells her it’s not a party, it’s a freak show. Just one of many cases in point of how bullying was very alive and well during the 00s despite the present millennial reputation for being “woke.” Some (boomers) would argue they only are because of all the abuse they suffered in their youth. Because that “builds character” and “empathy,” n’est-ce pas?
In any case, after that slight from Tiffany (the perfect late 90s/00s name for a bitch), Stephanie is forced to go back to her glamorless friend duo and keep lusting from afar as she ruminates, “If they were this amazing in high school, imagine how perfect the rest of their lives would be.” Clearly, she never watched Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion. Back in her room, she continues to muse, “I hated thinking that life wasn’t for me. That I was destined to be just some average, boring, invisible girl who had no friends.” Once again, she seems not to comprehend that, in “those days” (and even still), being average and boring was ultimately the prerequisite for being popular person material. Whereas in the present, a uniformity exists in being as “different” as possible, de facto rendering “weird” a new normal.
Other “parallel universe” signs of this era sharing similarities to the 00s occurs when Stephanie, after conditioning herself to be “cool” through taking the advice of a series of teen magazine articles, proceeds to snap infinite “selfies” (still not coined as a word) in the way of Polaroids that end up on her bed next to her Discman. For yes, director Alex Hardcastle (known for Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and Grace and Frankie) and co-screenwriters Andrew Knauer, Arthur Pielli and Brandon Scott Jones (best known for his writing on The Other Two) are very attentive to “time capsule” details. Not just in set design and props (e.g. a copy of the ubiquitous-in-the-00s Infinite Jest on the table or Stephanie’s dad working at Blockbuster), but also in dialogue like, “Oh my God Seth, did you Fatone your hair? It looks so good.” Later in the movie, Seth will hold a copy of H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine, possibly wishing he had his own to go back and not dye his hair in that manner.
The obsession with appearance in the 00s was, believe it or not, perhaps even more absurd than it is in the present, even with social media at one’s fingertips to help constantly curate. For at least there’s been a mild push toward “keeping it real” with the #nofilter claim. As for millennials like Stephanie, they were instead indoctrinated with articles that featured titles like, “3 Pounds Is the Difference Between Hot and Obese” (there’s a reason Regina George wanted to lose three pounds, after all). With this constant propaganda flying off the shelves back when magazines could actually sell in a tangible format, it’s no wonder millennials are still deprogramming from all that inculcation. One that fucked many a body image for years to come. But Stephanie is met with the most shocking body image of all when she lands in a coma after Tiff instructs two fellow cheerleaders to sabotage her routine by not catching her after her flip.
The result is twenty years lost. As well as a segue into a plot reminiscent of 1999’s Never Been Kissed starring Drew Barrymore as Josie Geller, the woman who must go back to high school to do an undercover assignment for the publication she works at. Unlike Stephanie, however, she’s far more reluctant to go back because she didn’t have a very good time there. A sentiment echoed by Stephanie’s friend, Martha, when she notes, “This may come as a shock to you, but for most kids, high school sucks.” So, in contrast to Josie, Stephanie is not only immediately put on blast for her overt age, but wants to go back to fully dominate as she always felt she was destined to. Even if it’s hard to achieve such a feat when, among the big shocks to her regarding the passage of time since her “heyday,” is that you can’t say “retarded” or “gay” anymore (at least, not in the tone that indicates being a synonym for “stupid” or “lame”). Or “spaz,” as Lizzo learned, though Tiffany freely tells Stephanie in 2002, “You’re just a poor spaz playing dress up.”
But the sting of what Tiffany said to her all those years ago—“I’m MTV, and you’re VH1. I’m the real deal, and you’re a poser”—regarding her ability to claim the prom queen title continues to plague Stephanie. And with Martha now the principal at Harding High, she’s able to reenter with relative ease. For, just as Janis Ian had a plan to take down Regina, so does Stephanie have one to take down Tiffany by seeking what should have been hers in the first place. That plan is: 1) Get back in school 2) Be cheer captain 3) Get friends (soon changed to “Get followers”) 4) Be popular.
As she learns the “new rules” (like Dua said) of what it means to be “in,” she focuses on the latest edition of Tiffany: her daughter. Bri (Jade Bender)—short for Britney Jean—is the most followed “influencer” at Harding High, therefore the person with the most clout. She, like Martha and the rest of the Gen Zers, are opposed to “competing” in the way millennials were once used to. Conversely, this generation has ostensibly embraced the Tall Poppy Syndrome approach by making sure everyone feels “special” via offering no acknowledgment of specialness whatsoever. But of course, Gen Z has merely gotten sneakier about self-aggrandizement than millennials ever were. As sardonically emphasized in dialogue (from Bri) like, “I don’t really think about popularity. I’m just trying to build my most authentic, socially conscious, body positive, environmentally aware and economically compassionate brand that’s a home for inclusion, focused fashion, food and fun-filled lifestyles. And if tons of people respond to that, then great.” Naturally, the dead giveaway of the filmmakers’ ages in this is the total absence of TikTok at any point, with all reliance for “prestige” being gleaned through Instagram.
Nonetheless, Bri is passive aggressively ageist herself (because we all know Gen Z sees their generational forebear as “ancient” at present) when she makes an introduction to Stephanie. She then takes an “ussie” with the millennial curiosity and then traipses over to her own respective lunch table. When a Gossip Girl-esque “blast” goes off in the form of @OfficialBriLuvs making an Instagram Live post, Stephanie is still unaccustomed to such technological marvels (“What is that? Fire drill? Robot invasion?”) as she suddenly sees Bri on a phone screen saying, “Hey guys, we have a new student at Harding High and she’s older than us. And I wanna remind everyone around the world that treating someone differently because they’re elderly is called ageism.”
The image of the “ussie” then shows up onscreen next to the phone Stephanie is holding with the caption, “Don’t discriminate against the elderly” with the salt in wound hashtags: #elderly #comavictim #outoftouch. In a moment that truly echoes what Regina George said to Aaron Samuels about Cady Heron (“I know she’s kind of socially retarded [that millennial word of choice again] and weird, but she’s my friend, so just promise me you won’t make fun of her”), Bri adds, “No matter how weird or foreign or out of touch they may seem.”
But Stephanie certainly isn’t so out of touch as to pick up on the generally sexless vibe of Gen Z existence, agreeing to go along with a cheer that recites, “C-O-N-S-E-N-T. I don’t touch you and you don’t touch me.” But every time Stephanie thinks she can fully get on board with Gen Z life, she has to let her millennial freak flag fly. Which is why she convinces the rest of the cheer squad to transition into some sexual choreo to the tune of Saweetie’s “Fast (Motion).” See? Staying sonically relevant despite a consistent devotion to Britney (complete with a fantasy dance sequence wherein she re-creates the video for “[You Drive Me] Crazy”).
Thus, Stephanie can’t quite get on board with the notion of “consent,” still being mentally trapped in a pre-#MeToo era. But one thing that millennials will always do best is the art of meta. That’s why Alicia Silverstone—the high school queen Cher Horowitz herself in Clueless—makes a cameo as former prom queen Deanna Russo, now Stephanie’s Lyft driver. As they get to talking, she assures her that she never had the “perfect life.” Something Stephanie automatically assumed every time she drove by Deanna’s perfect house in high school and saw her hot husband kiss her before leaving for work. For even in analog times, the projection of a false image was easy to give off without social media. Confessing to getting divorced before thirty and having no practical skills or job prospects, Deanna also adds, “For the first time in my life, I’m excited for the future, instead of holding onto the past.” As is the tendency with many peak-too-soon types.
Stephanie must also learn the lesson that she has to stop telling the people who love her the most that they don’t count when, as her father reminds, “They are the only ones that count.” This, of course, refers to Seth and Martha, who serve as Stephanie’s version of Janis and Damian to Cady in Mean Girls. But don’t mistake Stephanie’s parallel to Cady for inferring that she’s going to split her prom queen crown into multiple pieces and share it with the rest of the crowd (an act that, by the way, was very prescient of Gen Z behavior). Indeed, it’s fortunate that Stephanie went into a coma before Mean Girls came out in 2004 or she might have had a coronary over that scene.
In any event, Stephanie is won over by Gen Z and their new-fangled methods for “receiving and accepting love” (as well as practicing self-love). And that’s when Stephanie realizes that her second tour of high school has been far more valuable and meaningful than the first. Revealing the major aspect of why she does a one-eighty on her former obsession with popularity in the live apology by announcing, “Fuck being popular, fuck being cool.” An offshoot of her subsequent question, “Why fit in when you can stand out?” A query that doesn’t seem to fathom that “standing out” is the new fitting in. Nonetheless, she admires Gen Z’s ability to have the confidence to be their “authentic selves” when millennials never could, asserting that’s precisely what she’s going to do after twenty years, plus an entire adolescence spent fixating on all the most detrimental “pursuits.”
Her full-circle moment of growth comes when Tiffany knocks on her door to apologize for the years of abuse (but only because Bri won’t unblock her until she does), sort of like Cady going to Regina’s to “suck out all the poison.” Stephanie, now a wise honorary Gen Zer, replies, “There’s enough room for all of us. We don’t need to fight with each other.” But her old millennial ways flare up again when she flips Tiffany off right after that. Because, let’s be frank, there’s a little millennial in all of us when it comes to pettiness and narcissism. Just ask Anna Delvey.
