Today on my day off I was doing a Netflix and Chill and came across this show called Everything Sucks! all about the ’90s and if you know me at all then you know I love anything ’90s related.

Everything Sucks! is an American comedy-drama web television series created by Ben York Jones and Michael Mohan that parodies teen culture of the mid-1990s. Ten half-hour episodes were ordered by Netflix and the series was released on February 16, 2018. The series is set in the real-life town of Boring, Oregon in 1996, and focuses on a group of teenagers who attend the fictional Boring High School as they proceed to make a movie together while dealing with issues such as dating and sexuality.

Basically if you have ever watched My So-Called Life or Freaks & Geeks it’s kind of a combination of both of those shows.

Everything Sucks! is about a boy named Luke O’ Neil and his friends McQuid and Tyler who are freshmen at Boring High School in Boring, Oregon. Luke falls for a girl in AV club named Kate Messner who is the principles daughter. For the first few episodes Luke tries to get closer to Kate and even makes a cute video of him and his friends acting all these different ’90s music videos just so he can ask her out and then shows it to the whole school. When Kate agrees to go out with Luke he is so excited. Sadly a rumor starts to form around school that Kate is a lesbian after she touches one of the drama club girl’s Emaline Addario boob. So Kate uses Luke as her fake boyfriend to stop the rumor and they go out for a few weeks. During this time Luke falls more and more in love with Kate even taking her to see her favorite artist Tori Amos. But sadly Kate tells Luke she just can’t reciprocate his feelings because she is a lesbian. During all of this Kate pulls the fire alarm in the auditorium and ruins the drama clubs set for the spring play & Luke takes the blame for her. Because of this Emaline and her boyfriend Oliver Schermerhorn start to harass the A/V club. So one day they decided to stand up for themselves against the drama club and in turn tell them that the Drama and A/V club team up to make a school movie. Lots of funny drama happens and in the end the movie gets made. While all of this is going on Luke’s mom and Kate’s dad end up hanging out and then falling in love much the dismay of Luke who is trying to figure out more about his father who left some video tapes of a video diary.

The thing I liked about this show the most was the lead was a cute little black boy and his mom. In most slice of life shows they don’t usually feature a black lead unless it has to do with race. In this story it just has to do with family, love and friendship and his race has nothing to do with it. Yes most of the rest of the cast is white but if you can look past that then it’s a cute cast. But I did like the relationship Luke and his mom had since there was no dad in the picture (they even have a cute handshake).

Also I commend this show for showing a girl exploring her sexuality in the ’90s when except for My So-Called Life there wasn’t any real representation of LGBTQIA+ people back then.

Then the main two relationships of the show are interracial.

I personally love all the ’90s trops in the show because well I just love the ’90s and what a great time it was. It was cool beans, phat and all that and a bag of chips lol (when ever they said all those phrase I was taken right back to being 5 years old again). I also liked the way they used video to tell this story was great too. Even in the ’90s making videos was a thing even if it was low quilty and took a long time.

Now as much as I like this show I also find that most of the side characters get no love. At the end of the season while everyone else ends up happy Luke’s best friends walk away miserable. Plus it feels they didn’t fully flesh out most of the characters outside of Luke, Kate and their parents. One of the characters who at first you thought was really nerdy and smart was nerdy and needed some help in school and I think they could of expanded more on that. It also would of been nice if they showed the other characters family lives which hopefully they will do in season 2. I also thought that the trop of the black kid with the dead beat dad was a little bit of a sterotype even though his dad was white and they came from a small town.

 

Now as always I gotta talk about the music of a show. In this show they mostly use alt-rock to tell the story of this show. Oasis who’s last album came out in ’96 was a staple of Luke and Kate. Also Alanis Morissette is talked about a lot in the show and Kate’s favorite artist is Tori Amos. When ever something big happens in the show a different song plays to represent it. Even when Kate’s dad is falling for Luke’s mom he sings that Breakfeast at Tiffany’s song.

Over all this wasn’t too bad of a show. If your into slice of life drama/comedys about the ’90s, wanna releave your teenage/childhood or didn’t grow up in the ’90s and wanna know what it was like check it out. I think you’ll get a kick out of it. It will be interseting to see what they do with season 2.

Well Until Next Time…Peace Out!