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I used to think only death came for us all, but now I know, so do the unrelenting waves of nostalgia.
I kid, but watching the first episode of Netflix’s new ’90s-set teen dramedy Everything Sucks! did get me thinking. I found myself ruminating about mortality, aging, and how looking backwards is a huge part of how American teens grow up. These thoughts were only amplified by meeting the show’s young stars at a recent Netflix press day. Peyton Kennedy, Jahi Winston, Quinn Liebling, Rio Mangini, Sydney Sweeney, and Elijah Stevenson were all exuberant and effervescent. They giddily talked about the show and how they had been enlisted to snap photos with, get this, ’90s-style disposable cameras.
Sweeney explained to one reporter, “So we each got little disposable cameras on set and we would just take pictures. We also had little camcorders and we would tape everyone behind the scenes.”
Liebling said it was also part of a low-fi social media campaign: “They used the photos that we took for the Instagram photos.” By that, he means, they created old school collages with the cast’s physical photos, digitized them, and uploaded them on Instagram. If that sounds circuitous, rest assured the results are also incredibly cute.
By its nature, Everything Sucks! is a show that forces then to collide with now. The show follows a group of lovable AV and drama club dorks growing up in 1996 Boring, Oregon. Jahi Winston’s character, Luke, is a sweet freshman who finds himself falling head over heels for sophomore Kate (Peyton Kennedy). The twist is that Kate is exploring her own burgeoning feelings for other girls. The coming-of-age ensemble deals with first crushes, teen drama, and the quest to figure out one’s place in the world. It’s pretty universal stuff, but every scene is punctured with over-the-top references to ’90s pop culture. The soundtrack in particular sometimes feels like an homage to Oasis’s Greatest Hits. It’s kind of funny to think of Everything Sucks! as a show about kids obsessed with VHS tapes that’s streaming for kids today to watch on Netflix.
Quinn Libeling (who plays the show’s cut-up Tyler) explained, “Nostalgia’s coming back! It was the ‘80s a while ago, now all the clothes you see are ‘90s.” More of the cast chimed in. They spoke with and over each other, a cacophony of teens asserting that for the first time ever, people actually cared about the music and movies made in the 1990s. And for the first time in my relatively short life, I want to shake my head, pull someone aside, and say with a wizened smirk, “Look, kid. Nostalgia’s not coming back. Nostalgia’s always been here.”
Everything Sucks! just happens to take place in the exact time period that I grew up. What I remember keenly about being a tween in 1996 was that I desperately thought the ’90s sucked, the ’80s were embarrassing, and everything about the ’70s and ’60s was fantastic. I was into tie-dyed hippie t-shirts and mod-style dresses. I borrowed my sister’s Fleetwood Mac CDs and asked my mom if she freaked out when the Beatles played Ed Sullivan. (She did not. She had been a tiny bit too young for Beatlemania, and besides, her favorite memories of growing up involved reading Cherry Ames novels, which were in turn, set during her mother’s youth: World War II.)
So, sitting there, in a room with six youths aggressively describing for me, an old, how fun the ’90s were, I had to wonder if nostalgia for a stolen past was in itself part of growing up. When we talk about the appeal of nostalgia, we’re usually talking about remembering a time we took for granted or the yearning for a picture-perfect past we feel cheated out of. Listening to the cast of Everything Sucks!, I discovered that nostalgia might carry an even deeper purpose: it can teach us empathy.
Elijah Stevenson (who plays Oliver on the show) said that Everything Sucks! was unique because it finally made the ’90s relatable for his generation: “It’s hard for me to get into these shows or movies when they’re in the ‘90s or they’re in the ‘80s, or you know, before I was born, because I don’t feel like I can super relate to it. But that’s where our show really shines. Even if you’re decades from where it’s taking place, you can still feel that you totally get what that guy’s feeling.”
The cast of Everything Sucks! were basically saying that working on the show made them realize that older people had once gone through similar struggles that they were now going through. The circuitous nature of nostalgia booms created new bridges of connection between warring generations. What made me smile was remembering how this precise idea was summed up in one of my favorite ’90s teen movies, Clueless. Breckin Meyer’s stoner character Travis says offhandedly, “Okay, like, the way I feel about the Rolling Stones is the way my kids are going to feel about Nine Inch Nails, so I shouldn’t really torment my mom, huh?”
Everything Sucks! might be the latest riff on nostalgia, but it was the first that made this jaded millennial realize that nostalgia itself is an exploration of how we’re all the same.
