‘Everything Sucks!’ Gets Just How Awkward High School Is For Gay Teens

At first, Netflix’s new comedy series Everything Sucks! seems super familiar. That’s not just because it’s set in 1996 and makes its era known through choice needle drops (does anything take you back the way Spacehog’s “In the Meantime” does?). The show’s familiar because it focuses on a group of AV club nerds, just like the quirky cliques centered in shows like Freaks & Geeks and Stranger Things. There’s a charm to Everything Sucks! right away, no doubt, but it’s hard to not feel a bit of “seen it” fatigue as another group of scrappy high school nobodies try make it through the school day without getting creamed.

But even though you can’t tell it from the first few scenes, Everything Sucks! is doing something a little bit different with the underdog formula. That becomes apparent at the end of the first episode when we find out that we’re not getting the usual “nerdy guy works up the courage to ask out a girl” story, or even the “group of guys deal with adding A Girl to the group” one. Everything Sucks! actually puts a gay teen in the spotlight and gives us an in-depth look at the mortifying awkwardness of teenage queerness in the ’90s.

Kate Messner (Peyton Kennedy) isn’t like the other girls, her otherness initially coded through her interest in video production. She’s also quieter than the other girls, like the Ace of Base-loving boom mic operator Leslie (Abi Brittle) or the hyper-theatrical Gwen Stef-wannabe Emaline (Sydney Sweeney). Kate doesn’t even look like the other girls, as she’s taller than all of them but still has the innocent vibe of a middle schooler. But all that otherness gets compounded with the mother of all other: Kate thinks she might be a lesbian.

Everything Sucks! isn’t the first show to deal with high school queerness. It’s not even the first Netflix comedy to do so, as the stellar One Day at a Time prominently features its own gay teen. But Everything Sucks! is different in that the show is set almost exclusively in a high school and features a nearly all-teen cast. On top of that, Kate’s the co-lead of the show alongside director-in-training Luke (Jahi Di’Allo Winston). The fact that Luke spends the first few episodes working up the nerve to ask Kate out while Kate is in the process of coming out to herself, it puts a fresh spin on an old high school plotline and makes Kate’s identity essential to the plot.

Because the show splits its focus between Kate and Luke, we get to go on Kate’s self-discovery journey with her. Her first experience with a Playboy, some upsetting locker room bullying, way too much time spent hiding in the bathroom–we’re with her through all of it. We’re also with her when Luke asks her out, which means we’re there with her as she tries to figure out how to avoid teen romance without coming out to the entire school.

That right there is a dance a lot of gay kids do in high school, as they grapple with their identity and reckon that they shouldn’t knock what they haven’t tried. But Kate learns that “trying it” and trying it are two different things, and going steady with Luke isn’t the same as actually having to kiss him. The panic Kate feels, the panic Kennedy plays, it will feel all too real for so many gay adults.

I won’t get into spoilers, because the whole point of Kate’s journey throughout the season is that you’re as surprised as she is along the way, but I’ll say that Everything Sucks! keeps Kate’s queerness front and center, even as other plotlines come into focus–even as Kate has to deal with other drama. For a show that on the surface looks like another teen nerd tale, the depth and care with which this gay story was told is way commendable. Everything Sucks! is definitely worth your allotted bingeing time, especially if you’re someone that spent high school looking for any excuse not to lock lips with the opposite sex, or if Tori Amos woke something within you that you didn’t know was asleep. Being gay in high school sucked a lot of the time, and thankfully Everything Sucks! knows it.

Where to stream Everything Sucks!