‘American Vandal’ Is the Most Savagely Honest Depiction of Teen Life on TV

American Vandal is a show of rare beauty. I know it’s a show that revels in dick jokes and poop storms, but for all its mentions of baby farting and turd burglars, American Vandal is also a tremendously humane show. Maybe American Vandal was initially designed to be a true crime satire, poking fun at the sanctimoniousness of arm chair detectives and the doggedness of conspiracy theorists, but its greatest triumph is its honesty. Specifically, American Vandal is the one show on television offering a honest portrayal of suburban teen life.

Being a teenager on TV is usually a dangerous, glamorous business. Most shows starring adolescents either project a glittering adult fantasy onto high school life — where school work is hardly a problem and everyone’s hair is perfect — or teens on TV find themselves caught in the crossfire of some high-stakes dramatic mayhem. Teenagers on television are usually played by adults, written like adults, and typically don’t reflect our actual experiences being, well, kids.

Ironically, the most interesting part about being a teenager is how mundane it is. Everyone goes through adolescence. It’s actually not a unique experience or fodder for over-the-top drama. But it is a time where the smallest things — the wrong word spoken aloud or a text not received — can feel like the biggest tragedies. American Vandal understands this. It uses this conceit to build its satiric hook: treating the seemingly small crimes of spray painting penises on cars or pouring laxatives in lemonade to open up bigger conversations about classicism, sexism, prejudice, betrayal, and social anxiety. But American Vandal also remembers the cardinal rule of teenagedom — that the little things mean everything — in building out the ranks of its youthful ensemble.

The most wondrous part of American Vandal‘s first season was how well it understood high school. When I was in high school, I never met a kid like Chuck Bass or Marissa Cooper, Archie Andrews or Sabrina the Teenaged Witch. I did know Dylan Maxells and Christa Carlyles. I knew funny jocks, silly pranksters, perfect princesses, sweet losers, and a lot of really nice kids who just didn’t know what was going on. The kids in American Vandal hedge closer to real kids and that’s because there’s a specificity to the way they talk and behave that doesn’t come from a trendy think-tank or mastermind showrunner’s imagination. Thankfully, this attention to detail continues in Season 2.

In Season 2 of American Vandal, we meet a young man named Kevin McClain. Without spoiling too much, Kevin finds himself in the crosshairs of the turd burglar storyline because he has a history with…poop. His popularity tanked in fourth grade when he got a grassy mud stain on his gym shorts, prompting the nickname “Shit Stain McClain.” The joke stuck to him and shaped his development. When we meet him in American Vandal, he is a newsboy cap-wearing, tea-sipping, fruit ninja weirdo. The kids at school make fun of him, but he claims he’s in on the joke. He opens his locker to reveal a sticker that says, “Religion-free zone,” and has a fancy way of saying “horchata.” He is, as one kid scoffs, “doing an impression of a smart person.”

He is also a painfully accurate depiction of actual weird kids you meet in high school.

Television tends to depict bullied kids as wimps or nerds. The truth is, the kids often bullied in high school were the ones who didn’t just march to the beat of their own drummer – they banged the gong in your face. The details of Kevin McClain’s life are so specific that they become universal.

American Vandal is raucously funny, deliriously vulgar, and brilliantly executed satire. But for me, it really succeeds as the most honest depiction of teen life on TV. It nails the highs, lows, and middling day-to-days of the average American teen.

Watch American Vandal on Netflix