Stream It Or Skip It: ‘High School Musical: The Musical: The Series’ On Disney+, A Super-Meta Tribute To The ‘HSM’ Franchise

We had no idea that the original High School Musical came out a whopping 13 years ago; that means people who loved the movie as kids, preteens and teens are almost all adults. So, with the launch of Disney+, how could they bring HSM to Gen Z, who weren’t even around when the movie came out? Make a meta-musical-mockumentary, that’s how! Disney is releasing the first episode of High School Musical: The Musical: The Series before the November 12 Disney+ launch, airing the first episode on ABC, Disney Channel and Freeform. So let’s take an early look at what this meta-musical-mockumentary is all about…

HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL: THE MUSICAL: THE SERIES: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: We see a scene from the original High School Musical movie from 2006. Then the video starts to buffer, and we see that a woman is watching it on her phone.

The Gist: At East High School in Salt Lake City, the real high school where HSM was filmed, Miss Jenn (Kate Reinders) shows up for her first day as the school’s new drama teacher. She was an extra on HSM 13 years ago, and she’s determined to have the school mount High School Musical: The Musical.

On the first day of school, Nini (Olivia Rodrigo) gets encouragement from her best friend Kourtney (Dara Reneé) to rip off the Band-Aid and tell her soon-to-be-ex Ricky (Joshua Bassett) that she met someone at drama camp over the summer. For his part, Ricky and his best friend, Big Red (Larry Saperstein), don’t see it coming; as far as Ricky is concerned, they were taking a break. But when we see a flashback to six weeks before, we see that Nini put herself out there with song on Instagram expressing her love for Ricky; the shocked look on his face tells us that he likely didn’t return the sentiment.

No matter; after she tells Ricky it’s over, Nini and her new beau, popular senior and water polo captain E.J. (Matt Cornett) plan on auditioning for the leads for HSM. Kourtney wants Nini, who’s gained confidence over the summer, to go all “V-Hudge” and audition in the dress Vanessa Hudgens made famous as Gabriella in the movie. As Ricky sees who exactly is his replacement, he starts to hatch a plan to audition for the musical, intending on getting Zac Efron’s lead role of Troy.

Although Nini’s rival for Gabrielle, a competitive transfer student named Gina (Sofia Wylie), is tough, when she steps in for her audition, her newfound confidence helps her nail the audition. E.J. is fantastic and as Miss Jenn’s unpaid student choreographer Carlos (Frankie A. Rodriguez) says he “wakes up looking like that [and] doesn’t know I exist.” But when Ricky runs in late — the DVD of HSM he stole from the library got caught in the DVD drive in the computer lab of STEM teacher Mr. Mazzara (Mark St. Cyr) — he’s told to audition for Troy’s best friend Chad, then reels off an off-book speech directed to Nini about how he just didn’t say the words “I love you,” but that didn’t mean he didn’t love her. He then sings Nini’s song back to her, to applause.

You can guess what happens next. Nini is convinced that the only reason why Ricky, who hates musicals, is there is to get her back. Ricky denies it, but of course, that’s not true.

Our Take: So what we have with the confusingly-titled High School Musical: The Musical: The Series (heretofore referred to by the pithy acronym HSMTMTS) is something that’s a little bit of meta comedy, a little bit of high school relationship drama, a little bit of the mockumentary format, and a whole lot of singing and dancing. It’s not bad, but as we saw with the equally meta BH90210, there’s a delicate balance between being a fun show or just a series of in-jokes. And we’re not sure that HSMTMTS makes the leap to “fun show” status.

There’s a lot of mockumentary-style stuff that isn’t really necessary, from the side interviews to the shaky handheld-style footage. It’s distracting; isn’t it enough that we’re seeing fake students from the real high school where HSM was shot auditioning and rehearsing for HSMTM? Why do we need to go another level of meta with the mockumentary style? Yes, one of the side interviews has Miss Jenn giving the line that she feels she’s “saving lives” by mounting musicals. But shouldn’t this be just a story about the kids and how Ricky is going to get Nini back, plus stories about some of the other teens in the musical?

And there’s multiple flashbacks of the scene where Ricky returns Nini’s “I love you” by asking for a break, plus a scene when Nini auditions, she imagines she is in full V-Hudge mode. To say that there’s a ton of styles going on in the show’s first 35 minutes is an understatement.

However, the kids are all super-talented and charming, and Rodrigo is especially magnetic. So if the show settles down some of the gimmickry, it should play as just as effective a teen musical/romance story as the original HSM did.

What Age Group Is This For?: Pretty much anyone from 10 on up; your enjoyment of HSMTMTS doesn’t necessarily depend on knowing HSM, but it certainly would be enhanced if you’re a big fan of the original and its sequels.

Parting Shot: When everyone finds out what their parts are, we see stage manager Natalie (Alexis Nellis) say, “Buckle up, Wildcats,” citing the name of the HSM school’s mascot, “S–t’s about to get real.” The “s-word” is bleeped to keep things TV-G.

Sleeper Star: Julia Lester plays Ashlyn, who is E.J.’s cousin and writes her own music. She likely wants to get out of his shadow and it seems like Miss Jenn is intrigued by her.

Most Pilot-y Line: “No offense, but the one person I go to for advice is currently on her honeymoon in the cafeteria,” Ricky says to Big Red as he spies Nini and E.J. being affectionate with each other. That’s one of those too-clever lines that real teenagers — even bright ones like the ones on this show — likely don’t come up with on their own.

Our Call: STREAM IT. HSMTMTS is worth watching for the charming stars and fun song and dance numbers. But the meta-musical-mockumentary thing will get tiring if things don’t settle down.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, FastCompany.com, RollingStone.com, Billboard and elsewhere.

Stream High School Musical: The Musical: The Series On Disney+