Stream It Or Skip It: ‘I Am Not Okay With This’ On Netflix, About A Girl Who Has No Idea That She’s Telekinetic

We’ve seen so many shows about disaffected teens on the various streaming services that as soon as we see a teen tentatively walk down a busy hallway in their school and start hearing a snarky voice over we go, “Shit, here we go again.” That’s how I Am Not Okay With This starts, but it quickly establishes that it’s going to be different, and much of that has to do with a great lead performance. Read on for more…

I AM NOT OKAY WITH THIS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A teenage girl walking down the middle of a street at night. She’s wearing dog tags and a dress, and is covered in blood. “Dear Diary… go fuck yourself!” we hear her say in voice over.

The Gist: We see Sydney (Sophia Lillis), a self-described, “boring, 17-year-old white girl,” getting off the bus, and we hear her voice going, “Just kidding. I don’t know what to write in this stupid thing.” The thing she’s talking about is a journal, given to her by her guidance counselor Ms. Cappriotti (Patricia Scanlon), with the idea that it might help Syd with her “moods.” Of course, her moods are affected by the fact that her father committed suicide a few months prior.

So she’s just a normal, disaffected teen, right? Well, not quite. When she explains to us that she’s happiest when hanging out with her best friend Dina (Sofia Bryant), who moved to the “not cute” Pennsylvania town at the same time she did, it’s the only time we see her smile. But when Dina tells her that she’s hooked up with obnoxious football player Brad (Richard Ellis), she gets so angry at him, she makes his nose bleed as he eats her fries. But Syd can’t imagine that she made that happen with her mind, so she brushes it off. But we see other evidence of this, as her anger just about boils over, like when she yells at a dripping faucet to stop, and it does.

Her quirky neighbor Stanley Barber (Wyatt Oleff) asks her if she wants to hang out and smoke weed, and we hear a surprising admission from Syd’s voice over: she’s never smoked weed before. She’s not sure, but he turns her on to a band that seems to speak to the conflicting emotions she’s feeling. Her little brother Liam (Aidan Wojtak-Hissong) is getting bullied at school, and he wants to build armor to help protect him. Syd has his back saying “I’ll pull his throat out with my bare hands” in front of his principal, and she squeezes the life out of a hot dog to show him.

But not all of her family relationships are going well; her mother Maggie (Kathleen Rose Perkins) fights with Syd, refuses to talk with her about her dad, and says things like “Maybe you’re aiming too high, hon,” when Syd actually opens up and says, “Sometimes it feels like people who love me don’t love me back.” No wonder why she gets so angry.

Our Take: Based on the graphic novel by Charles Forsman, I Am Not Okay With This starts with a kid who is having a hard time in high school doing a voice over about how tough it is to be a teen these days. You know, like every other teen series. But Christy Hall, who adapted the comic for Netflix, quickly grabs the viewer’s attention with just how jumbled Syd’s emotions are. And by the time the brief, 20-minute first episode is over, we want to find out more about Syd’s journey through not only her feelings, but her figuring out that she actually has telekinetic powers.

What’s interesting about this aspect of the show is that Syd’s powers, generally brought about by an anger that you can hear boiling over via the show’s excellent soundtrack, are just a part of her story. Everything contributes to it: Her obvious attraction to Dina, her questioning of her father’s death and why he decided to hang himself, her battles with a mother who seems to have lost much of her humanity. So how each part of Syd’s life contributes to her abilities, and how she channels them, will be fun to watch.

Lillis’s performance, from minute one, shows us that she’s going to be a bit of a different teen protagonist. We’ve seen the loner, not-wanting-to-be-popular semi-weirdo in many a series, played by actors of various genders, but something about her degree of slouchiness, her short auburn hair and bright blue eyes, and her ability to convey Syd’s conflict will keep us compelled to watch.

Sex and Skin: Nothing.

Parting Shot: Syd’s anger at her mother, her father’s suicide, Brad being a douche and more boils over, and she puts a huge crack in her wall. “Maybe I am way more fucked up than I thought,” we hear her voice say.

Sleeper Star: Oleff channels a very young Patrick Dempsey (think Can’t Buy Me Love-era Patrick Dempsey) in his first scene as Stanley, and he’s got that ineffable nerdy quirkiness that will make a good best friend foil for the perpetually-depressed Syd.

Most Pilot-y Line: Nothing we could see.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Between Lillis’s performance, the gritty Pittsburgh-area locations, and the unique story about a girl figuring out she’s telekinetic, I Am Not Okay With This will be a fun binge watch for anyone who wants something quick to watch over a couple of nights.

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, Fast Company.com, RollingStone.com, Billboard and elsewhere.

Stream I Am Not Okay With This On Netflix