Stranger Things and The Americans have made the best parts of the 80s part of our present in perfect nostalgic form. The several dozen reboots of Full House, Gilmore Girls, Friends, Roseanne, Will & Grace and everything else are doing everything they can to remind us how mediocre most TV in the 90s was. And then Netflix came along and decided to try to make the 90s something to talk about again with Everything Sucks.
Everything Sucks for Real
The problem with Everything Sucks is that almost everything sucks about it. Set in 1996, it follows a three dorky A/V club freshmen (sound familiar?) as one falls in love with a girl not into him and the other two support the hijinks that follow with very limited character arcs. Hijinks that follow? The A/V club kids join up with the horrible drama kids to make a bad movie.
The episodes are so short that the binge-watchability is easy, but it’s not satisfying. It’s essentially a mashup of a ton of nods to my high school years (also with very little worth talking about). Plenty of shots of 90s nostalgia: Surge! soda, Columbia House mailers, Sony Discman, Gwen Stefani buns, those seat belt buckle belts, plaid pants, cassette singles, unoriginal arguments about Alanis Morisette’s Ironic, Hot Pockets, slap bracelets, girls into Tori Amos, Beavis and Butthead and that ubiquitous 90s event – taking a call in another room and asking a family member to hang it up for you when you get there.
But that’s all it is. A bunch of flashes of things I remember that lead to a bunch of reasons for my 13-year-old to roll her eyes when I say “I HAD THAT EXACT ______.” That’s as far as the fun goes. Oh, until you realize there are a ton of anachronisms as well. It’s supposed to be 1996 but no one has a cell phone. Slap bracelets were gone by 1992. The lesbian doesn’t mention The Breeders. The Freshmen is playing a whole year before it came out. No one mentions Lauryn Hill. They tried, but it still looks like a poor facsimile of 1996, not the real thing.
And it doesn’t tell a story that couldn’t be told in any other time without the trappings of trying to make the oldest Millenials and youngest Gen Xers watch just for sentimentality. But you know what does? These shows.
90s Nostalgia Done Right
Freaks and Geeks: Not 90s in the 90s
Set in 1980, this 99-00 show still somehow gets all the nostalgia points from the late 90s that Everything Sucks can’t possibly. Everything from the late 70s and early 80s was pure thrift store fodder by the time I was high school, so the outfits, the hair, even the dialogue on this show felt right out of my high school. Plus it’s Paul Feig, and he’s the greatest.
My So-Called Life: 90s in Every Way
Let’s pretend Everything Sucks didn’t rip off the title card for the greatest of teen high school TV dramas, and just focus on the fact that this show WAS 90s high school. It wasn’t pretending to be; it just was. Layered grunge and Feria highlights and all.
My Mad Fat Diary: True 90s Nostalgia
I’ve written about MMFD before YEARS ago, but I’d almost forgotten it existed until I started watching Everything Sucks and how hard it tried to have a great 90s soundtrack (it doesn’t). My mom knows Radiohead’s Fake Plastic Trees by name; it’s not edgy. Besides having an incomparable heroine and a fantastic love story, MMFD IS the soundtrack for mid 90s kids.
You want 90s shows, watch these. Or hell, watch Dawson’s Creek, Daria, The Simpsons. Even Saved by the Bell, Hey Dude, and Keenan and Kel will give you better 90s feels than Everything Sucks. And better music too. Also, could everyone quit trying to make nostalgia happen? Those of us squarely between GenX and Millenial are perfectly fine looking forward.
What is your favorite 90s High School show?
