SPOILER-FREE REVIEW
Although it falls back on familiar teen movie tropes far too often, Netflix’s latest drama offers an unconventional take on a superhero origin story, invigorated by an electrifying performance from Sophia Lillis.
I am Not Okay With This is a peculiar sort of show, but stranger things have happened on Netflix’s search for dominance of the streaming market. Over the years, the service has made its name selling coming-of-age dramas with a side serving of the supernatural or science fiction; in other words, shows that are pretty similar to this one. To a certain degree, I didn’t relish having to watch it, because I got the eerie feeling that I’d seen it somewhere before. But I came, I saw, and I binged for the simple reason that, despite its non-humble and overly familiar origins, I am Not Okay With This is a highly effective and riveting drama that occasionally even manages to achieve the unconventional as it unfolds over the course of its seven-episode arc. What it does to the superhero origin story needs to be seen to be believed.
We start off with Sydney “Syd” Novak (Sophia Lillis), the resident troubled teen of a small town in Pennsylvania. Things are…not great. Syd’s father committed suicide fairly recently, driving a big wedge between her and her overworked mother (Kathleen Rose Perkins), while her unlikely friendship with popular girl Dina (Sofia Bryant) has begun to break down courtesy of Dina’s new jock boyfriend Brad (Richard Ellis). When she isn’t taking care of her little brother Liam, whom she affectionately calls ‘goob’, she’s hanging out with her oddball neighbour Stanley (Wyatt Oleff) and his collection of classic rock music and VHS tapes. You’d be rooting for Syd to survive all of this, even without the set of telekinetic superpowers that slowly manifest as her anger boils over and her mental state breaks down.
Does wrapping the cliché superhero story around the cliché coming-of-age story only create a show to make your eyes roll backwards into your skull? Miraculously, this show is no such thing. Try wrapping the superhero origin story around Stephen King’s Carrie and toss in some of those familiar Netflix spices, and you encapsulate what I am Not Okay With This actually is. It’s an unconventional take on the superhero origin story: darkly funny, with an affection for the pulpy novels and comics that inspired it that takes the form of respectful homage. Its writers have a deft hand, proven by the way the show twists and turns towards a spectacularly explosive climax as Syd struggles to manage her personal life as well as her superpowers. Losing control of one means losing control of the other.
Some writers must have masochistic tendencies; an unspoken tenet of good fiction is to make your characters suffer. Syd is strung out by the writers until she’s at her wit’s end, and Sophia Lillis plays along with a fantastically punchy performance that quite frankly sells the whole gig. She has an utterly magnetic presence whether she’s wearing a wilting scowl, or a big goofy grin and her performance is brilliantly layered, capturing every facet of her character’s complex backstory, and all the grief and frustration and what little joy her life brings. In her hands, the character becomes archetypical, a big sister, a neighbour, a daughter, and much more than just a stereotypical suffering teenager. By and large, the rest of the cast play off her, but they do it incredibly well.
It’s easy to dismiss from a surface-level observation of the show, since it does look pretty familiar. Its tone and style is not dissimilar to that of Netflix’s other shows, and I understand that it might be tough for some to invest yet more time into yet another coming-of-age comedy-drama-tragedy. It falls back on tropes too: awkward teenagers, and a modern setting with anachronistic music in a bizarre attempt to tap into that particular vibe. But the true charm of the show comes from the way Lillis and its creator Jonathan Entwistle work to shape the show’s main character within those confines, and as it turns out, they’ve come up with something understated in its brilliance. The thirty-minute episodes are short and sweet, and optimised for your binging needs. It’s solid proof that this particular formula of Netflix’s still has plenty of capacity to entertain. They might have made similar shows by the dozen, but it’s not often you’ll find one quite this good.
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