Heartbreak High Final Season Review – A Colorful But Contrived Farewell to Hartley High | television

WWhen it comes to remaking an old TV show, where do you draw the line between paying homage to the original and coming up with your own tone and style? I’ll admit that Netflix’s remake of Heartbreak High has its virtues, like its lively energy and engaging, fresh-faced cast, but I’m not sure I can ever forgive the producers for taking such a dazzling shift away from what made the long-running original so compelling.

The first Heartbreak High, which aired in the 1990s, had a dramatic, near-realism and a gritty aesthetic that perfectly matched the authenticity of the characters, played by a widely diverse cast long before the diversity movement brought attention to long-entrenched pop culture whiteness.

In comparison, the new series has a polished, bubble-wrapped look, a playful tone and engaging writing; It still delves into important issues relevant to young people’s lives (among them: abortion, mental health, gender politics, bullying, and racial tensions) but without any of the fearlessness or courage of its predecessor.

This third and final season of Heartbreak High unfolds during the gang’s final year in high school, where the drama gets an early shot in the arm with an old-fashioned prank. For the benefit of international readers, this is usually the last day of high school for Australian students, during which they commit numerous mischievous acts that often involve torturing younger children (for example, in one year, I was doused with a water gun filled with cat urine – ah, the glories of tradition). Like many scenes in this show, this moment contains a ring of unreality, with scantily clad young men from another school breaking into Hartley High, dressed in G-strings and colorful masks (perhaps inspired by the young thieves in Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers).

A big question, asked throughout the series (this review includes all eight episodes), is which character begins a theme park ride that, after hours at the carnival, sends one of the employees into a coma. The way the writers treat this as a massive mystery feels a bit forced, providing an aura of pseudo-whodunit, conveniently introduced at various points to raise the stakes. Other aspects of the drama are soap opera-like, including the complicated feelings between Amiri (Aisha Maddon) and Malakai (Thomas Weatherall), who used to be an item; romantic tensions between another couple, Spider (Brynn Chapman Parrish) and Missy (Sherri Lee Watson); And the paths some characters follow to achieve their hopes and dreams – for example, Darren (James Magus) becoming an actor, and Harper (Asher Jaspinchik) becoming a visual artist.

Creator Hannah Carroll Chapman may have intended the show to be the Australian equivalent of Sex Education, which also has a high tone but does a much better job of combining humor and drama, and exploring the issues facing contemporary young people frankly and sincerely (as with the Australian series Bump). The approach taken by Heartbreak High’s directors (Jesse Oldfield, Adam Murfitt, Tig Terrera, Nina Buxton) is colorful but contrived, and rarely achieves strong emotional pull. Even — especially — during the show’s overtly emotional moments, which are designed to generate emotion rather than earn it. It often feels painfully contrived, like the opening montage in which Amiri flips through Hartley High School’s yearbook, musing about how “high school almost killed me” while Never Tear Us Apart swells on the soundtrack. The “show, don’t tell” rule exists to protect against this kind of elegant, over-specific writing.

“Giving someone a second chance is like giving yourself a chance,” one character says at the end of the piece, via a reflective audio clip, making clear what many of us have suspected from the beginning: that the show’s finale favors sentiment over accuracy.