I watched this series in one go and holy crap on a cracker, it is sooooo good and I don’t think there is going to be a second series but I reeeaaaallllyyy wish there was.
Sydney Novak has secrets, simmering-boiling-barely controllable rage and… superpowers?
The series follows Sydney trying to deal with her barely there mental health after a massive loss, and the impact that said poor mental health has on the superpowers she has begun to develop at, to be quite honest, really freakin’ inconvenient moments!
This show is a less than “Hollywood pretty” look at grief and trauma and mental illness and just pure f*cking anger. From a girl no less, because let’s be real, how many times do female characters get to be really, truly, genuinely angry? Really sad? Or really, truly, genuinely, honestly just messed up?
We don’t see it enough is my point. Girls can be down right messy and it does no one any good (and does quite a lot of the opposite) to sugar coat and borderline glamorise mental health issues. And also, as much as I hate to say it, it makes for better T.V. and I don’t just mean better as in more interesting. I mean it’s better because honest representations of how f*cking terrible mental illness, grief, trauma and anger can be? It makes people realise they are not alone.
And while you may not be able to destroy your school library or a local store with your mind because you had a panic attack, you can still look at a character like Sydney Novak and go (in simplest terms):
“Girl. Same.”
Sophie Lillis plays the lead role of Sydney and the girl is A-M-A-Z-I-N-G! The whole cast is incredible, but there is something about the way Sophie brings Novak to life that is just so, so compelling.
There’s a reason I watched the whole series in half a day.
And I can’t sit still long enough to focus on any one thing at the moment, so you know it’s good.
And the superpowers actually make sense. They aren’t over played. She doesn’t master them in one afternoon or after some triggering event. They start at random, they continue at random and they respond to her emotions.
Obviously, I can’t speak to real world events (if anyone actually has superpowers hit me up, I got a lot of questions) the way they show the chaotic link between Sydney’s issues and her powers, it feels real. It feels gritty and like if you had some level of crazy going on and suddenly developed superpowers, that is how they would work in the real world.
I know this is short, but I honestly feel like I’ve said too much anyways. I don’t want to spoil this show for you, because it kicks ass and YOU MUST ALL WATCH IT! I HAVE SPOKEN, SO IT MUST BE!
THANK YOU FOR COMING TO MY TEDTALK!!!!
Comments