With Its Unwavering Realism, Everything Now Becomes the Teen Drama We Desperately Needed

The teen drama used to be something that we had an abundance of, but with Riverdale and Sex Education now ended, the genre seems to be teetering on a tightrope of uncertainty. While teenage endeavors have still continuously found their way to the small screen in recent years, satisfying representations of young adulthood seem few and far between. A handful of them get released onto Netflix’s platform each year, but with their newest attempt, Everything Now, it seems like they have finally found their footing. It’s no Skins, which was an incredibly raunchy and realistic portrayal of teenage angst, but it’s also no Heartstopper, which is almost devoid of realism in favor of something more saccharine. 

Everything Now revolves around Mia (Sophie Wilde), a teenager who, in the first episode, has just left a seven-month inpatient program for eating disorder recovery. She comes home to a welcoming party, accompanied by her father, distant mother, her brother, and well-meaning Grandmother. There, her Grandmother offers her a slice of cake, and it’s then that it becomes clear that for Mia, recovery isn’t as simple as the people around her would like it to be.

Her friends are supportive, but once they begin unloading gossip onto her, Mia realizes that in her seven months away, she has missed a handful of classic teenage experiences. From here, she decides to make a bucket list filled with firsts. When the group go to Mia’s first high school party, she attempts to complete each task in one night, which ultimately ends in failure. Despite being outpatient, Mia feels like she doesn’t have much time left, and to her, this bucket list also serves as a lifeline. After drinking too much at the party while on a concoction of medication, she lands herself in the emergency room, where her friends reassure her that she’s not alone, and with their help she will complete her bucket list. What follows is a heartening portrayal of firsts and failures, tackling pressing topics from bullying to abortion. 

While realism and the saccharine can coexist at times, there’s often no in between within recent teen dramas. The honeyed view of teenage existence can work for a certain audience perhaps, but if that is the only representation we have on television, there’s a larger problem at hand. Young people on TV are allowed to have eating disorders like Heartstopper’s Charlie, but these hardships are a tiny sliver of their lives compared to the cutesy relationships they find themselves in. In Everything Now, while Mia’s eating disorder isn’t the defining factor of her life, it’s given more nuance than the former. From Episode 1, the final credits advise viewers to seek out Netflix’s mental health initiative if they feel the need to, from Episode 6 onwards, a trigger warning precedes the events that will unfold. 

When the show flashes back to moments when Mia was inpatient, it showcases the realism of the disorder without exploiting the tribulations the disorder brings. In that way, it’s unlike Netflix’s 2017 release To the Bone, which abandoned its themes of struggling through recovery for a romance that aided in the harmful assertion that people with eating disorders need to be saved. In these flashbacks, Mia’s skin is cracked, her nails are overgrown, and she looks like a shell of the person we had previously been introduced to. The show is adamant about not straying away from the harsh realities of anorexia, but does not force you to reckon with triggering visuals where the sole aim is to shock the viewer. The approach it takes is bold, and treats Mia and her disorder with an amount of empathy that is almost staggering for a modern teen drama. 

Everything Now is also unabashed in its representation of sexuality and morality. There are fantastic conversations about sex: why people have it, what it feels like, why certain people do or don’t want to partake in it. It’s refreshing, not shying away from the multitudes of perspectives on sex, rather opening the door for each character to slowly reveal their thoughts on the matter. And of course, because the characters are teenagers, there are secrets: secret relationships, lies, unraveling friendships. But what would a teen drama be without all those aspects? As each of these secrets unfold, the series is adamant in its portrayal that each of its characters are imperfect, including the protagonist herself.

If Talk to Me wasn’t enough proof, Sophie Wilde’s turn as Mia should surely shoot her into stardom. At 26 years-old, she holds a vulnerability that’s unlike her peers, unwavering in every choice she makes in portraying the character. She balances great comedic timing with the more serious bits of the show, fully pulling Mia apart with each action, and under her care, Mia becomes one of the best characters on TV this year. She carries an unshakable anger beneath the surface of her chest—anger at her friends for coddling her, anger at herself for what she views as abnormal, anger at the world for the state of her life. It’s refreshing to see a main character who is unbelievably flawed in a show that doesn’t expect her to be perfect.

Each of Mia’s friends are the same: imperfect teens trying to make their way through the world. Alongside Wilde, Lauryn Ajufo is a standout as Mia’s best friend Becca. She operates as the star student of the group, juggling top marks alongside her secret relationship with Mia’s other best friend, Cameron (Harry Cadby). At the beginning, it appears that she may be sidelined in favor of the mishmash of characters that trickle in to make a larger group, but by the fourth episode, it’s clear Ajufo will be allowed to shine just like Wilde. Slowly, as her story begins to unfold, she serves as the heart of the series, alongside Mia. 

Each character gets their chance to shine, with Mia’s brother Alex (Sam Reuben) even getting an episode dedicated to him later in the season. The cast is filled with charismatic actors, and creator Ripley Parker actually seems invested in letting each of them show off their chops. They aren’t solely relegated to the background or subservient to Mia and her story. While she is undoubtedly the protagonist of the series, each character is given an amount of depth that seems almost shocking for 8 episodes. They each offer something to the show’s themes of friendship and growth, whether it’s played for comedic relief or bleeding-heart drama. Parker has created a cast of young characters that don’t feel like fickle representations of modern teens, but rather teenagers who feel and act like real people.

Everything Now balances itself between the likes of Sex Education and My Mad Fat Diary, never straying away from the hardships of growing up. The show abandons all archetypes of the modern teen drama in favor of crafting a show that, in the last few years, seemed unimaginable. From a Grimes needle drop during a house-party to conflicts that hold weight because of their realism, this feels like the closest we’ll get to a proper successor of the teen dramas of the 2000’s. Each aspect of Everything Now weaves together to craft up something beautiful, and in doing so, the show cements itself as a significant standout amongst its peers.

Kaiya Shunyata is a freelance pop culture writer and academic based in Toronto. They have written for Rogerebert.com, Xtra, The Daily Dot, and more. You can follow them on Twitter, where they gab about film, queer subtext, and television.

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