Everything Now will make you ache, laugh, and cringe, but most of all it will make you watch the next episode immediately.
Like the best of teen dramas, Everything Now features a cast of characters you want to spend time with, even when they’re misbehaving and making terrible mistakes — which, to be fair, they almost always are. But hey, what’s the point of being a teenager if it’s not to make mistakes and, in the process, discover who you are?
The Netflix original series follows Mia Polanco (Sophie Wilde), a 16-year-old who has already had to face down too many of her personal demons. When we first meet her, she’s returning home from a lengthy stay at a clinic recovering from the eating disorder that nearly killed her. But reintegrating back into her friend’s lives proves not to be as easy as she hoped. While Mia’s world stopped for months, becoming singularly focused on healing both her body and mind, her friends’ lives continued. In her absence, everything it seems had changed. New relationships were forged, virginities were lost, and drugs were taken. In short, their lives changed when hers was arrested. Desperate to catch up, Mia decides to throw herself back into life full force. She plans to try, well, everything now.
Courtesy of Netflix
Mia embarks on a journey that involves first loves, alcohol, drugs, sex, and partying. But above all else, she just wants to be seen as normal and shed her reputation as “the girl with an eating disorder.” Unfortunately for Mia, the call is coming from inside the house. Along with all the ubiquitous teen insecurities, Mia faces the ever-looming threat that one day it will all become too much and her anorexia will wrestle back control of the wheel of her life. Triggers lie around every corner.
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While there are your more standard plot lines involving love triangles, loss of virginity, ill-timed vomiting, and dance montages — and lots of queer romance — what sets the series apart is Mia’s struggle with her recovery. It’s emotionally brutal, raw, and even ugly — but also kind and always sympathetic to the way it impacts both Mia and everyone around her from her parents to her brother and her friends. It’s the unspoken monster in the room, it’s the wall that everyone bangs against, and the fragile egg that everyone must hold but never mention.
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Yes, this is heavy but it’s buoyed by a cast of charming if complicated characters. For all their flaws, Mia has an incredible support system in her friend group, who support her through her ups and her downs (of which there are many).
There’s a casual pansexuality to the series; some characters code as queer and identify that way, as other characters fall in love and lust across the gender spectrum and the only aspect that is treated as a surprise or strange is when it crosses social stratification boundaries. That it’s a queer romance isn’t even given a second thought. This truly is the future gays want.
While there’s no shortage of teen dramas, Everything Now manages to carve out its own lane. All the elements — the drama, sex, and personal exploration — are here, but its depiction of Mia’s personal struggles makes it as meaningful as it is entertaining.
Everything Now arrives exclusively on Netflix October 5. Watch the trailer below.
