#learn from her really I need a people pleaser character that quinnie helps understand that giving yourself up for others doesn’t help

[malpractice-morale]

oooooooh okay I will add my own opinions to this because boy oh boy do I have some and no I don’t think I can get this structured at. all.

Commentary:

They absolutely lost the focus of the show in s2 they could’ve done so much more with elaborating on established storylines. was there a fallout of the police brutality? there was a video put online so I would assume there would be demands for justice, maybe an internal investigation into the cop that would be dropped bc racism. I love malakai but they could’ve put him THROUGH IT a bit more. Neither the trauma nor the fallout end just because he spent some time (re-)connecting with his roots. Also, and I am super mad about this, his bi disaster era is foreshadowed after the threesome but we don’t get to see it, we just get the offhand commentary from missy about ‘what they talked about over break’ and I would’ve preferred to see that on screen a bit more

The entire cumlords thing feels like a parody and that is all I will say about that. SLT class could’ve been utilized a lot better for setting up character development (even if the show has no idea how to follow through with that) with maybe just maybe wishful thinking here talking about different sex drives, amato- and allonormativity, performance anxiety etc. this is one time I would’ve LOVED gratuitous exposition and info-dumps and then seen characters in quiet go hey so about what we talked about in class today do you really think that- and then go from there

The bird psycho plot is completely lost. I think everything about it is a waste of time and Rowan is way over the top. If they really wanted to do bird psycho (god I hate that name so much) they could’ve set it up a lot better and given Rowan a less awkward and almost stereotypical motive (and was I the only one that thought his character was just a bit stigmatizing?)

Characterization:

With the characterization they just hit restart at the beginning of s2 which didn’t help the fact that the bird psycho plot doesn’t hold a candle to s1 and the combination of both is the root of all the problems

Harper, while getting the most carry-over from s1, could’ve spent more time actually confronting the trauma and the emotional fallout rather than talking about it. I would’ve love to see her and amerie’s friendship more permanently and deeply changed by this because yeah they aired out what happened that night but it doesn’t end there. And I think it’s great she gets to have her own place etc. but give me her being really uncomfortable at ameries and about accepting the help and then a) getting independence AND b) learning how to accept help. Just her moving out seems like a topical fix (sorry to everyone who loves her storyline, while better than most in the show it still could be improved)

Ant was decently characterized as a dick in s1 and then s2 felt a lot more like trying to set up a redemption ark while at the same time forgetting s1 and just about putting him on the same level of characterization as the youtuber idiots on 911 la that pour cement on their friend head. like they get about 2 minutes of screen-time and are idiots and any gets about twenty times that and feels the same character wise. I do like himbo ant as a concept but a) not with Harper that doesn’t fit and b) more fleshed out

Sasha was a bit flanderization’d from season 1 which does mean they maintained her character ark but uhhhh why didn’t she grow from Quinnie breaking up with her? We know she actually holds those values albeit in a very performative way and that confrontation could’ve helped her realize the performance aspect of her activism and grounded her a lot more.

They, in general, sacrificed the depth of their commentary to throw as much of it in as they could. And I think they did the same with representation. They have so much amazing diversity but they stop utilizing it in the way they set up to tell meaningful stories, stripping them of said meaningfulness. Like with Malakai and the police brutality, we never get a conclusion to Darren’s issues with their parents. They just start crashing at Cash’s and then move out to their own apartment with him. They set up a relationship with their dad at the end of s1 and then that’s just dropped… Quinnie is the one exception to this but, at least to me, the obsession with bird psycho is completely out of left field. I love how they went about it (though I dislike the stylization as a noir detective story) but here, too, I think they sacrifice Darren’s character for Quinnie arc. S1 Darren seems really good at respecting Quinnies quirks and needs and they seem to have been really good friends for a really long time and to then have them be such a dick about her obsession with bird psycho seems a bit out of left-field. Don’t get me started on that absolute jump in the logic from getting bitten by a wild animal to ‘your obsession with bird psycho almost killed you’. I don’t know anything about Australian wildlife and how a native would navigate wildlife and maybe she was distracted by the phone and didn’t watch where she stepped but to me there is neither correlation nor causation between quinnies obsession and her getting bitten. I love where her story leads her but the set up could’ve been a WHOLE lot better in my humble and overly critical opinion.

Cash/Darren lives in my head rent free and one day I will summarize all my thoughts in a post but we were done so dirty and so well at the same time. Cash is the best ace rep I have seen in such a long time if not maybe ever and I desperately want them to do something with that. Darren and the Puriteens is so fucked up and out of character it makes me want to cry. Darren, to me, would’ve spent the entire break between s1 and s2 digging through ace discourse (by and for ace people, not the tumblr ace discourse from the 2010), and I know forums are outdated but I totally see them going on AVEN and just asking so many questions about dating an ace person and differences in sex drives and how to deal with that in a relationship. From the conversation with dusty we can gather that Darren has at least done some research on asexuality because that’s the first time we hear asexuality applied to cash. It doesn’t come from cash but from Darren through dusty. Like Darren, to me, seems very in touch with their queerness and the queer community in general so just the entire cash/Darren arc is the best and worst thing at the same time.

I already did my rant on amerie but she needs to grow up in every sense. she gets progressively more annoying with every episode simply because she can’t really move forward. I really liked her talk with Malakai about how she would’ve been supportive while he figured out his sexuality and the abortion arc. there are moments where we can see what could be and I would like more of that.

I like that we get some context for spider and I am a sucker for redemption arcs (sex education, anybody?) but his mom only making one appearance was a bit weak. I would’ve liked to see her and coach confront each other as a bit of symbolism of two waring influences on spider only for him to break free from both. I love Missy with my whole heart and I even like some rep for the ‘he is such an asshole and not even a nice person why do I love him’ crowd but I don’t like how she almost gets utilized/sacrificed for spider and his arc. We don’t really get to know her outside that relationship and I would’ve loved that.

Also: what happened to end of s1 Darren, quinnie, amerie, harper, Malakai friend group? Did they split up over summer? They seemed like a really interesting possible group dynamic to explore (esp. the effect of other people essentially joining the friendship of Darren and quinnie)

Why Heartbreak High Season 2 Feels Different

I was ranting about this in the tags of another post lmao so I think I just wanna make my own post. I really didn’t know how I felt about season 2, especially once I got half way through, so I’m just gonna kinda organize random thoughts here.

Commentary

Lowkey everything falls under this I can’t even lie. My thing is, I can’t fully tell you what HBH2 was trying to say; it might be because it just wasn’t what I was expecting. Season one commented on race relations and sexual trauma and friendship. Season two kind of did that, but it just wasn’t as focused. I hate to say it, but too many things were going on and the cast is just decently big? Malakai’s sexual exploration felt lacklustre, Amerie x Malakai felt lacklustre, Ant x Harper felt lacklustre, Ant’s WHOLE CHARACTER feels lacklustre, Sasha’s performative activism felt lacklustre and like… a performance, Spider… I’ll get into that in a second, the whole election process kinda felt lacklustre (mostly because of the characterization involved), we lost Harper and Amerie’s friendship along the way a little bit with the way we hardly got to address the real issues within it; all the social commentary that came with all of these things fell kind of flat. I won’t say EVERYTHING was bad — because even if we kinda hit restart and redid Ca$h x Darren, I felt like that went solid enough… except for Ca$h’s sexuality conversation centralizing Darren and BACKTRACKING the conversations we’ve already had — but it definitely could’ve been better in my opinion.

2. Square One

I don’t know if it’s just me, but I feel like a lot of the things HBH2 was trying to do was just done better in HBH1. The discussions around sexuality and masculinity and trauma and betterment were all done pretty well from what I can remember of season 1, but then we get to season two and… nothing’s really changed? I get it, they’re teenagers; but also, what am I here for if we’re just restarting and kind of doing it worse? This also ties in with the lack of focus. Season 2’s discussions felt worse because there just wasn’t enough focus, not enough time spent on each thing. Season 2 didn’t really build on season 1. I felt like it was just kinda doing its own thing besides Harper’s trauma because that carried on pretty well. Like we spend hardly ANY TIME in SLT class and that’s where all the magic happens. I kinda mentioned this above, but omg Darren x Ca$h… what happened? Their story was pretty good, but Darren ending up with the Puriteens… they’re too smart. I feel like season 2 kinda undermines the intelligence of the characters.

3. Spider

First of all, it will always be SCREW SPIDER!!! SCREW YOU SPENCER!!!! I hope I don’t have to explain why. With Spider… it just TOOK TOO LONG! We knew what he was like in season one, why did we have to redo this whole thing and TIKTOKIFY IT TOO!? We didn’t need the extra thing with Missy. No offense to that storyline, but if we spent all of that time we did with Spider and Missy with Spider and his mom instead and then realizing his feelings for Missy (which imo came out of nowhere) OR he thinks back on his feelings for Amerie… it would’ve been so much better. TikTok is mentioned like twice, and yet the whole masculinity storyline is basically based off of it. Coach I Forgot His Name was just saying the same thing over and over again, it wasn’t building and the indoctrination process wasn’t that evident. I guess the superficiality could’ve been a point, but Spider is smart. Instead of the whole “just one joke ruins a life,” I wish they were daring enough to actually sprinkle some white supremacist and potentially Nazi (I don’t know the political landscape of Australia so take this with a grain of salt) ideologies in there until it became so extreme that Spider realizes what the hell is going on. Spider’s mom being a TERF is one thing (that we don’t even have time to dive into because the show gives us one damn scene), but we don’t really get to see how that settles in him. How he’ll never be able to please his mother or be who she wants him to be. Idk if I’m making sense lmao. Making Coach a joke character was also a mistake.

4. Rowan

I THOUGHT HIM AND MALAKAI WERE SO CUTE :((((((( My thing is that he was just brought in too early. He could’ve been a major season three character and season two could’ve been spent wrapping up all of season one storylines. Rowan just interrupted everything. He’s incredibly interesting, but with all the things we needed to get done/ wrap up, we didn’t even get as much time as we could’ve with him either. We don’t even get to see what his family life is like or his dynamics with his parents. Because of this, what we would expect to be commentary on mental illness just… kind of isn’t there. And it also takes away from Amerie, and the overall school community (!!!!), being held accountable for/ addressing their bully tendencies. Like as soon as we think “huh everything is fine and good and perfect” after wrapping up season one storylines, the show could’ve spun us around and made us see that there was still a ton of work to do.

That might be it. Maybe there’s some more, but I think this is generally my thoughts. HBH2 was very entertaining and fun and I’ll never get tired of Australian culture, but it still felt different.