Looking For Alaska: Season One review

Not sure how I even stumbled upon this, but Hulu has released the first season of John Green’s Looking For Alaska. For those that dont know, the show is based on Greens novel, which I had forgotten that I ever read until I started watching the show. That being said, I will not be spoiling any elements of the show, but I will giving my thoughts on it.

I’m not usually the type for romcoms or sappy teenage coming of age stories, but this show (so far) has been worth binging. The show obviously has elements of that beloved teenage romance, it is after all based on a John Green novel, but it touches on a lot of issues so much more important–you watch characters deal with mental health, prejudice based on background, family lives, and trauma. And while the premise of the show isn’t super realistic for everyone, it does still have a sense of entertainment as you watch these characters develop and form relationships with each other.

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The first episode starts when Miles Halter, a shy, highly sheltered loner, decides to go to a boarding school in Alabama, called Culver Creek. While the school much more resembles a summer camp as the students live in cabin like structures, and everyone seems to be super artsy and into discussing deep philosophical questions while secretly smoking cigarettes under a nearby bridge and drinking wine coolers, its somehow the perfect setting for the show. When he gets caught in the middle of a prank war (which is for some reason a really big thing at this school), Miles is adopted into his new clique– consisting of himself and three other students, all scholarship kids, all with their own anxieties and issues. After that the show basically follows the foursome as they navigate high school, pulling pranks and not getting caught, and each other. You watch how each elaborate prank they pull brings the four closer and closer (a very wholesome aspect of the show actually) and of course everything comes to a head when tragedy strikes the entire school ~and nothing was ever the same~

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