Previewing Looking for Alaska

Aww nostalgia, when we sit and reminisce about the good old days by blocking from our minds of all the horrible things that happen in our youth and just focus on the pop culture we loved. And I am all for the nineties nostalgia that is in full swing right now which I believe was started when Anna Kendrick reminded us how great a song No Diggity was (then in the second Pitch Perfect featured an entire 90’s Hip-Hop Jamz category during the Riff-Off). Since then Dave Matthews Band were an integral part of a critically acclaimed movie, a Lauryn Hill sample topped the Billboard charts, Friends is the most popular show on Netflix, Wonderwall has been on Spotify’s most streamed for eighty percent of the last year, most of the Roseanne cast is back on television while The X-Files and Twin Peaks saw new seasons recently, Hootie and the Blowfish has reunited and is touring with Barenaked Ladies.

But Hulu is really trying to start a 00’s nostalgia trend. Earlier this year they rebooted Veronica Mars and now they are launching a new series set a year after Veronica Mars launched on something called UPN. But now that I think about it, now that the nineties nostalgia is bringing back Beverly Hills 90210 and Billy Ray Cyrus has the biggest song of the year with a gay country rapper who samples Nine inch Nails and Nirvana while taking his name from one of the greatest rappers of the nineties, maybe it is time to start a 00’s nostalgia trend.

In 2005, a Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage were two years from essentially launching The CW as we now know it with Gossip Girl and now they are back together for another take on a literary work, Looking for Alaska based that year. And their new show looks like something that could have also fit in during those early days of the young network. Well, if The CW had a much bigger budget, better casting agent, and more money for bigger and better songs. After a teaser of what is to come, the show essentially opens with All These Things I’ve Done. What a great song, I am warming up to the 00’s nostalgia. There is also a bizarre Milkshake cover I did not even realize it was the song until it was over. They do seem to bounce between originals and modern covers from the era on this show mostly for the better.

In a measure of full disclosure, I have not read the John Green the book Looking for Alaska is based on or any of his books, or seen The Fault in Our Stars or Paper Town, the two movies that were based on his other books (a third is coming to a Hulu competitor later this year). I did scroll the non-spoilery parts of the Wikipedia page and was surprised how many accusations of pornography were leveled at the book as the show is something that could have very well aired on The CW aside from a couple naughty words and bizarrely an incident with a tube of toothpaste, but even then the camera cuts away really quick before becoming too graphic. In fact there is a scene in the first episode where a guy is told “You can let go now” which is very much like a PG-13 version, new millennium version of “You can blink now.” And since both Green and Swartz (who wrote the first episode) are my around my age, I am convinced whichever of those two wrote the line was influenced by Doc Hollywood.

Looking for Alaska stars Charlie Plummer (Boardwalk Empire) who plays the kind of kid who back in 2005 has no one but his parents show up to his birthday party, probably knowing copious amounts of famous last words is the greatest conversation starter. So he convinces his parents to send him to a boarding school in Alabama (though it took me about half the first episode thinking this was a summer camp). And wouldn’t you know it, he is able find plenty of friends there. There is Denny Love (Empire), his roommate that introduces himself as “The Coronal” (and dubs the new guy Pudge because… irony?), and his buddy Jay Lee (American Vandal). Dude even manages to catch the eye of a recent Romanian immigrant Sofia Vassilieva (My Sister’s Keeper). The Coronal also has a girlfriend played by Landy Bender (who I was surprisinged to learm she is played by the fowl-mount little girl with too much make-up in the criminally forgotten Jonah Hill comedy The Sitter) but I never quite understood that relationship. Oh yeah, and then there is Alaska.

Kristine Froseth plays the titular character. The only thing I had seen her in previous was The Society where she was pretty forgettable. Granted everyone on that show was pretty forgettable. It took me about four or five episodes to realize there were two douchebags with perfectly coifed hair. Then there were three or four brunette chicks that just blended together too. But as Alaska, Froseth is enigmatic; you can tell why clerk would sell her beer with a crappy ID or why Plummer would be so obsessed with her even though he can easily hook up with a cute Romanian.

There also two adults in the show both expertly played when they could have easily come off as clichés. Timothy Simons (Draft Day) plays the Dean of Students but manages to not come off as the completely buffoon who returns to the school he once attended nor an evil authoritarian, but plays the role with the right amount of strictness and empathy. Ron Cephas Jones (Mr. Robot) is the one lunged theology teacher who the perfect people to be around the end of the series.

Not knowing much about the show with a pretty unknown cast based on a book whose author I have never read but base his work, basically only wrote The Fault in Our Stars as a sad sack kids dying in love story based on the trailer. But Looking for Alaska is a witty coming of age story with an abundant amount of pranks between Plummer and the Weekday Warriors (basically the rich kids who go home to their big houses on the weekend) with a homicidal swan terrorizing anyone who comes near him. Looking for Alaska is a fun show about young love and school pranks… until it isn’t.

It is not a spoiler to say something bad ends up happening; the show starts off with a car crash and though the first few episodes are mostly light and low stakes as the pranks get more elaborate, there is a slow creeping dread that seeps into the show thanks to the place card at the end of each episodes that tells the number of days before… presumably the car crash. This ramps into top gear when “1 day before” starts an episode and then ends with one of the main character driving away angry. The next episode starts off with someone saying, “Something terrible has happened” and minutes later we see the place card that simply says, “After.”

Had they adapted the book when it came out, it likely would have been a movie. Thankfully the rights languished in development hell for a decade and a half, long enough for the proliferation of television outlets, some that are not afraid of shows that will not run for two-hundred episodes. So instead of a two hour movie, an hour dedicated “Before” an hour dedicated “After,” Looking for Alaska gets to sprawl to almost eight hours letting up live with characters, and the show is much better for it. Looking for Alaska is an expertly crafted show that touches on every bit of emotion you could possibly want from a television show. If you do cry sometime “After” (or three) or laugh hysterically during the one final prank, I worry for your soul.

If I have one complaint is that Looking for Alaska is only a limited series with these eight episodes being all the time we get with these characters. Had this gone multiple seasons (and the “After” does not happen until late in the run), Looking for Alaska could have gone down a one of the great high school dramas. I actually would not mind if Hulu pulls a The Handmaid’s Tale and go past the book (with one big retcon preferably). Instead it will just have to go down as one of the best limited series in the history of television.

All episode of Looking for Alaska are on Hulu today.