Heartbreak High season 2 review: A Frankenstein of better teen shows

But, like a lower classman trying to impress a pack of seniors at a house party, Heartbreak High season two largely leaves behind the earnest representation and Down Under uniqueness of its freshman season in favor of the preposterous pulp of shows like Riverdale, Pretty Little Liars, and that aforementioned Sam Levinson series. Like its predecessor, the show’s second term unravels a season-long mystery over the course of its eight episodes. (We won’t spoil it here, but the premiere begins with a bang and, unlike the show’s many racy romps, it’s not the good kind.) But the first season’s threats and thrills were (mostly) rooted in relatability, the kind of everyday disasters that often befall your average adolescent: the grief of an unexpected friend break-up, the bashfulness of one’s sexual discoveries (or lack thereof), the trauma of being let down by your parents. In comparison, this year’s dialed-up teen troubles require a full suspension of belief, from the lunatic gym teacher who leads the boy students in an uprising to reclaim their masculinity (the group is, ever-so-subtly, called CUMLORDS), to the “Bird Psycho” that has been menacingly leaving bird corpses, The Godfather-style, at Amerie’s doorstep.

It’s a shame that so much of the second season feels concerned less with authenticity than fulfilling a teen-show algorithm (clunky lines like “Spider’s gone and literally Poké-morphed into a peak incel!” barely feel written by a real human, let alone uttered by one), because there is such potential in the characters’ more textbook coming-of-age antics. With the sweet but complicated queer romance between Darren and Ca$h, James Majoos and Will McDonald remain standouts in the fresh-faced ensemble, and Ayesha Madon is particularly affecting as Amerie wrestles with her reproductive health in the season’s back-half. We wish Heartbreak High season two had as much confidence in its kids as we do.

“When we were teenagers we got our own Heartbreak High, and what we’re doing here is giving this generation their own show,” the reboot’s writer-creator Hannah Carroll Chapman told The Guardian ahead of the first season. And while, yes, the Netflix remake succeeds in its vibrant Gen-Z makeover, it’s too well-studied in the teen-drama genre to wholly come into its own. So much of adolescence is about forming one’s own identity, and we’re still waiting for Heartbreak High to find itself.

Heartbreak High season two premieres April 11 on Netflix