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Heartbreak High premiered its eight-episode first season on Netflix on Wednesday, September 14, 2022. The debut season of the reboot show was a refreshingly smooth take on modern-day high school life and its intricacies. Though it is based on the same-named high school drama from the 1990s, it has been updated with minimal fuss to accommodate modern-day crises.
In many ways, the show edged closer to Netflix's hit drama Sex Education than to its predecessor, Heartbreak High. The series was remarkably easygoing but tense at the same time. Behind this clever plot line, the show also displayed some relevant truths that govern the world; one of the most important ones being the gray nature of every character.
Read on to find out the lesson that Heartbreak High left us with.
How did Heartbreak High depict grey characters in the series?
Much like its most comparable series, Sex Education, Heartbreak High quite realistically captured the essence of modern-day schooling. Not only was it politically and spatially apt, but it also managed to capture the essence of the character to capture the essence of human nature itself.
Both the characters at the center of the story were flawed. Despite their best intentions, they frequently ended up hurting each other or themselves.
Amerie (Ayesha Madon), for example, deeply cared about her best friend, Harper (Asher Yasbincek), but it did not stop her from putting her self-interest first, as revealed in the ending.
Amerie's selfishness triggered a chain of events that resulted in Harper's major transformation. She was involved with the school bully, Spider (Bryn Chapman Parish), and refused to answer Harper, whom she had already abandoned back at the party, in order to protect her image.
Harper, on her part, suffered from a series of misfortunes that night, which ultimately set her off in a completely different direction. But she, too, lost interest in Amerie without attempting to find out what had happened that night. Amerie had Harper's best interests at heart and tried to figure out what went wrong, but Harper's rage outweighed her empathy. During this crusade, she also managed to injure Amerie several times.
Moreover, both Harper and Amerie created the hook-up map, keeping track of people's personal lives. Of course, they did not intend to publicly display it, but when it did fall into the public eye, it caused pure chaos.
Similarly, every other character, like Malakai (Thomas Weatherall), had their respective flaws. Malakai was nice to Amerie and most people around, but in a moment of weakness, he too abandoned Amerie and ended up sleeping with Harper. Cash (Will McDonald) was also a nice person at heart, as evidenced by the ending, but he put up with some problematic friends for a long time without complaint.
In this way, Heartbreak High effectively commented on the duality of human nature, depicting how having good intentions does not always lead to good actions and how every person is susceptible to mistakes.
All the episodes of Heartbreak High are now streaming on Netflix.
