Is “I Am Not Okay with This” (Season 1) any good? Is It Worth Your Time? – A Full Review

There’s a reason why Netflix’s new coming-of-age drama “I Am Not Okay with This” feels overly familiar.

While it’s washed out retro aesthetic and sharply calibrated mix of 80s pop-music and teenage rebellion hearken back to “The End of the F***ing World“; the supernatural twist and suppressed grief inaccurately feels like a “Stranger Things” subplot waiting to irrupt.

1. Quick Answer 

As a coming-of-age tale, the show stumbles but manages to hold on thanks to a great central performance by Sophia Lillis. Her vulnerability and emotive eyes manage to make her relatable in spite of the character’s genuine unlikability on-page.

2. Is It Worth Watching?

Based on Charles Foresman’s graphic novel and directed by Jonathan Entwistle, “I am Not Okay with This” is about Sydney (Sophia Lillis) – A distant, feisty teenager who is having a hard time coming to terms with her father’s death.

Even after more than a year of her father’s passage, Sydney’s rage and anxiety seem to stem out of thin air. She is also having a tough time having to share her best (and supposedly only friend) Dina (Sofia Bryant) with the high-school dickhead jock Brad (Richard Ellis). Their new dating scene and Brad’s douchey attitude is turning her world sour.

Back home, she doesn’t have a stable relationship with her mother. As one of her voiceovers notify, they’ve never really discussed her father’s suicide. This is why they don’t seem to get along with each other. They often end up having arguments out of nowhere.

There’s a clear lack of empathy that Syd feels but she doesn’t seem to channel her feelings in the right way. Her only real solace is her wiser-than-his-age little brother, a newly developed friendship with the weird neighbor Stanley (Oleff) and her ‘Dear Diary’ that is given as a daily practice by her guidance counselor. 

This is where things get interesting. Syd stumbles upon a brand new discovery. It is when Syd can’t seem to control her emotions – there’s either an uncontrollable urge to shout at someone or if she is embarrassed or just hit by a sudden torrent of anxiety; things around seem to replicate her mind’s unrest.

At first she is unsure of it and believes it is just an illusion. However, soon after she understands that she has a superpower of moving things with her mind. The flipside is, she doesn’t seem to understand how to control it yet.

“I am Not Okay with this” very well serves as an origin story of a superhero. Then again, it seems to work as an allegory for teenage hysteria. Since the narrative is more concerned with what she is feeling rather than anything else, her emotional turmoil is metaphorically represented as powers that she can’t seem to have control over. These negative strand of feelings that she goes through, woe her into believing that something is ‘not okay’ with her.  

Her father’s sudden death has left a wound inside her. There hasn’t been an outlet to this grief that she has repressed. Teenage angst and restlessness are major themes here. Constantly wrestling with emotional derangement is a way of living for Syd but the show hints that this is the real problem.

3. Underlying Tone

In a way, “I am Not Okay with this” is about mental health. Though it is never explicitly mentioned, there are subtle hints at how Syd is unable to channel her emotions into words. A lack of communication and empathy has driven her into a corner where she is making up one illusion, after another just to keep herself sane.

4. Trailer & Where To Watch

5. Verdict & Grade

Grade: B

Sadly, none of the other characters feel well-rounded and relevant. The supernatural elements serve well as a metaphor but the subtle hint that “I am not okay with this” season 2 would rather explore that element to the more urgent and accessible ‘growing-up’ story at it centre makes me want to not recommend it.

The superhero story also feels kind of strapped-on to the central arc rather than an element that can serve as an entertaining entity on its own.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s still a lot here that makes it worth a binge – the short runtime being one of them. But the show’s inability to ground the characters and a sense of shadowing and aping its own counterpart “The End of the F***ing World” makes for a big chunk of the real disappointment.