The Society

By John Sapienza

Netflix has produced many young adult-orientated series recently, and their series The Society has an interesting twist that TV has not seen in some time. Netflix’s The Society, which premiered on the streaming service in May 2019, is a dystopian, science fiction melodrama; like Lord of the Flies meets One Tree Hill. It features an ensemble cast of high schoolers that come back from a school trip to find that their wealthy New England suburb is deserted and they are all alone.

The series is created by the veteran Christopher Keyers who has experienced critical success in the television industry by writing and producing series like Party of Five and Tyrant. These series have 98% and 60% on Rotten Tomatoes respectfully. Season 1 of The Society is currently sitting at an 86% critic score and 75% audience, so the series has been greenlit for a second season which is set to release sometime in 2020.

The action starts when a group of high schoolers’ school trip is cut short, and they return to their town of West Ham to see that their parents are not there to pick them up. After recognizing that all other members of the town are gone, including their families, the group of teens does what’s expected of them: they immediately avoid all responsibilities and get drunk. Things begin to take a turn for the worse when the group makes the discovery that the town is now surrounded by dense forest. Realizing that they are stuck there, the student body president, Cassandra, combats anarchy by taking the initiative to ration food, set up a police force, and materialize a functioning society. And from there, the group has to learn to survive while dealing with animals, gun violence, and each other as threats.

The main plot of the show is driven by its main core of characters’ motivation to either attempt to run their society or find a way back home. Simultaneously, there are many other subplots happening, as we see many romantic story arcs, teen pregnancy, and violence. As well as a storyline that tries to explain how the group got there, centered around a smell that was plaguing the town just before the group is stranded. The plot of the show is interesting and has an original feel to it. Most of the time I was left clueless to the oncoming events. There is, however, one particular moment where I felt the show to be very predictable (no spoilers!), but this one instance was not enough to ruin the whole experience. I found the most exciting part was a series of events that happens after a girl named Elle tampers with a dessert and then tries to stop people from eating it.

When it comes to the characters, I did not have an emotional connection to any of them at first as there were several characters whose names I couldn’t remember. However, after learning who everyone was and who is related to who, I found myself starting to like certain characters and hate others. One thing that the show does well is explicitly giving the viewer an idea of who they should and should not be rooting for. The characters are constructed delicately and with purpose. They are complex and have their individual backstories. There are some stereotypical character types, like, the egotistical jock Harry, and Will, the underprivileged outcast, as well as some new ones like Sam, a deaf homosexual boy. The character arches are consistent and concise as some characters have to experience life-changing events in order to shape the person they develop into. Other characters, however, are constant in having the same personality and not experiencing much growth throughout the whole series.

In conclusion, I would definitely recommend watching The Society because it is a fun watch for any audience as it mixes the struggle of being a teen with the incomprehensible situation of being stranded with your classmates. The writing is excellent as the dialogue between the characters feels genuine. The actors and actresses give an authentic performance that makes the viewer forget that they are acting. The ensemble cast has great chemistry onscreen and it is reciprocated when watching interviews of the cast afterward. There are 10 episodes in the first season and each is about an hour. So it is not necessarily a series I would watch all in one sitting (I watched about 2-3 episodes in one session). With season one ending with on a cliffhanger, season two, slated for later in 2020, should further the story and provide some explanation to the overarching question of the series: How did we get here?