It’s the kind of show you can’t find on TV, but through the magic of the internet and a bourgeoning genre of scripted, serial Youtube series, it has been realized: a realistic story about teens.
Squaresville season 1 consists of 16 short episodes featuring best friends, Esther and Zelda, a bespectacled, reticent brunette, and a slim, idealistic redhead who battle boredom in their quiet suburb. Visually and thematically, it is reminiscent of Ghostworld (but less cynical), two geeky but adorable best friends face the ordinary ups and downs of high school as “outsiders.”
It’s funny to me how nearly every teen series casts its characters as outsiders. The school-skipping, drug-using freaks are outsiders, the good student, bookish kids are outsides, the film geek, straight edge, artsy types are outsides, or in this case the square, respectful, adventure-but-not-danger-seeking girls are outsiders. It seems that shows get away with this by avoiding telling stories about cheerleaders. They, it would seem, are the insiders – everyone else, is out.
In any case, this most fits with the generally agreed upon idea of the teenage experience: young people feel alienated as they encounter their own individualized experiences with dating and sexuality, friendship and fights, drinking and drugs, boredom and adventure.
For Esther and Zelda, the ordinary may outweigh the exciting, but the angst and isolation of adolescence is present and accounted for throughout. The short 2-6 minute episodes cut the blubber and get straight to the kernel of teen issues and experiences.
As much as I love Skins and My So-Called Life for their complex emotional realism, Squaresville reminds viewers that for so many teens on the edge, the outsider experience is sitting in treehouses and playing video games, not getting laid and overdosing on ecstasy. Just as Freaks and Geeks creator Paul Feig wanted to tell real stories about high school, Squaresville avoids the pitfalls of drama and scandal, and tells stories that don’t seem to be out there these days. Beyond that, the series offers an intricate and nuanced depiction of female friendship all too lacking in mainstream television’s teen narratives.
It’s an adorable, sweet, funny, and believable series, and I suggest you catch up on season 1 in anticipation of the upcoming season 2, due this spring.
