I'm seeing a lot of very negative reviews here. I can kind of understand where people are coming from. The show has a really loose structure, and the acting sometimes falters a bit. I was pretty skeptical at first myself.
Still, I'm shocked, because overall I really enjoy this show. The thing about it is it's really trying to show us how things are. Sometimes people talk about "representation" like it means sticking non-white, non-straight, non-male characters in where they weren't needed. But in a case like this, representation is clearly just representation, i.e. realism, i.e. trying to portray how things really are.
So unlike a lot of other shows or movies set in NY, this show gives me a clear sense of what it would actually be like to live there. The characters fit into the setting like a hand in a glove. You can understand each character as a part of the overall world. These aren't just disembodied bits of biography.
And I feel like people in general don't get just how hard it is to portray a social milieu. It's a sense of what everyone around you is thinking, how they'll react to things, stuff like that. It's much easier, but less satisfying, to have the characters exist in their own closed-off bubble. This show is so good at represented the overall society the characters live in.
It also conveys the sense of being a freewheeling young person really well. The characters move around the world eager to find something new. They bump into people randomly -- and it doesn't feel like the screenwriters are just pulling strings willy nilly. It's such a fun, breezy feeling, leaving me feeling good after watching the show. And it only works because the world they move through feels so real.
Finally, the skating aspect is cool. I don't know anything about skating, but for this show skating is clearly not just a prop. They want you to like skating as much as the characters do.
