Messy does seem to be an understatement considering the, now thankfully resolved strikes, streaming service meltdowns, and the general undervaluation of art. But messy contains multitudes, much like the one season wonder on the docket.

For the vast majority of you who passed on this series while it was airing figuring you’d wait for it to all be out or because there’s 1001 things coming out and it just slipped through the cracks in your radar, here’s the pitch: set four years prior to Grease, it chronicles the creation and subsequent trials of the original Pink Ladies. Oh, and like its progenitor, it’s a musical. Our Pink Ladies this time around consist of Jane, studious but wanting more out of her high school career than just falling into the background like she had been; Nancy, a no nonsense fashion designer whose regard for high school drama is “been there, done that”; Wannabe T-Bird Cynthia who counts herself as one of the boys until a new group of friends gives her a better sense of who she is and new sense of friendship; and Olivia, the “younger” (they’re implied to be in the same grade, so some people have posited them being twins) of this gens leader of the T-Birds Ritchie (whom I love, to the surprise of no one though all of the T-Birds this time are great) and who has… the most loaded of the subplots.

(And don’t worry, we’re gonna get to Hazel)

The first thing I want to talk about is the music. After a week of having the whole soundtrack on loop, I must concede that there are some actual good songs. For me, the measure of any good musical is the balance between songs that are context dependent versus the ones that are universal, and a mix of ballads, bangers, and bops. Every number is impeccably choreographed, functioning as musical numbers to move the plot forward and fit the tone of the show. There are none that I would cut for the sake of them bogging down the plot even if I don’t like all of them.  The soundtrack has enough of all, highlights include: 

• New Cool (our proper introduction to the T-Birds and Cynthia’s dynamic with them) 
• Girl Gang (a song that plays with the irony of 50s housewifedom and makes excellent use of the ringing of a rotary telephone as a musical backbone)
• The Boom (one of the many numbers nominated for Outstanding Choreography at the 2023 Emmys and a generally great “don’t panic, it’s chill” song)
• Merely Players (A queer love realization song for the ages)
• Face to Face (a bop of a darkest hour song)
• Hit Me Again (Jonathan Nieves stunting on everyone while also being a meditation on toxic masculinity)
•  Please, Please, Please (if only for the rhyme “you’re a double feature/and he’s just a geriatric teacher” followed quickly by Cynthia cutting in with “And his name is Leonard, for god’s sake!” which, iconic.)
• Sorry to Distract (a beautiful meditation on the double standards of dress codes and for the line “apologies on behalf of Eve, Cleopatra, Helen of Troy and the ladies after”)

Those last two probably lead into the topic that is most likely the reason this show hasn’t left my head in spite of my best efforts. It’s time to talk about Olivia’s subplot.

Content warning before we do for discussions of student/teacher relationships and the… glorification? Normalization? Romanticization? of them.

Ooh boy…

The first three things we learn about Olivia in the impeccably choreographed opening scene of the first episode are: 

1. She and her brother are bilingual and Ritchie had to spend a decent amount of time trying to convince their mom to allow her out of the house tonight
2. Her brother is a T-Bird and our “Danny Zuko” stand in (but he’s… miles better than him)
3. A joke about needing a teaching license before she “put out” (quoting the show here) is normalized.

Which, sure is an effective character hook, but also one of those lines that, within the teen TV genre has any viewer on red alert. 

Because, for some reason, there are a non-zero amount of shows that are uncritical of the potential framing of a student and teacher dynamic that is more what is respectable and reasonable. Which, like, why y’all. I get it, media does not need to moralize to us, and exploring things in media is basically the safest way to do this sort of  thing but it becomes a matter of framing where things get squidgy. It’s one thing to have this type of relationship to have happened and have it framed as something we should not be sympathizing with and another where it tries to turn it into an aspirational romance. Which uh… isn’t great y’all! There are several ways to do this introduced concept, some of them better than others.

Pink Ladies… doesn’t go the way of non-romanticization.

In fact, it’s a little wavy on what way it wants to go with it for a while.

And I’m sorry, I don’t buy the way they went in the show!

I will eat my metaphorical hat if there wasn’t a version of this story that doesn’t play Olivia and Mr. Daniels as it was portrayed in the show. Where it was “consensual” (even though Olivia is a minor who can’t) That it was framed as an assault and that the rumor mill about it all churned anyway. Songs like Sorry to Distract and some of the lines in Pointing Fingers are potential signs of this. 

Not to mention its stronger thematic resonance than what we got. One of the central themes of Pink Ladies is the effects of the patriarchy and how class and race play into it. This gen of Pink Ladies are a diverse group of women who are sick and tired of the cis/het, white patriarchy telling them what to do and what societal expectations have to be followed, all with the added bonus of it being 1950s suburban America (a point put literally in the song Girls Can’t Drive). Having it go the seemingly darker but more realistic route would be another expression of how the patriarchal systems built into schooling and society have failed them. Or hell, one off handed line about how Olivia’s push to have them get married is at her family’s insistence to “preserve her dignity”, anything but what we got. It short changes Olivia who is one of my favorite characters in the show (followed by Ritchie and Cynthia)

The other major non-Pink Lady related subplot is that of Hazel, who from first introduction we, the audience, know is gonna join the gang. She’s got similar values, but a different enough perspective, and is going through similar struggles our core are going through just on the periphery of their story. And though the narrative doesn’t seem to give her the full attention it could’ve, it’s clear by the season finale, the plan was to make her a bigger deal the following season.

Which, well, we all know isn’t what happened.

Rise of the Pink Ladies became a victim of the tax writeoff removal from the streaming services boom just a handful of days after the airing of its last episode. Even after it got nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Choreography for six of its numbers. It’s release on digital and physical media only coming after pressure from the public. The only thing that still exists online is all the musical numbers still on the Paramount Youtube channel with the notice of “Not Available on Paramount+” in the description  in spite of the logo being in the corner of ever clip.

I don’t need to be the person to tell you that shelving, deleting, and removing of  media is a bad thing. Even if opinions on said property can be boiled down to “mixed at best”, fully complete projects should not be able to be disappeared to line the pockets of the rich who already don’t need more money.

Or maybe that’s just me.

I hope that in any case, the cast and crew find continued work and in an ideal world are allowed to shop the project around so we can eventually see where they were headed. 

Until then, we’ve got the same sky, and I’ll say hi to Orion for ya.