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“I Am Not Okay With This” is the Queer “Carrie” you didn’t know you needed
“Dear diary…” the voiceover begins over a shot of a blood-soaked teenage girl walking down the middle of a street at night with police sirens growing ever closer. “Go fuck yourself.”
So begins the opening sequence of “I Am Not Okay With This,” Netflix’s latest foray into the world of shows that utterly defy genre. We can call “I Am Not Okay With This,” (which I will refer to as “IANOWT” for the remainder of this review) a coming of age comedy-drama, but that feels diminutive for the story being told here. It’s coming of age, undoubtedly, but also gritty, sci-fi, and comic-booky in a way that feels new and refreshing. Moreover, it’s relatable as hell. At the risk of gushing too much, this show is honestly one of the most engaging pieces of television I’ve watched in the last decade. IANOWT is based on Charles Forman’s likewise titled graphic novel. I have not read the graphic novel and cannot, at this time, compare the two, so my review is entirely from the perspective of having seen the Netflix show.
I am hardly spoiling anything when I tell you that the show revolves around Sydney Novak (played by Sophia Lillis), an androgynous 17-year-old girl who starts discovering that she has telekinetic powers as she struggles to stay focused in school following the suicide of her father. While I am not…
