Outer Banks: Why are Teens Left in Awe?
Image: Unsplash
As a teenage girl, Outer Banks was always the sole thing my friends would blather about during the five minute passing periods from one Zoom call to another throughout the last months of freshman year.
“Oh my god. JJ is the hottest person to ever roam the face of the Earth. I literally binged the entire show last night,” was the kind of thing I would hear daily from my classmates the week after the show’s release, and I could honestly not understand why.
Netflix’s Outer Banks could be found on top 10 in the U.S. Today charts, its highest being #1 for the week of its release on April 15, 2020. I guess word of mouth really spread and soon every single teen across the country was watching the show, soon making it the big Hollywood break for the show’s main characters.
So of course, I had to check it out for myself and join the trend of falling in love with JJ. Binging the ten episodes of emotional turns, romance, mystery, action, and suspense was how I decided to fill my boring April weekend. Sure, the story was gripping, and certainly something I enjoyed but was Outer Banks as good as people hype it up to be, and what was it about the show that caught the large appeal to teenagers around the world?
“The Outer Banks, paradise on Earth. It’s the sort of place where you either have two jobs or two houses. Two tribes, one island” - John B (Chase Stokes).
The show, created by Josh Pate, Jonas Pate, and Shannon Burke, revolves around the world of the Pogues (lower class teens) and their rivalry against the Kooks (upper-class teens) on the island of Outer Banks, North Carolina. With the sudden disappearance of his father, John B (Chase Stokes), the main protagonist of the show, alongside his other Pogue friends Kiara (Madison Bailey), JJ (Rudy Pankow), and Pope (Jonathon Daviss), embarks on a treasure hunt to find 400 million dollars in gold sunk decades ago with the Royal Merchant ship.
That’s right. In the small town where initially the main problem, like many other shows, seems to be tension between social classes, viewers discover themselves immersed in a race where every other person is on the quest to find long lost gold. To add to the already complex and intense adventure that John B and the other Pogues are on, viewers also find themselves in a Romeo-Juliet plotline when John B falls for one of the Kooks, Sarah Cameron (Madelyn Cline).
So with the uncertainty of where the treasure is hidden, the adventure of finding the treasure, the everlasting friendship of the Pogues, and the budding romance of Sarah and John B, viewers are never left with a dull moment in Outer Banks. Each episode ends with a different twist, cliffhanger, or shock that keeps them wanting to watch more, and that’s why it doesn’t come to me by surprise that the show was binged by nearly all of my friends.
Right from the beginning, we are plopped into a summer paradise. The sun’s golden glow, the shimmering water, and, of course, the rebel Pogues fill our head with fantasies about our own summer. John B stands, drunk with another can of beer in hand, unsteadily on the roof of an abandoned house. I couldn’t help but wonder, do they do illegal stuff like this every day just because no one is stopping them? Suddenly my thoughts disturbed as I saw the Pogues running from the security that has now found them clowning around in the abandoned property.
Perhaps this is the appeal that the creators of Outer Banks bring to teens around the country. A summer getaway when everyone is stuck quarantined at home. A story about teens without adult supervision, getting to do anything they want, while we are stuck having to listen to everything our parents say. Perhaps the freedom and carefree nature portrayed in the show is why so many teens are left in awe.
Sadly, I also can’t say that watching this show was all rainbows and unicorns. There were gaps in the plot and utterly nonsensical results of some actions. For example, John B doesn’t have a legal guardian, and is hardly ever at work, so how does he pay his bills? I guess it is safe to say that this isn’t one of those ideal shows to watch if you are looking for realistic thriller and mystery, but rather if you are just looking to watch a hooking summer adventure to get you through another quarantined weekend.
Unlike other teen mystery shows like Riverdale and The Society, I found the plot of Outer Banks to be attention-grabbing and personally fell in love with the charismatic cast. There was realistic acting and the show painted the picture of paradise in my head. Yes, the story may have been unrealistic, but sitting on my couch with a tub of ice cream and a global pandemic on the loose, I found it the perfect entertainment for a rainy Seattle weekend.
Outer Banks TV-MA. 1 season. Watch on Netflix