Recently, I haven't had a TV show to watch on a weekly basis, and I've been missing it, which is funny since I hardly kept up-to-date on any shows for a few years. But for the last couple of weeks, I've been thinking about how much I want something that I can look forward to a new episode of on a regular basis. When I heard that Heartstopper was coming out, I was excited to check it out and have something new to watch.
While I'm excited to watch the series, I'm not really getting the weekly episodes that I'm craving because Netflix released the whole season at once. (I'm a little surprised Netflix still does that when so many other streaming services release them once a week.) Despite that, I'm forcing myself to wait a bit between episodes and also writing these reviews before I watch the next one. I'm creating my own anticipation (and it's very much working).
Heartstopper is based on a webcomic that has been popular on the internet for several years now. I've been aware of Heartstopper since it first started getting attention, but I didn't keep up with it. I heard enough about it to check in on it and read it occasionally, but I've never kept up with a webcomic, and I'm just really bad at keeping keeping up-to-date. Instead, I just read it whenever I remembered it existed and planned to eventually get the physical volumes to read. So, I've read bits and pieces of the comic, but I certainly haven't read all of it chronologically.
I also have a terrible memory when it comes to comics and graphic novels. For whatever reason, those forms of stories just don't stick in my head well, so while I do know the basic premise of Heartstopper and the main characters from the comics, I'm in the dark enough that the TV show feels like a completely new experience.
Part of not being able to remember everything means that there are a few characters who I don't remember from the comic. It's entirely possible that I've read parts of the comic that featured them and just forgot, but it's also possible that they just weren't in the parts I've read. One of those characters was Ben. I was actually a little surprised to find out that Charlie was in a "relationship" (if you could even call it that) right off the bat.
The show did a great job of showing how toxic their relationship was from the very first scene of them together.
On the other hand, Charlie and Nick are adorable together from the first time they say hello to each other. I loved seeing the series of hellos between the two of them only to then see Ben get super defensive over a simple hello from Charlie. Charlie and Nick really do have great chemistry, which is great to see from the first episode. As of right now, I think that was the biggest highlight of the episode.
We really only get short glimpses of Charlie's fiends. We get the most backstory about Elle, who's just started at the all girls school after being bullied at the all boys school. She lies to Tao about having made friends. There's also definitely something going on between Elle and Tao, so I hope we get to see them a lot more in future episodes because I think they could have great chemistry too once we see them together.
There's another member of their friend group, Isaac, who barely speaks this whole episode. I had to Google his name because I couldn't remember it. I really hope we learn more about him in the coming episodes.
At one point, Ben assaults Charlie, which I did not see coming. That scene was quite intense. It's not the sort of thing I want to watch again, and I may skip it if I rewatch the show.
So far, the story seems to be moving really fast. It feels like a lot happened with Charlie and Nick, yet we didn't see much of anything from the other characters. I hope that the other episodes don't feel quite so rushed.
Overall, I enjoyed this first episode. It was extremely cute! And I suspect that the rest of the show will be as well. I didn't get around to writing this review last weekend (after watching the episode on Friday), and I've been anxious about getting it written so that I can go watch episode two. So that's probably what I'm off to do now!
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