When Netflix suddenly canceled its original series Everything Sucks! in 2018, it left many wondering why the coming-of-age dramedy was unceremoniously canned. Developed for the screen by Ben York Jones and Michael Mohan, Everythings Sucks follows the students at a fictional high school in Boring, Oregon who try to produce a movie while dealing with the usual trials and tribulations of being a teen in the 1990s. Checking all the boxes of a modern coming-of-age tale, Everything Sucks! had all the teen angst and rebellion expected, but with a dash of ’90s nostalgia for extra flare.
The series was met with decently positive praise from the critical establishment, and it earned high marks with audience members on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. Though now it is mostly remembered as a mere stepping stone for actor Sydney Sweeney before she landed a larger role on HBO’s dark teen drama Euphoria, Everything Sucks! still ranks highly among the best teen shows on Netflix. While most teen-related programs have hints of unreality throughout, Everything Sucks! at least attempted to capture the real teen experience, and earned high marks for its positive depiction of LGBTQ+ teens.
Netflix Canceled Everything Sucks! Because Not Enough People Finished The First Episode
Though Netflix is usually pretty tight-lipped about their streaming data, apparently, the cancelation of Everything Sucks! came down to numbers. The show debuted in February 2018 with all 10 episodes dropping on the same day, and Netflix swiftly canceled the series just a few weeks later in April. According to Business Insider, the number crunchers at Netflix weren’t seeing enough long-term engagement with the series, and a majority of viewers turned it off within the first few minutes of the premiere episode. Even if viewers hung on through episode 1, they didn’t stick around for much longer which meant Everything Sucks! wasn’t retaining audiences well enough.
The cancelation caused outrage with the small but vocal minority of Netflix subscribers who actually watched the series all the way through, and Netflix VP of original content Cindy Holland specifically addressed them in her statement to Business Insider. Holland said in a statement “because we were seeing a much lower completion rate of the whole season, we realized that it is very unlikely that we would… have a large enough audience to justify a season two“. There is no way of confirming Holland’s supposition since Netflix pulled the plug so quickly on their LGBTQ+ teen show.
Everything Sucks! Crew & Fans “Disheartened” By Cancelation
While the streamer has taken strides to improve the LGBTQ+ shows available on Netflix, the cancelation of Everything Sucks! was a big blow to the community and was felt especially by those who worked on the program. In a piece from The Hollywood Reporter, executive producer Jeff Pinker reflected on the show’s audience when he said “it found an audience of very passionate fans… it became an important personal touchstone: either reflecting their current life, or an echo of their own teenage years“.
As mentioned previously, many fans of the series were unhappy with its sudden cancelation and took to the internet to vent their frustrations. Several Change.org petitions were created to urge Netflix to continue the series, some of which garnered thousands of online signatures. However, those avenues seemingly had no effect, and the show is still quite dead. Considering the fact that so many years have passed, it is highly unlikely that Everything Sucks! could get snatched up by a competing network since interest is still so low in a revival.
