High School review: Tegan and Sara's origin-story drama is a teenage dream

The Freevee series starring Railey and Seazynn Gilliland is more My So-Called Life than Euphoria.

Tegan (Railey Gilliland) and Sara (Seazynn Gilliland) don't pick up a guitar until episode 5 of High School. The teen twins — busted by their mom, Simone (Cobie Smulders), after sneaking out to go to a rave — have been grounded and sentenced to hard labor: cleaning the basement. Sara finds the instrument behind a wall of storage boxes and gives it a try. She picks out the opening notes of the Smashing Pumpkins' "Today" as Tegan watches, transfixed.

As far as indie-rock origin stories go, it's pretty tame, but that's a big part of High School's appeal. The eight-episode series, based on Tegan and Sara Quin's 2019 memoir of the same name, is a moody and touching tale of queer adolescence told with artful simplicity and excellent '90s alt-rock.

A recent move to the suburbs of Calgary has Tegan and Sara starting at a new school. It's 1995, and the 15-year-olds' previously intertwined lives are beginning to peel apart. Sara's in a secret relationship with her BFF Phoebe (Olivia Rouyre), which leaves her sister feeling left out — though she doesn't fully understand what she's being left out of. At school, Tegan is saved from a bully by the feisty, flannel-clad Maya (Amanda Fix), and the two form the kind of immediately intense friendship that is peculiar to teenage girls. Mom balances night shifts at a crisis helpline with her pursuit of a master's degree, while quietly questioning whether she's outgrown her relationship with Patrick (Kyle Bornheimer), her kind and dependable longtime boyfriend.

High School loosely follows the structure of the book, alternating between Tegan and Sara's perspectives, but showrunner and director Clea DuVall (Happiest Season) broadens the narrative by weaving in key viewpoints from outside the twins' bubble. Phoebe struggles to reconcile her love for Sara with the shame brought on by her conservative mother's suspicions. Maya, who is lonelier than she'll ever let on, feels like Tegan's "filler friend" and forever runner-up to Sara. And Simone is desperately ready for the day when she can put her own needs first. There are breakups and house parties, drug trips and angsty mope sessions in poster-covered bedroom sanctuaries. Kurt Cobain is God; Pixies and Violent Femmes and Stone Roses are on the stereo. If nothing else, High School and its precision-guided needle drops will hit all Gen Xers and Geriatric Millennials in their nostalgia-music pleasure centers.

TikTok stars Railey and Seazynn Gilliland acquit themselves well in their non-vertical screen debut. The 21-year-old actresses bring an endearing awkwardness to Tegan and Sara, sisters whose twin dynamic can best be described as caretaker and risk-taker. ("This breaks a lot of mom's rules about safety," frets Tegan, after Sara drags her to the aforementioned rave.) As Simone, Smulders nails the exhausted, permanent skepticism of a mother trying to keep two teenage girls alive. When Tegan and Sara play Patrick and Simone their first song, a wistful ditty called "Tegan Didn't Go to School Today," you can sense the cacophony of emotions pounding behind Mom's placid smile: surprise, wonder at the girls' unexpected talent, and the heart-swelling joy of seeing her often-bickering babies working together to make something beautiful.

The eight-episode season covers only part of the Quin sisters' memoir, and it would be a disappointment if we didn't get to see DuVall's take on the rest. Eventually, Tegan and Sara will be famous, multiplatinum indie icons — but in High School, they're just a couple of kids figuring out how to be themselves. Grade: B+

The first four episodes of High School are streaming now on Freevee. New episodes premiere every Friday.

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