From Surge to Showgirls: A Guide to the 90s References in Everything Sucks!

From Surge to Showgirls: A Guide to the 90s References in Everything Sucks!

In Everything Sucks!, Netflix’s latest time capsule of a TV series, a group of teenagers feel their ..

In Everything Sucks!, Netflix’s latest time capsule of a TV series, a group of teenagers feel their way through the ups and downs of high school in a town called Boring, Oregon. The show is set in 1996, which you’d be able to guess even if nobody ever spoke the year aloud, thanks to scenes like the one in Episode 3 when one freshman explains Showgirls to another by saying that “it makes Species look like FernGully”—because in the movie, Jessie Spano “totally does it with the guy from Dune!”

The show is filled with these sorts of obsessive time stamps—nostalgic references that were deeply personal to show-runners Michael Mohan and Ben York Jones. Mohan himself graduated from high school in 1998, the same year that Jones started ninth grade; setting Everything Sucks! in 1996 was a way for them to combine their shared experience. In a chat with Vanity Fair, the show-runners take us through all their favorite nostalgic references in the series, from the sugary delights of Surge and Zima to a sneaky Freaks and Geeks Easter egg.

Vanity Fair: Let’s start with the music video Luke makes for Kate in the second episode—a tribute to Oasis’s “Wonderwall” that parodies classic 90s videos. How did you decide which videos to spoof?

Michael Mohan: A lot of it was like, “What could these kids pull off?” One of the ones we were planning on doing was Jamiroquai’s “Virtual Insanity,” and as we got into the logistics of that, we were like, “These kids would have no idea how to even try to do that.” But we wanted super recognizable ones, like Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” There are some deep cuts—like Des’ree. Her video for “You Gotta Be” was huge at the time, but hasn’t really entered the pantheon of videos. It’s a video they would have been exposed to. [Luke’s video] starts with Oasis’s “Wonderwall,” it goes into Alanis Morissette’s “Ironic,” then it goes to Radiohead’s “Fake Plastic Trees,” Des’ree’s “You Gotta Be,” “Smells like Teen Spirit,” then “No Rain” by Blind Melon.

Photos by Scott Patrick Green/Courtesy of Netflix.

The kids in the cast are so young. Did they have any frame of reference for any of these songs?

Mohan: Some of them had heard of the songs a little bit, but we were educating them as well. What was hilarious was sometimes there were things we took for granted, that we thought they would be fully aware of, that they had no idea about. There’s a lot of videotapes in the show. One of the very, very first scenes, there’s a shot of a VCR, where Jahi [Di’Allo Winston, who plays Luke] had to just put a tape in. We’re rolling, I call “action,” and then he puts the tape in the wrong way. We were like, “Dude, what’s happening here?” He’s like, “I’ve never used these before! I don’t know what I’m doing!”

That makes me feel ancient.

Ben York Jones: This entire summer was a process of Mike and I feeling increasingly ancient.

I have to ask about Surge and Zima, too.

Jones: Surge felt like the cool-kid drink. It was so caffeinated. If you weren’t quite interested in smoking cigarettes or drinking, the idea of getting a Surge and drinking it—it was like as close to that as I could come. It’s just sugar water, but there’s something badass about it.

Mohan: As for the Zima, I can’t believe that we were allowed to use it in the show. It’s like a gateway alcohol, because it tastes like a soda. My experience with Zima was the very, very first breakup I ever had. It miraculously coincided with two of my friends also getting dumped on the same exact day, and we all got together and drank Zima and watched Rushmore. So I will forever associate Zima with the sting of heartbreak.

Jones: Mike, can I ask you a question?

Mohan: Yeah.

Jones: Do you think that the girls who dumped you guys coordinated?

Mohan: It’s possible.

At least it culminated in a memory with Zima. I’m also curious about the reference to Columbia House, the mail-order CD club. Did you guys have subscriptions?

Mohan: Totally. I had friends who gamed the system. You would do the one where you get nine CDs, and you have to buy one. So what they would do is they’d get the nine CDs, buy one, then cancel it. And then they’d sign up their dog and get 9 CDs and buy one and then cancel it, and then sign up under a nickname. So there were people gaming the system. But I feel like when I was around, somehow every single household obtained a copy of the R.E.M. CD Monster. Like, everybody had that orange CD case, and I believe they all got it because they forgot to mail the thing back and it just showed up one day.

everything sucks still
By Scott Patrick Green/Courtesy of Netflix.

Jones: This is like the 90s equivalent of when U2 put their album on everyone’s iPhone.

Mohan: [laughs] Exactly. You open your mailbox like, “R.E.M.? I didn’t want this!”

Jones: Another memory I’m glad we were able to fit in was Blockbuster [which is featured in the finale]. So many of my favorite movies were just things I rented blindly, because the description on the box or the cover looked amazing. That’s just something that doesn’t exist anymore tangibly.

Mohan: That specific Blockbuster doesn’t even exist anymore. That was a real, working Blockbuster [that the cast and crew filmed in]. One of the final 10 Blockbusters open in the world. Obviously, we had to re-dress it with VHS tapes and take all the Blu-rays and DVDs out, but in between when we shot and today, that one sadly has closed.

Let’s talk about Showgirls.

Jones: It’s kind of like the Surge of movies. There’s just something about being a young man at that age and getting hold of a copy. It’s a rite of passage. It’s just what 14-year-old boys talked about in 1996.

I also wanted to talk about prank calls. They had such a renaissance in the 90s.

Jones: I didn’t really participate in a whole lot of that, but I sure had Jerky Boys CDs, and I thought they were really hilarious. There’s something about the prank call that almost can be distilled down to an art form. To continue the theme, I feel like prank calls are the Surge of misdemeanors. There’s really nothing harmful about it, but it feels kind of badass to do it.

Thank you for keeping up the Surge theme. Are there any Easter eggs or explicit references to iconic 90s shows in Everything Sucks!?

Mohan: There’s a huge Freaks and Geeks Easter egg buried somewhere. If you look for it, you will find it. It is a very, very special thing that we were able to pull off.

From NBC/Everett Collection.

Can you talk about the decisions behind some of the teen bedrooms? Kate had certain celebrities plastered on her walls; Luke had a stack of very specific movies.

Jones: It all starts with character. I think my favorite bedroom, even though we only see it for a moment, might be Oliver’s bedroom. [The theatrical bully is played by Elijah Stevenson.] There’s almost like a rock ’n’ roll Casanova feel to it. He’s got a zebra-print comforter, and the walls are purple. He’s got a Union Jack hanging up and lava lamps. It’s very rich and textured. The room is such a window into who the character really is.

Mohan: When you look at some of the bedrooms of John Hughes’s characters, a lot of times they incorporate what the character’s aspirations are right onto the wall. Who do these characters want to become? In the case of Kate, she’s someone who maybe didn’t update her bedroom for a few years, so there’s still traces of middle school lingering.

Jones: In the case of Luke, I think my favorite thing in his room is the Mallrats poster and the Do the Right Thing poster.

What were your favorite things in your own teen bedrooms?

Jones: I went to elementary school, middle school, and high school in Southern California, so I went to Disneyland a lot. I would collect strange things from the park. I would fill up an empty Coke bottle with water from the Pirates of the Caribbean ride and put it on display in my room with a little placard. Or peel off a piece of wallpaper from the Haunted Mansion and put it on display. I kinda liked to make my room into a museum.

Mohan: I moved into my older sister’s room when she went off to college, because she had a slightly bigger room. The biggest wall in that room [had] a Georgia O’Keeffe-inspired mural, so I basically grew up with flower representations of vaginas on my wall my whole high-school experience, which I think explains a lot.

I could not have anticipated either of the things you guys just said.

Jones: [laughs] We had normal stuff, too.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

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Yohana DestaYohana Desta is a Hollywood writer for VanityFair.com.

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