High School Musical: The Musical: The Series: Review

season 1

COURTESY IMAGE // DISNEY

I grew up in the High School Musical era of Disney, I had a HSM sing-along board game, I even had HSM pajamas. So when I heard that Disney was making a High School Musical spin-off show, I was both excited and worried. I decided not to read any reviews of the show before watching it, and create my own opinions after bingeing it before my seven-day free Disney+ trial ended. 

High School Musical: The Musical: The Series (HSMTMTS) is set at East High School in Salt Lake City, Utah, the school in which the original movies occurred. The plot starts when the drama department gets a new teacher, Miss Jenn (Kate Reinders), who acted in the original movie and sets it as that year’s musical. The show follows the drama students of East High in navigating relationships, competing for roles, and dealing with troubles at home. The main character, Nini Salazar (Olivia Rodrigo), spends most of this season struggling between her new boyfriend, E.J. (Matt Cornett), and her ex, Ricky (Joshua Bassett), who is trying to win her back. I would first like to say that the show isn’t bad; I watched it for the first with little issues, and I even cared a little bit about the drama. That being said, the second time I watched this through, I realized that Disney did such a DisneyTM thing by focusing on Nini and the problems she seems to create for herself, all while leaving behind her talented, woman-of-color best friend, Kourtney (Dara Reneé). 

We meet Kourtney in the pilot episode, but from the start she plays a supporting role for Nini and her issues. It isn’t until the fourth episode that we get a stronger focus on Kourtney, when she joins the costume crew of the musical. Even when she does get this spotlight, she is still just put on an underrecognized crew in the theater department. Kourtney is along for the ride with Nini’s problems, and the focus never shifts to her and her issues, or even highlights her as a real person. 

This show feels like a realistic musical. These are theater kids. Nini wrote a song to tell Ricky she loved him when they first dated (Ricky later wrote Nini a song to win her back). At Nini and Kourtney’s girls’ night, Kourtney sings for the first time at karaoke. At this point in the show, I really wanted to see more Kourtney, and I was hoping this night would launch her deeper character arc. Spoiler alert: this did not happen. 

As the theater department gets closer to opening night, a lot of things start to go wrong. The high school’s theater burns down, Miss Jenn is almost fired, and Gina (cast as Taylor) moves away. Kourtney, who at this point has not had enough screen time, is taken from the costumes department and taught the dances to play Taylor in the production. I was very excited to finally see Kourtney’s moment. My excitement was quickly squashed when E.J. buysGina a plane ticket back for opening night and she surprises the cast by showing up right after the first scene. Instead of letting Kourtney stay on stage, which is just the basketball court in the gym, the continuity of the show is completely disrupted when Gina goes back to playing Taylor. I’m super upset that Kourtney didn’t even get a chance to sing in front of more than the drama department and parking lot behind the karaoke bar. The rest of the production was a total mess, Ricky walks away and makes E.J. go on as Troy, then comes back, Big Red (Larry Saperstein) keeps screwing up at the soundboard, and much of the show doesn’t go as planned.

Now don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed watching this show. I would definitely recommend watching this to people who just need a quick distraction from the world, but in finishing the season, you will gain very little. Season 2 does not have a set release date due to a pause in production, but I will be watching it for the drama, even if the show is Beauty and the Beast and has nothing to do with its namesake.