Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies Review

Have you ever wondered just how the Pink Ladies of the musical Grease got their start? Well, wonder no more, as Paramount+ is continuing to dig deep into their existing IP well of content (after successfully rebooting its once dormant Star Trek franchise over the last several years – well, somewhat successfully) to craft new shows for the streaming site. Set in 1954 – that would be five years before the musical – Grease: The Rise of the Pink Ladies explores Rydell High, its cliques (which also includes an all Latino T-Birds gang), the socio-political themes of the time (think plenty of misogyny, thinly veiled – and not so veiled – racism, and the continued rise of conservative ideology), and the general confusion that arises whilst trying to find your identity in high school. Oh, and it’s a musical. Think Glee, but with original songs and more grounded storylines (although we do have at least one creepy teacher).

There are definitely a number of things to like about this series. For one, it doesn’t take itself too seriously – there’s plenty of biting humor and general silliness threaded between the teenage angst, worries, love, and heartbreak that makes for a good high school drama series. The cast is also pretty darn great. Made up of relative newcomers, the central four Pink Ladies are a solid group, bouncing off one another with ease, with each able to hold their own section of storyline when they are separated. Marisa Davila is Jane, the Sandy-esque character, who moved to the area in the previous year and began dating the star jock, Buddy (Jason Schmidt, who manages to find some depth in a character who doesn’t seem to have much on the surface), in secret over the summer. When Buddy asks her to go steady, she accepts and the two hook up in a car at the drive-in. But when one of the popular girls sees it – and Buddy brags about going all the way to his friends, even though the pair didn’t – it sparks the season’s central storyline, highlighting the rampant slut-shaming and general misogyny of the time. And when Jane opts to run against Buddy for school president, after the endorsement of three fellow outcasts – Nancy (Tricia Fukuhara, who is great as a quirky, individualist), Olivia (Cheyenne Isabel Wells, who has a hell of a voice but who I wish wasn’t saddled with the disappointing arc she is given – more on that in a moment), and Cynthia (Ari Notartomaso, excellent as the comic relief and heart of the series) – the story kicks into gear. Or at least it does for the five episodes provided for critics.

Now, this isn’t a particularly original series. I suspect you will be able to guess exactly where the plot is headed from beat to beat, much like I was able. But that isn’t really a weakness in the series. After all, this is meant to stoke our sense of nostalgia for a film and musical that is pretty beloved (despite its flaws) decades after it first appeared. And having a narrative arc that feels familiar helps play into the feeling of safety that comes with a nostalgic series. There are no surprises here. The love triangle is exactly what you expect it to be. The queer character finds a potential girlfriend exactly when you expect them to. The characters you expect to be racist and sexist, are. It’s all perfectly fine, with moments elevated above the paint-by-numbers plot by some excellent performances by the show’s young cast (and Jackie Hoffman, one of our best character actors out there, absolutely kills it each time she’s on screen as the Assistant Vice Principal).

So, if the performances are strong despite a predictable plot, how’s the music? Well, that’s where the problems with the series start to come into play. Early in the season, the songs feel fresh and exciting. We don’t know our characters all that well, so it’s nice to get a song here and there to learn a bit more about their inner monologues and separate them into their specific place in the story. And the early songs are fun and solid pop numbers. But, as the season continues, the songs all start to sound relatively the same. Lots of belting, strong pop beats, and they start to take away from the performances on screen rather than add to them. As the series continues, the lyrics of the songs don’t seem like important inner monologues or stories that can advance the plot. Instead, they stop the action dead, reiterate what we already know, and do so in increasingly bland pop sounds. And through five episodes, there wasn’t a single ballad to be had. Which is a shame, as the cast has some great singers. I found myself just wishing that the show would drop the musical element and exist as a simple dramedy – the acting is strong enough to not need the music if the songs aren’t going to add to things.

And then there’s the storyline Olivia gets saddled with. Her particular arc falls into one of my least favorite high school story tropes – the teacher who has feelings for/a relationship with a student. In this case, the writing mostly paints him as a creep (he’s got a fiancée, he blames the student for their relationship when they are caught, he keeps leading her on), but it’s such a disgusting storyline to even put in the series that . . . ugh. I hated everything about it and wish the writers had opted to cut this particular arc all together. We don’t need this story told anymore – and the series doesn’t need to saddle one of its more interesting characters with this particular arc in order to feel a bit edgy or dangerous. Just tell us a story of a high schooler dealing with their issues without turning it into something with such a large ick factor.

But we are given a very racially diverse Rydell High this time around – not quite sure how the T-Birds go from a Latino gang to a white one in the span of five years, but maybe that will be addressed? – which is a nice change of pace. And the story makes sure not to gloss over that racism was alive and well in 1950s America (Jane, who is half Puerto Rican, passes easily for white, which becomes a part of the plot in a key way early on). But the ease of the narrative starts to strain a bit when more complex plot points start trying to enter the fray. And there are a few too many characters to ensure that every story receives enough screen time (Jane is the clear series lead, but Cynthia and Olivia have significant screen time, while Nancy and a couple additional characters end up really getting a short shrift as the season unfolds). This series is an imperfect one that likely won’t be worth your time unless you’re a Grease fan or if you’re looking to fill that Glee-shaped hole in your heart (at least, thus far, the characters are far more consistent in their development than whatever happened on the Fox series). Your mileage may vary.

Grease: The Rise of the Pink Ladies premieres on April 6 on Paramount+. Five of the ten episodes were provided for review.