TV REVIEW: Sugar Rush
I fell in love with Sugar Rush the moment I first saw it. Honestly, when you're full of teenage angst, questioning and/or experimenting with your sexuality, establishing your sense of style, and dabbling in things you shouldn't, it's very difficult not to.
Sugar Rush opens with Olivia Hallinan's character, Kim, masturbating with an electric toothbrush whilst fantasising about her best friend Sugar (played by Lenora Crichlow). Sugar is outrageous, beguiling, and glamorous, always either dancing, shoplifting, smoking, drinking, or having sex, and it's a challenge not to be captivated by her. She's also selfish, hard faced, insensitive, and frequently oblivious to other people's feelings, constantly seeking to get what she wants. Shy, insecure Kim idolises her and would do anything for her.
Many of us have had such a best friend, whether we've been "sexually obsessed" with them, as Kim puts it, or not. That's point number one in the long list of Things Teenagers Can Relate To, which Sugar Rush so brilliantly conveys: the wild highs and miserable lows of a toxic friendship. Kim and Sugar are particularly hard to watch together when Kim eventually admits how she feels; a confession Sugar cruelly uses to her advantage.
A major appeal of Sugar Rush is that it takes the viewer through the unending emotional rollercoaster of what happens between the ages of 15 and 18: being a teenager, growing up, reassessing your priorities, establishing boundaries, juggling new relationships with old ones, and so much more. Sometimes it feels as though you're watching parts of yourself acted out on screen. The show also deals with difficult themes such as conversion therapy, sexual assault, and grooming, not to mention infidelity, joyriding, swinging, drug use/overdose, peer pressure, and in Sugar's case, detainment in prison. Many of these topics are dealt with via a two-pronged approach, where some scenes are designed to make you laugh out loud and others so raw you end up on the verge of tears.
In Sugar Rush there is always something going on, and the episodes often feel like a collection of potent moments and memories. The look on Kim's face when she sees Sugar's bedroom for the first time. Stella, Kim's mother, showing her softer side for the first time when she tearfully begs husband Nathan to let her stay after he finds out about her affair with the hired help. Sugar, crying alone in a café after she and Kim finally discuss what might have been and what will never be. There are also those weird and disturbing scenes with no context or follow up, like the one where Kim's brother submerges his pet hamster in paint (and the later scene where said hamster, now mummified in blue emulsion, can be seen still in its cage, unnoticed by the rest of the household), but we won't dwell on that too much.
Another brief but brilliant scene: Andrew Garfield's character Tom's transformation after having had sex with Kim and almost with Sugar, which is a perfect simultaneous display of the sublime and the ridiculous. His proclamation that he's "had her" [Kim]...and her girlfriend [Sugar]", as he leans against a wall moodily sucking on a cigarette in a stylish black leather jacket, is cleverly amusing. His new, smooth, confident image marks a departure from the old, uncoordinated, awkward Tom, the soft-as-a-brush and sensitive Tom who adored his fluffy lapdog and was uncoordinated and over-eager to say the least. The scene is entertaining because the new Tom is a caricature, an embodiment of the notion that successfully navigating sex with someone for the first time makes you more desirable, less attainable, and worthy of awe and admiration. Of course, one could criticise the scene for pushing the idea that it is acceptable to publicly name who you have had sex with and wear that fact as a badge of honour, another notch on the bedpost. The new Tom is however so incredibly absurd in context of the old Tom, that anyone with a vague appreciation of satire would take it as just that.
To summarise: Sugar Rush, for me, is a love affair that will never die. It has everything. It is challenging, sexy, heartbreaking, funny, bizarre, and addictive. A show which gave representation to young women trying to navigate a world where being in love with your female best friend is not the ideal scenario. A show, which explored how dysfunctional families can become functional, even under the oddest of circumstances. It is complicated, and yet at once so simple in that the ultimate message is, we are all different, and life is not always an easy ride, but by god it will be a wild one.
Written by Amy Watson
Amy is a content manager originally from the UK and now proud to call Hamburg, Germany her new home. She is a passionate lover of cheese, literature, languages, modern art, and enjoys all four with copious amounts of red wine.
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