PANIC: A SHOW THAT SEEMED AFRAID OF ITS OWN POTENTIAL

Panic is an American Teen Drama Television Series about a group of graduating seniors, who risk their lives competing in a series of challenges that force them to confront their deepest fears, for a chance to win life-changing money, in order to escape their small town. The show was created by Lauren Oliver, based on her 2014 novel of the same name. The series stars Olivia Welch, Mike Faist, and Jessica Sula. It premiered on Amazon Prime Video on May 28, 2021, but in August of the same year, the series was canceled after just one season.

The Series currently has a 67% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with a much higher Audience Score of 80%. It also has a Metascore of 54 (based on only 10 critic reviews) on Metacritic, with a User Score of 6.7 (based on 22 Ratings) and a 6.6/10 on IMDB (based on almost 9,100 reviews).

So, this show caught my attention while I was scrolling through Amazon Prime Video looking for something new to watch, mostly because I liked the concept. The premise was extremely smart, incorporating the existential dread of being a teenager, feeling trapped in a small town, and turning it literally into a life or death prospect. Casting for this project was adequate, and about what you would expect for a YA Series, a bunch of young and fairly attractive twenty-somethings, most of whom you’ve never heard of, playing high school aged kids.

The story had potential, lots of it in fact, and it probably would have worked better as a movie about a bright-eyed teenager looking to escape her small town to go to college and become a writer, before her junkie mother derails her plans, but it folds under the pressure of 10 hour-long episodes, which is the problem. Because of the extra time the story needs to fill, we get a lot more melodrama than I think would have been needed if this were a film, and it saps the energy out of the story. Also, there are so many twists involving so many people, that it felt a bit distracting.

The dialogue was fine for the most part, which was a nice surprise, because a lot of these YA shows can be really clumsy when it comes to how the characters converse with one another. The acting was decent, with a handful of known older actors like Bonnie Badilia, Rachel Bay Jones and Enrique Murciano appearing alongside the younger cast members. The plot points of the story move fairly fluently from one to the next, but unfortunately this show does eventually jump the shark (or the tiger, Lol), and by the cliffhanger of an ending, it just feels like a waste of a weekend.

But if you want to watch Panic for yourself, you can do so on Amazon Prime Video (with subscription).