#i can’t say the same for rina in s4 apart from Kourtney and that is sad

[chemical-irwin]

i did a binge of hsmtmts s1 to s4, and it really struck me how much i missed having the school musical as the that held all the plots together

in s1 all of the characters are motivated by that musical. Ricky and Nini getting cast as the leads and it means a lot to them because its first time anybody has believed in them. Gina and Ej dont get the leads and it hurts their egos. we get to watch all of the kids bond over the musical, and when miss Jen is going to be fired all of the drama club do a performance to save her.

in s2 they have the menkies, where the club feel the pressure to beat North High who is actively sabotaging them. getting cast as Belle makes Ashlyn insecure, Gina choreographing with Carlos causes tension between them, and Ricky wanting Nini to be the show makes them fight. in end they don’t open the results because they only cared that they put on a good show

in s3 the doc adds pressure on them. getting cast as the lead makes Kourtney confront her anxiety, getting cast as ensemble sends Ashlyn into an identity crisis, Ej having to direct the show puts a rift between him and Gina. rehearsals and the doc puts characters in situations that move their story forward. in the end they all came together to say forget the doc because putting on the best show was more important to them

in s4 all of the characters are in separate plots with nothing holding them together. Rina are in a generic Romeo + Juliet/star is born story, Kourtney has the mandatory college storyline, and Ashlyn and Carlos get B plot relationship drama. all of the stories feel disconnected because none of them really relate to each other. there was literally no narrative reason for any characters to be extras in the films, they were just props in the back (even Ricky, because he was only there to react to filming in jealously or awe). the only character that talks about the musical is Ricky (and Gina), and we only saw one rehearsal

and like… all of that is fine, but they found their magnum opus in s3. the pacing was better and the dramatic irony had great pay-offs, the themes, the balancing of storylines and characters was infinitely better (it’s shocking how downgraded Ashlyn was in s4) and it had a shorter runtime. this season wasn’t about high school kids putting on a musical. with the exception of Kourtney and miss Jen this seasons not really about high school. a part that of me really missed watching a group of kids grow together through the school year while they put on a musical (especially if their ‘senior’ year😭)

#if you took rini out of s2 the season is fully coherent and has several interesting storlines #i can’t say the same for rina in s4 apart from Kourtney and that is sad #ricky ashlyn and carlos had their love stories and their own personal plots outside of relationships equally #hsmtmts #gina porter #ricky bowen #kourtney greene #ashlyn moon caswell #hsmtmts rina

[homemade-ghosts]

watching as rinis and pws say rina is gonna crash and burn like the other relationships bc they can’t keep ppl together is so 😭😭 the narrative of the season is rina together is the love they both deserve. pw was a plot device from the beginning and rini literally had ricky regressing by the end of s1 yet i was supposed to assume they wouldn’t crash and burn? rina will no doubt have problems in s4 but they’ll prevail unlike others …they can keep couples together but just like with every other teen drama midgames happen before the endgame 😭😭

After all this time, after interviews with the literal showrunner & creator of the show that confirm everything we've been saying, they still don't get it.

Both Rini & pw were built to fall apart and reducing their respective breakups to just being for the sake drama or because "the writers are incapable of keeping couples together" is a disservice to every character involved.

The Rini breakup was a huge sign of development for both Ricky & Nini. For Ricky, it meant letting go of his past, accepting his parents’ separation and embracing change. A part of Ricky resented his parents for not trying “hard enough”, for not “fighting” to save their marriage. Being with Nini was not only a way for Ricky to hold on to the last shred of his past, of his life before things were complex and difficult and confusing and changing -- but it was also a way for Ricky to try to prove, to both his parents & himself, that any relationship can be fixed if you just try really, really hard. Ricky wanted to believe that things don’t have to change if you don’t let them change -- but the more he tried to keep his relationship with Nini together, the more it became obvious that it was breaking apart at the seams. Ricky’s desire for stability & sameness was in direct opposition to Nini’s desire for the unpredictable & the new -- no amount of deleted comments or attempts at getting Nini into the musical were going to change that. In the end, Ricky realized that he & Nini couldn’t give each other what they needed or wanted anymore. When he did the mature thing and broke up with his first love -- this representation of his past/childhood -- it was an indication that he was growing up, finally ready to say goodbye to a part of himself that he outgrew a long time ago. Even if it hurt to realize it, he knew that his mom had been right all along, “Not all couples are meant to be together. Sometimes people change.”

For Nini, their breakup meant independence & room to breathe. She felt suffocated in her relationship with Ricky and she knew that he loved her not for who she was, but for what she represented (”am I something to you and not someone? ‘Cause I feel trapped on this pedestal you put me on.”) + Nini has, canonically, always been the kind of girl who judges herself by what boys see in her (in s1, Kourtney quite literally told her this & in s2, she wrote/sang the lyric “all my life I’ve seen myself through your eyes”). Gone is the girl who needed EJ’s encouragement to feel she was even worthy of auditioning for Gabriella at the beginning of the series. Gone is the girl who ran back to the safety of East High when YAC got too difficult. Now she finally has the confidence & self esteem to really go for what she wants. She realized that it’s her opinion of herself that matters. Ricky wanted her to be someone she hasn’t been for a long, long time -- but now Nini’s life gets to be solely about what she wants. 

People who ship Rini (In this, the year of our lord Tim Federle, 2022? Embarrassing.) really do not care about Ricky & Nini as individual characters at all because they hindered each other’s character development and became the worst versions of themselves (Ricky: clingy & vaguely controlling / Nini: neglectful & gaslighting) when they were together. 

pw was quite literally built, like you said, to be a plot device for Rina. Gina told Ricky she doesn’t do anything right the first time and EJ being her first relationship/boyfriend is a representation of that. EJ’s inability to share things with, support, listen to, show up for or understand Gina showed her that Ricky can, has & will do all of those things for her and more. EJ showed Gina the kind of love she deserves by not giving it to her.

Ricky & Gina had to be with and breakup with Nini & EJ, respectively, in order for them to be fully ready for each other.

In the immortal words of the great philosopher Taylor Swift:

Sometimes giving up is the strong thing Sometimes to run is the brave thing Sometimes walking out is the one thing That will find you the right thing

#like sorry they can't tell the difference between a layered slowburn who understand each other in a way no one else can #& a couple who can't give each other what they need...but idk what they want us to do about that #hsmtmts #hsmtmts s3 #ricky x gina #rina #asks #anon

[multimetaverse]

HSMTMTS 2x08 Review

Most Likely To was the best ep of S2 so far and ended one ship while launching another. Let’s dig in!

Gaston was super fun, a very nice showcase for both Larry and Matt. This is the kind of energy that early S2 was lacking. Also feels like the first ep where East High might actually have a shot at beating North High. Covid restrictions played a role but we really needed to see more rehearsal scenes and scenes of the wildcats just being theatre kids. This also may be one of the last times we see EJ perform as a student in the musical so I’m glad we got this.  

EJ has been criminally underused for most of S2, he’s marketed as part of the big 4 along with Nini, Ricky, and Gina and Matt Cornett’s name is listed 3rd in the credits but in the early eps of S2 you’d think he was guest star. Lately he’s started to become more important and tonight was an excellent showcase of why he’s such an interesting character. I’m not gonna check but this feels like it’s the most EJ screen time in a single ep that we’ve gotten all season long. 

Of course, the main reason for EJ’s increased screen time is because of Portwell. I’ve been neutral on them but tonight they really won me over’ their scenes were so sweet that they warmed even my cold black heart. Matt and Sofia are good friends irl and that shines through in their easy rapport and great chemistry. Gina snorting at EJ’s joke was cute and I loved the shot of Gina accidentally walking into the shot for EJ’s confessional. As an aside, they’ve been doing some fun stuff with the confessionals lately which helps add a bit of the metaness that helped make S1 so great.

The real big Portwell scene tonight was EJ and Gina talking on the couch at Ashlyn’s. Lot’s to love there. Gina’s speech to EJ about what she sees when she thinks of him was sweet and her saying that EJ tried to do the right thing and often failed but kept trying echoes what she said of herself during her confession to Ricky. Also when EJ asked Gina if she understood the feeling of having her life mapped out she replied, ‘’not really’’ which is almost certainly the inspiration for Gina asking a question to EJ and him responding ‘’not really’’ in their pre S2 face time call on the hsmtmts instagram. 

EJ is still wracked with guilt for the guy he used to be but Gina reminds him that he’s grown and is a good guy which leads to her slip up about her seeing him that way vs the rest of the gang hinting that she’s beginning to catch feelings for EJ. Which leads to EJ complimenting her and them having a moment that could well have led to a kiss if Ashlyn hadn’t come home. And they cap it off with Gina falling asleep and EJ covering her with his Duke sweater. 

It’s been nice not seeing Gina upset over Ricky these past two eps and it’s a damning indictment of the poor writing and pacing of S2 that her story in the first 6 eps can be summed up as Gina being upset over something Ricky said or did. Not only has Portwell allowed EJ to rise in prominence but also it’s allowed Gina to escape the rut her character was stuck in pining for Ricky. 

I hope after S2 is over that we get an interview where Tim explains how the Portwell plot came to be. The S1 finale set up some possible interest between them as did the pre S2 face time call but nothing came of it during the first 4 eps, they stood next to each other a lot but barely interacted otherwise. Notably in 2x01, which Tim himself wrote, EJ tries to grow a beard and tells Ashlyn that he says her as so young which is extremely jarring now that we know that EJ is crushing on Gina who is Ashlyn’s age. 

Was Tim not set on doing Portwell until he realized he needed to give Gina something else to do other than hopelessly pine for Ricky? Narratively, it made sense after Rini got together in S1 to put the other two Big 4 characters together in S2 but did Tim not want it to seem so obvious to the audience so he deliberately kept Portwell apart until 2x05 where EJ’s feelings make for a nice plot twist? Was he just reluctant to plug EJ back into the love square due to how much more complicated it would make things but later felt he had no other options? Or was it just plain old bad pacing and writing?

Of course, I wish that there wasn’t such a large age gap between Sofia and Matt but there are no Gina ships that avoid that problem, there’s also an age gap between Sofia and Joshua, just as there was between Olivia and Joshua and Matt in S1. Depending on when they film S3 there’s a good chance that most of it will be finished before Sofia even turns 18 which is deeply unfortunate. There’s a broader issue of teen girls being cast in mostly age appropriate roles while their male love interests are older adults and in particular it often affects female characters of colour. Netflix has a really bad track record with those kind of age gaps but Disney has problems too as we’ve seen on HSMTMTS and on GMW where by the end of S3 they had 18 year old Peyton Meyer as the boyfriend of 14 year old Rowan Blanchard’s character (not to mention canon Joshaya which didn’t have such a bad age gap between the actors but was problematic regarding the ages of the characters themselves).

A knock I’ve seen on Portwell is that EJ is just gonna leave for university next year but that was never gonna happen, Matt’s under the same 4 season contract as all the other mains and he’ll be sticking around in some capacity much like Sharpay ended up doing in the movies. It is true that EJ will probably have to move on at the end of S4 while Gina still has her senior year left but that will also happen with her and Ricky since he’ll be graduating at the end of S4. It was a big mistake to make EJ a senior but it also may end up being a big mistake to make Gina a sophomore. It would have been too messy to retcon EJ to be a junior but Tim probably should have taken the chance to retcon Gina into being a junior in S2.

That Rini breakup was so sad (missed opportunity for gotta go my own way). They managed to get in a Troyella reference with the treehouse. This was inevitable they just have not been communicating well though now that we know that Ricky thought Nini left YAC for him some of his desperation to spend as much time together as possible makes more sense. I think Rini is endgame if the series has 4 seasons but it wouldn't shock me if we never seem them dating again and they only get back together in the series finale. It also wouldn’t surprise me if Nini never dates anyone else for the remainder of the series or at least not seriously. 

We’re not even halfway through the series so it’s way too early to permanently slam the door on Rini though this time apart will probably help Joshua and Olivia move on from their own bitter break up before it bleeds too much into their performances. I do wonder if Tim really has a clue what he's gonna do with them for the remaining 24-28 eps of the series, assuming S3 and S4 have 10-12 eps each. 

Roman Banks killed If I Can’t Love Her and the montage of all the couples or ex couples was great.

It was nice to finally meets some parents other than the Bowen’s and Salazar-Roberts’. Kourtney’s mom was played by Dara’s actual mother and their dynamic was great as expected. It seems from their conversation that Kourtney's father is dead which I don’t believe has been mentioned before. Cash Caswell.... well it gets what the character is about across. He really looks and sounds like a rich Utah republican, I bet he knows Mitt Romney personally. I liked EJ going to tell his father that he’s not going to Duke and recognizing that he wants to build his own life on his own merits. 

We saw a bit of that S1 Miss Jenn energy tonight which was fun though I didn't like how curt she was with Seb nor did I like how rude Carlos was to Seb although we know that blows up in 2x10. 

Jazzara rising! I really liked how Jazzara and Portwell are sort of mirroring each other and since Mazzara knows about EJ’s feelings for Gina it wouldn’t shock me if helping EJ out is part of him showing a softer side in 2x12.

Of course Ashlyn is VP of the Nostradamus society. It's clear her family has some kooky new age beliefs (her parents are probably members of some naturopathic medicine group on Facebook that doubles as a gateway into Qanon)

It was nice to see Big Red being such a good friend to Ricky and the return of Ricky’s infamous pillow hugs. Lmao at Ashlyn just chilling while Big Red is comforting Ricky

Also Miss Jenn saying sexy and Big Red referring to pillow talk, the writers are adding a bit of spice when cooking up these scripts.

Looking Ahead: 

Looks like Gina may be wearing EJ's duke sweater next ep according to some posts I saw. Jack presumably is there to somehow help Gina decide what she wants with Ricky and EJ though him having wanderlust might also feed into Gina’s thoughts on settling down in SLC or moving with her mom around the country.

Let's see what mom of the year, Lynne Bowen, has up her sleeves. Ricky’s bedroom at her place in Chicago looks much nicer than the apartment Mike Bowen has so perhaps she makes a lot more money than he does. 

Not looking forward to the Zoom portions of the ep but I guess it was inevitable. 

There’s only two paths for Gina’s story to go in the remainder of this season; either she decides to move on from Ricky and give EJ a chance or she decides that Ricky is worth trying again and squelches her budding feelings for EJ. The former looks much more likely after tonight’s ep but either way it needs to be handled with care. Inevitably Gina and Ricky need to talk about what happened between them but if Tim really wants Ricky to continue being a viable love interest or even a good friend to Gina then he needs to really have Ricky apologize and show a thoughtful, kinder side of him that’s largely been missing this season. 

What I think Tim is doing is setting up Portwell getting together in 2x12 but Ricky pining over Gina until Portwell break up late S3 and Rina get together in the S3 finale before they break up later in S4 and Ricky gets back with Nini near the end of the series. If I had Tim’s ear I would tell him that he should pick which ship he wants to do, Rina or Portwell, but don’t do both. He wants canon Rina? Great then end Portwell before it starts and have Rina happen in S3 and introduce other obstacles to them getting together rather than having to damage EJ’s character and make him lose another girl he likes to Ricky. He wants canon Portwell? Great then have Gina and Ricky’s conversation be closure for the both of them and have Gina and EJ get together and break them up without Ricky being a cause of it or waiting in the wings to get with Gina soon afterwards. Doing both will be a disaster and I truly hope that Tim Federle carefully thinks over his mistakes in S2 and really plans out the remaining 2 seasons of the series while there’s still time to prevent things from going really off the rails like GMW and AM did thanks to the bad decisions of Michael Jacobs and Terri Minsky. 

Until next week wildcats. 

#HSMTMTS #Portwell #Rini #Gina Porter #EJ Caswell #Ricky Bowen #Nini Salazar-Roberts #Kourtney Greene #HSMTMTS Reviews