We all have that John Green phase, when the word “Okay.” oozed with a gravity of emotion that turned us into this helpless puddle of tears (or is it just me?) or when we thought smoking was so cool and so badass (it’s not) and that dying young is much preferable than living long enough to achieve your dreams (also not) or when we thought having weird quirks made us look cooler and more interesting (I’m so glad I didn’t stick an unlit cigarette to my mouth and call it a metaphor). Green’s novels did not begin the wholly large young adult consumption, but it was a great factor for the success of the genre. Most of those who were actual young adults during this era are now adult-adults whose Green phase are long behind and long forgotten—until now.
It’s nice that the Looking for Alaska adaptation is set as a throwback, putting the scenes in 2005, because the faux-depth and the brooding teenage angst would probably not be as mirroring of today’s teens. In a way, the series targets the adults who hit puberty at the same time they reached the After chapter of the source novel. And as a previous Green fanatic, I was amazed by this faithful version of the beloved book.
Adapted to television by Josh Schwartz, the same guy who gave us Gossip Girl (I’m citing this one, even though his other show, The O.C. is much more popular, because I did grow up with Gossip Girl), Looking for Alaska is about Miles ‘Pudge’ Halter whose “admirable” quirk is that he knows a lot of famous last words and who went to a boarding school to “go seek the Great Perhaps”. There, he met an ironically cool bunch of misfits: The Colonel, Takumi, and the titular Alaska and did things normal high-schoolers do...or do they? In Green’s universe, chain-smoking to die, not to enjoy the nicotine, executing elaborate pranks against the wealthy students, and constantly talking in snarky, sharp, witty dialogues constitute as normal things high school students do. So, that’s what the group does.
I can go on and on about how Looking for Alaska and Green’s other works, for that matter, feature almost imaginary bunch of mostly self-deprecating, smart, and conventionally attractive characters with quirks, but I’m here to praise the series. The adaptation is actually good. While most of the memorably cringy dialogues and the unique normalcy of Green’s characters are still intact, Schwartz and the writers managed to strip most of the pretensions and really showed the fears and motivations of these troubled teens. I absolutely love what they did to Alaska’s character.
Alaska Young can be argued as one of the best examples of the literary manic pixie dream girl trope. The book, written from the boy’s perspective, wrote Alaska as such. She’s the cool girl. She’s the mysterious girl. She’s the cool, mysterious girl who likes to chain-smoke to die and carries an incredible trauma. But that doesn’t matter because the story is about the boy who falls in love the moment he sees the girl. And somehow, his dreams and his personal growth would be completed because of her. And it’s all about him and him alone, and the whole purpose of the girl is to be his green light across the bay. Ugh. Even writing about the whole manic pixie dream girl trope exhausts me. In the series however, young actress Kristine Froseth gave such depth and maturity to Alaska that really captivated the viewers’ hearts. It does help that most of the writers and directors that helmed the eight-episode miniseries are females. This helped shift the story from Miles’ subjective, male gaze to a much broader, objective one. So we didn’t see Alaska from Miles’ perspective, but we saw her from an outsider’s. We saw this beautiful girl whose currents run deep below the surface. That was the most important change incorporated in this adaptation.
I really couldn’t care less about Miles. I didn’t like him as a protagonist and I only sorta liked him in the series. I am still disappointed though when I finally heard the most popular quote that ruled Tumblr for a long time said by Charlie Plummer’s Miles. “If people are rain,” he said. “I was drizzle, and she was hurricane.” It was written as an admission of inferiority, but feeling OK with it. It’s not written as something to be exclaimed. It’s a gentle realization that the person we love are so much greater than we are. In the series, it was not delivered nicely and it only made the whole absurdity of the quote even more apparent. Even the one quote I liked from the book (“No, not past tense”, which I realized was a reference to Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye) was not greatly uttered. Disappointing.
I couldn’t care less about Miles, but I did love The Colonel, which was brilliantly portrayed by Denny Love. Sofia Vassilieva, on the other hand, made the almost secondary book character, Lara, unforgettable. Despite her imperfect accent, her scenes were attention-grabbing. I still sometimes catch myself saying “It’s hospital time, Milessssss”. And book Takumi and series Takumi are both perfectly adorable.
In the book, the chapters are titled in reverse chronological order, counting down the days until the “After” and the series adapted this. In every episode, a title card would flash indicating how many days we are until the inevitable After, until the one that showed “1 Day Before” and the After episodes. Readers of the book know what happened. But it still created this mystery that was foreshadowed right in the very beginning. It was a nice touch.
Lastly, the most commendable thing about this series is its music. The use of hits from the year the story was set cemented the whole thing as the throwback show of today. Remember when everyone on Tumblr used to cry to Death Cab for Cuties’ I Will Follow You Into the Dark? Well, we now have a new version to cry on as the series featured Miya Folick’s beautiful rendition of the song. The Postal Service also made a musical appearance, as did Kelly Clarkson. It was an indie playlist through and through. And I’m currently obsessed with the songs used in the series.
In the end, the Looking for Alaska miniseries is good TV. It’s not perfect, but it hits all the right notes, creating an entertaining adaptation of such a beloved novel. Now, we go seek the Great Perhaps...whatever that means.
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