Thursday, March 8, 2018

Youth & Consequences 1x02 Review: “The Hanging Chadwick Part 2” (Find the Ho) [Contributor: Alisa Williams]


“The Hanging Chadwick Part 2” 
Original Airdate: March 7, 2018

In the second episode of Youth & Consequences, Farrah and Colin have their work cut out for them. They’ve just destroyed Hope’s chances at student council president, but have learned the other frontrunner, Ilo, is cheating on Farrah’s BFF, Hurley, with former-BFF Stacey. So he must be destroyed as well, and Farrah has to come up with a dark horse candidate to beat him. She has her sights set on the noble but unknown Grace Ho. On top of that, they’ve discovered a hidden camera in the recently-deceased guidance counselor, Mr. Chadwick’s, office and have stolen both the camera and his laptop to find out what that’s all about.

Farrah and Colin head back to his place to start their work. Colin finds hundreds of files on Chadwick’s computer. He not only secretly recorded confidential conversations with students, but he also upskirted the girls with his conveniently placed camera. Gross. Colin wants to destroy the files but Farrah says no. They now have secret information on any student who ever entered Chadwick’s office and it could prove useful. Despite his objections, Colin agrees to transfer the files to the secure server he uses for the Crotch — the blog where the school’s secrets are spilled.

The next day at school, Farrah tells her inner circle (made up of BFF Hurley, Jayne, and Jane) her plan to make Grace Ho a successful third party candidate to win tomorrow’s election. None of them have ever actually met Grace, but she has a squeaky clean social media presence and penchant for humanitarian causes.

After a school-wide search, Jane locates Grace in the Home Economics classroom, baking up some cookies. They do a mini-transformation, giving Grace a makeover and crash course on how to be cool. It doesn’t take too well because Grace is undeniably dorky and completely naïve, but as long as she keeps hanging with Farrah’s squad and follows their directions, she may just have a shot.

Farrah invites Grace to play Bridge with them in the school cafeteria, which they do every day at lunch. It will keep all the student eyes on her and raise her profile. Grace is actually really good at Bridge, as it turns out... not so much at writing speeches, which Farrah has been reviewing for her while they play. Farrah says she’ll rewrite the speech that night and get it back to Grace in the morning, right before the three candidates take the stage at the student assembly.

In the meantime, Farrah lays out her strategy. Hope is basically done, after her derogatory remarks about the students were blasted during Chadwick’s candlelight vigil, which makes Ilo the only serious competition. He has most of the student groups in his pocket, but Farrah thinks they can fracture the groups by speaking directly to the female students. The school is 54% female and if Grace can convince them that she’ll give the women a unified voice, she’ll win.

That evening, Farrah works on Grace’s speech over at Colin’s place. He spends most of his time in a run-down RV parked in his mom’s driveway. It gives him the privacy he needs to run the Crotch without her knowledge. Grace appreciates the privacy, too, as things at her house have not been great lately. Her father took off, though it hasn’t been revealed why. For a while all his stuff was in boxes in the front hall, but since it doesn’t seem he’s coming back for it anytime soon, Farrah’s mom has finally moved it all out to the garage. Needless to say, whether the boxes are crowding out the hallway or the garage, Farrah would much rather be hanging out in Colin’s trailer, where he provides a listening ear. She doesn’t fully trust him with the private details of her personal life, but he at least gets the single parent thing and that’s something.

The next day, Farrah hands over Grace’s speech and gives her a final pep talk before the big assembly. Ilo delivers a speech that gets the crowd cheering, and reminds them to vote for a known quantity. Next up is Hope, who is met with boos. She tells everyone she’s sorry if she offended them, and that she recognizes she has a problem and will be taking sensitivity classes. The crowd laughs at that and she does a final half-hearted plea for their vote.

Next up is Grace, and it turns out she can deliver a pretty awesome speech. She tells the students she’s not an unknown quantity — she’s just like them. She’s a girl who just wants to survive high school and hopefully make some good friends and memories along the way. It has the desired effect and she wins the vote by a landslide.

After school she seeks out Farrah, wanting to know what happens next. Farrah tells Grace to keep her end of the deal about a private handicap bathroom. If she does that, they can do a weekly meet-up to discuss presidential strategy. Grace agrees, though it’s clear she’s disappointed because Farrah’s friendship isn’t part of that deal. Farrah heads out and Stacey approaches Grace, telling her she’s been there and this is how it is with Farrah, leaving Grace a lot to think about.

Meanwhile, we get a little nugget of info on why a private handicap bathroom is so important to Farrah. After she leaves Grace hanging, she heads over to Mrs. Davies house. We haven’t met her before, but as Farrah approaches, she’s helping her daughter — who’s in a wheelchair — out of the car. We learn Mrs. Davies is the mom of the mysterious Will, who we saw Farrah briefly texting with in the season premiere. He’s away at college and this girl must be his sister. Farrah asks how she’s enjoying her freshman year so far, though it’s unclear whether the girl is a freshman in high school or college, though I’m guessing college since we haven’t seen her at Central Rochester High before (though it’s a big school, so you never know). Farrah calls the girl by the nickname Woogie. Woogie says freshman year is going great, especially because Farrah’s not around to call her Woogie. They all laugh and continue talking as the credits roll. It seems our resident queen bee has several secrets up her sleeve.

If the rest of the season is anything like the first two episodes, this is a killer series definitely worth watching. I am going to be looking into that 30-day free trial of YouTube Red so I can watch the rest. Stay tuned!

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