The Underclass

After getting dropped from an elite program, a student gets tangled in the affairs of a high school gang while trying to find her own identity.

Rando@tpopal

October 5, 2020

Started out really good but ended up bad :(

This show tried to do too much at the same time. I think the overall message of this show was about social change and friendship. There was a sprinkle of some love interest in there but no real hashing out of the relationships. The social issues that they tried to acknowledge was the main plot of the show and they did a great job of making deputy director the bad guy. He was truly a horrible human being but nothing happened to him. **_After this there is a slight spoiler_**. All the people that were horrible and bad had no real consequences from the actions that they committed. The only one that had to deal with consequences was Pang herself. And I am not sure what message that was seeding. Totally understand that the world isn't fair and not all bad people get punished but I didn't see how parents wouldn't have caused more of a problem. **_Spoiler ended._**

There was also this constant dropping of sub plot lines. During the first episode they kept bringing up a school project that they had to complete and they constantly showed the girls not preparing and not doing the work. It was bought up so many times and then we never heard about it again and it just kind of went away. There was also some timeline issues with this show. Like deputy director came up with this stratified class system and implemented it when the director went away and its been about a year but then there were older ladies on the alumni association talking about how they had graduated from A Class and they did not look like they graduated in the last year. Puen was also in the A class and graduated and it seemed like she was in the A class for a couple of years so I am just confused on the timing. In this was not the only thing that didn't make sense time wise.

Directing and sound was also off. People were always standing around awkwardly and when they would play sports and games they were no sounds. No traffic, no cheering, no clapping it was just weird. And then you would get random sounds showing up. Just really threw off the experience.

And finally there was the teacher and student relationship that was going on. And the guy was young and she was a senior so not much of an age difference but he clearly he had a thing for her from the beginning though he never acted on it but still enough signals that everyone around them were calling him on it. Now to be fair I was totally into this relationship I just didn't see how they were going to get him away from the teacher role and make this OK. He should have gotten himself out of that situation as soon as he realized it. **_Another Spoiler_** And you see no interest from Pang in the beginning just pure annoyance. But you start to see it shift from annoying to respect and the next scene she's crying and begging him not to leave. I was just so confused as to when she started to be that into him. It really annoyed me that she would be so intense about it though he was very sweet and understanding. But then you find out that he had also dated his sister's other friend and it went into creepy territory. Obviously he will be dating but why is it always his sister's close friends.**_Spoiler done!!_**

Anyway was Ok. I would not recommend or watch again. It just stopped making sense after awhile.