This week’s episode follows East High’s drama students prepare for Carlos’ “Quinceañero”. The episode starts with Gina and Seb getting everyone on board to throw a surprise birthday party for Carlos, and, of course, everyone agreeing. Right off the bat, I notice something wrong with Nini and Ricky again that I just couldn’t quite place in last week’s episode. Now, I know. The writing for them is actually quite terrible, it’s cheesy and reminds me of couples that are just all about PDA. You know the ones that fight over who should hang up the phone first. I’m honestly upset at this revelation and I really hope the writing gets better for them.
On the other hand, Seb and Carlos have had the opposite effect and seem to have gotten more opportunities as a couple. Don’t get me wrong there is still a cringe factor to every couple on the show but that’s mostly because we’re watching a Disney + show on teenagers; It’s either this or Euphoria, apparently, there’s no middle ground. In this episode, we see a lot more characters that have been in the background for a while. We see EJ accepting his role in the AV club, Carlos and Seb’s dynamic together, and lastly Gina’s internal struggles with her feelings for Ricky.
This episode focused more on Gina as the protagonist. We see her celebratory dance in honor of Carlos, and we realize that Gina is not happy at East High. As I was scrolling on Twitter on the HSMTMTS tag, I came across someone saying that Gina was so surprised that EJ asked her how she was because nobody else has. I have to disagree with this sentiment because throughout the five episodes we’ve seen, Ashlyn has asked Gina if she’s alright, Kourtney asked this episode, and Carlos last episode. All these people obviously see there is something wrong but Gina is completely closed off in her responses so I don’t fault them for giving her space instead of pushing. I actually think the scene between EJ and Gina was to spark a new romantic interest between the two. We see EJ giving Gina admiring looks from across the room, more interactions between the two, and even a moment where both of them just stare at each other. I, personally, would love to see this play out.
I do have to point out that I admired Disney for showing representation of not only the LGBTQ+ community but also the Hispanic community. I think it took a while for media to realize that things do not have to be mutually exclusive, there can be a POC gay character as well as a body inclusive POC character. I loved the representation and I especially loved the fact that they emphasized Carlos’ fearlessness in being himself inspired other people to also do the same.
Overall, I enjoyed this episode a lot more than the other episodes we’ve seen so far. I haven’t mentioned the underlying plot of the spring musical is because the show writers have not made the stakes high enough. I’m not interested at all to see what happens, rather I’m interested to see how it’ll affect the characters.
Questions for next week:
Muska Olumi is a columnist for Boardwalk Times
