In a new Hulu series, two quirky teenage girls try to shake up the status quo at their school. But when they pass through a portal that forms in the locker they share, they end up shaking the status quo in their school in parallel universes. Sounds like a fun show, right?
Opening Shot: Two teenage girls lie in the grass, with their books around them. One asks the other, “Where would you rather be than here?”
The Gist: Davey (Veronika Slowikowska) and Jonesie (Jaelynn Thora Brooks) are the closest of friends, to the point where they essentially go everywhere together and shut out most of the other people at Schrödinger High School (their mascot is the Wild Cats, with a cat seen coming out of a box). They even share a locker, for various reasons. The locker is full of odd items, like a car battery with googly eyes on it, which is giving off a magnetic field strong enough to pin the watch of their only friend, Emile (Nikko Angelo Hinayo), against the side.
The two friends are not a big fan of school, or of anything involving going along to get along. They chafe at things like the “Enchanted Night of Tolerance” dance that is that night, and they don’t plan on going, even if Davey is sweating the lunkheaded Abbott (Kevin Osea)
The school’s just-divorced-and-telling-everyone principal, Debbie Neighbors (Evany Rosen), is worried that Davey and Jonesie’s co-dependent friendship is stunting their social development. She calls them into her office and tells them that she’s assigning them to the dance’s decorating committee, and that they are going that night. They need to show that they’re being social, under threat that she’ll change their schedules so that they’re not together. She goes so far as threatening to transfer one of them.
In the meantime, Mr. Schneider (Dan Beirne), the tenth grade science teacher, can’t be bothered to know anyone’s names and seems to be constantly locked away in his classroom. What he’s doing there is communicating with the infinite other Mr. Schneiders in the multiverse (one is a dog, another is a fax machine, and a third loves disco). His goal is to open a portal so that all of the Mr. Schneiders reunify into the powerful entity he used to be.
Davey and Jonesie report to the gym, to see Sierra (Erika Swayze), the student council vice president, barking orders to the less-than-with-it Joyce (Sydney Topliffe). Sierra does not like Davey and Jonesie and doesn’t wan them ruining her dance. But the super-cool president, Alexis (Alexa Yaphe), overrules Sierra, sort of.
Tasked to get Champagne-flute plastic cups, Davey and Jonesie instead disappear, and show up to the dance with animal mascot heads. The plan is to do a dance with their heads on and make sure that everyone gets the message that they’re sheep (the heads aren’t sheep). All they do is make everyone upset, especially after they set a banner on fire and set off the sprinklers.
In the meantime, Mr. Schneider gets the portal going, but it’s not in his classroom. It happens that it’s opened in Davey and Jonesie’s locker, due to all the magnetic crap that’s in there. As he gets ready to unify, Davey and Jonesie get chased through the school, and they end up jumping into their locker to hide. It ejects them in the same spot, but things aren’t at all the same as the place they left.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Created by Evany Rosen, who plays Principal Neighbors, Davey & Jonesie’s Locker plays like a combination of Never Have I Ever, Awkward and Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.
Our Take: We binged the first three episodes of Davey & Jonesie’s Locker, which is what Hulu made available for review, because we wanted to get a good idea of just what each episode beyond the first one was going to be about. After watching that first one, the other two played out like we expected: The girls rocket to different versions of Schrödinger High, some that look similar, and some that are wildly different. In the second episode, for instance, they encounter people in color-coded robes and “gem”-laden chokers, bowing to supreme leader Sierra. In the third episode, the world looks identical to their own, but music is outlawed. In each universe, Schneider tries to get them home, but the portal keeps breaking.
Then there’s Cheryl (Emily Piggford) a delinquency (DAD) agent of MOM, the multiverse’s overseer. She has her own backstory, and is determined to capture Davey and Jonesy, tracking them as they create anomalies — changes in the universe they’re in — as they travel around.
Rosen has done a good job of creating a plausible multiverse inside the confines of the school, and the imagination of her and her writers can run wild inside those confines. But the key to the show is the chemistry between Slowikowska and Brooks as the title characters. They’re tasked with being in sync as friends, to the point where they talk simultaneously, saying different things but somehow coming to the same end point. When they do those things, it often sounds improvised; given that we’re not sure whether it is or not is a testament to both Rosen and her staff’s writing and the leads’ performances. But it wouldn’t work if they didn’t make sense as super close, co-dependent friends.
Davey & Jonesie’s Locker certainly leans towards goofy, but does so with character in mind more often than not, which always makes for a better show. Despite the different universes, it seems that all of the characters in the school are basically the same in all of them, even if their status is different. That consistency makes seeing the characters in different settings that much more fun to watch.
What Age Group Is This For?: There’s some light cursing — “crap” is said out loud, but “shit” is bleeped, for instance — and a bit of teenage lust; we think kids 9 and up will enjoy it.
Parting Shot: As they rocket through universes, being told by various Schneiders that “you don’t belong here!”, they see one universe where Schneider is cut in half by a magician, spraying them in blood. Davey screams, but Jonesie smiles. They dash back into the locker.
Sleeper Star: Parker Lauzon plays the nerdy Mark R. Shirt. Does the “R” stand for “Red?”
Most Pilot-y Line: When Principal Neighbors says she’ll separate Davey and Jonesie, one of them says, “Did you say ‘pizza party’?”
Our Call: STREAM IT. Davey & Jonesie’s Locker is a funny show with two charming leads, but it also knows that, even in the multiverse, characters come before gags, which is always better.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.