On the surface, at least in episode 1 of Off Campus, an 8-episode series on Amazon Prime, based on Elle Kennedy’s 2015 book The Deal, you can predict everything that will happen.
College hockey player needs to ace an oral exam, otherwise he’ll fail the class and won’t be allowed to play. Straight-A student loses her scholarship and also crushes on an unattainable musician who doesn’t even know she exists. Straight-A student is awkward and gawky, hockey player is hot and cocky. Hockey player asks straight-A girl to tutor him, and also offers to play her “fake boyfriend” to make the other guy jealous, and – presumably? – interested in her. Straight-A girl resists at first: she can’t stand hockey. But she needs the money he offers and she wants to get the attention of her crush. They shake hands, strictly business, sealing “the deal”.
To say “we’ve seen this before” is to understate the powerful pull of the cultural cliche.
The Expected
Will these two – the hockey player who is also a “player” with the ladies, and the shy girl who falls over things and laughs from nervousness – fall in love while pretending to have a relationship?
Will he ace the exam?
Will she get another scholarship?
Will complications arise?
Will she actually achieve her goal and get the musician guy and will hockey player then suddenly be jealous, realizing his feelings for her?
Will hockey player declare himself at the last minute (preferably in front of a crowd), and will she realize she has loved him all along? Will the crowd do a slow clap?
Will another girl attempt to steal the hockey player away from his fake relationship? Will he break the deal of the “fake relationship” to “cheat”?
Will outside forces – like his judgmental jock friends and her equally judgmental nerd friends – get in the way of this pairing, poisoning the well? “How can you like her, she’s not a hot babe?” “How can you like him, he’s a dumb jock?”
Or maybe:
Will he be such a cocky asshole he resists his feelings for her because she’s not like the eager girls who cluster around him?
Will he be afraid of what his friends will say? Will his friends say dumb shit?
Maybe one of his friends will make a drunken pass at his fake girlfriend, and he will pull the friend off her in a fit of rage, revealing his true feelings?
Will he want to keep his options open, perpetually, because he’s always been a “player”?
Will she get feelings for him first and will he push her away?
Will some misunderstanding or miscommunication arise – maybe overheard gossip, or a misinterpreted social media post – and will we then have to suffer through three episodes of the two of them doing dumb shit, all while we writhe in frustration because if they just TALKED to each other, everything would be sorted out?
Will they be smart people but behave in dumb ways because the plot requires dumb shit and misunderstandings?
The Unexpected
You may think you know the answer to all of these questions but in only one or two cases will you be correct. Even minor interactions between friends, behavior between groups of people, the dynamic of a one-night-stand (and on and on) don’t quite go as expected. Many familiar cliches show up – the “oh no there’s only one bed” trope, etc. – but the playbook doesn’t infiltrate the interpersonal level. These feel like actual people. At the same time, you get the fun of the “fake relationship trope”. We just saw this in Anyone But You, with Sidney Sweeney and Glen Powell pretending to be in a relationship for the entirety of the film. We love to see it!
Realizing I couldn’t predict where some of this was going happened early, in episode 1. The big plot stuff is predictable by design, but the characters aren’t behaving the way they’re supposed to behave. Why is Garrett being transparent and honest in his conversation with his hookup? That’s not how this usually goes. If all you see are the tropes – and they are impossible to miss – your expectations may override the reality of what you are watching. People “present” as stereotypes and in the next five minutes the stereotype has vanished. This happens over and over and over again.
Cliches are cliches for a reason. They work. But when a project relies only on the cliches, counting on an audience to swallow it, there’s almost a visceral sense of hollowness, the lowest-common-denominator emptiness of it, and, if you think more about it, you sense the laziness of the writers who haven’t done the hard work of actually creating situations and characters that COULD be believable, regardless of the cliched scenario. You can DO this even within a formulaic structure. You CAN have both formula and originality. Look at 1930s screwballs.
In Off Campus, the use of cliches is deliberate. The first two episodes are almost a fake-out. Layers are then peeled off, scene by scene. I had to constantly re-evaluate what was going on as I watched. Oh, okay, so he’s smart. He actually isn’t entitled, he’s the opposite. Oh, okay, that was actually a deep conversation. Huh. Both of them just made good points and I can see both sides. We don’t have to wait for the penultimate scene to get underneath the surface of these people. It’s all there from the jump.
Be warned: this post has spoilers for the whole entire series.
This post starts with overview thoughts about what Off Campus is and how it operates, followed by my observations of the first episode. The series inspired the dramaturg in me. Hmm, I’m thinking of another television series that did the same thing … I’ve been working on this, intermittently, since I first watched the series in early August, maybe a paragraph at a time. It’s been a bad year. Everything here includes spoilers because I want to talk about the story structure as a whole, so basically these posts will be for people who watched the whole thing and maybe want to watch again. Trigger warnings are appropriate (two of the episodes have trigger warnings at the start, not what you would expect from a rom-com). Please note: when I use the words “trauma”, “trigger”, and “PTSD”, I am using them in the clinical sense even though I am not a doctor. These words are over-used, dangerous because it renders helpful concepts meaningless, but until we have better words, we’ve got to go with them. Off Campus is light and often funny and occasionally very sexy, but the trauma here comes from rape and child abuse – so the PTSD is real. I say this knowing it will make Off Campus sound “heavier” than it is, overall. It’s a romance, much of it is hilarious, the people are engaging. And yet it’s one of the more trauma-informed shows I’ve seen in a long long time. Wild that Off Campus came out at the same time as “Furious”, another heavily trauma-informed show with a very different tone. Traumas like rape or child abuse, or witnessing parental abuse, are things a lot of people deal with, even when they’re falling in love with each other. Because so much of the series is about sex/consent/trauma … I’ll be talking personally too, and, at times, in as much detail as I feel comfortable with, but hopefully tastefully too. I find it’s helpful to be frank, and Off Campus opens up a space to talk about these subjects. If frank sex talk is not your bag, or if it makes you uncomfortable, I totally understand and this post – and Off Campus – might not be for you. It’s up to you, just figured I’d say something before diving in.
Episode 1 might be a hurdle for some viewers, since the “deal” — Hannah and Garrett making a deal to help each other out in a “mutually beneficial” “purely transactional” way – is laid out in such an obvious fashion. Some viewers may be so busy counting cliches that they miss all the subverting going on, might miss the insistent introduction of the Unexpected into the formula. The “unexpected” gets more and more obvious with each episode, and then we get to episode 4, the halfway mark, when all bets are off. Episode 4 feels like the finale, and yet there are four episodes to go. The structure is lop-sided, the season bifurcated.
I watched to enjoy the charm of all these good-looking people going to college. I wasn’t disappointed, but I noticed early that the TONE was “off”. Things happened as expected but something was different. During the second watch, I kept my critical thinking skills and paid close attention to HOW the show was doing what it did. The first two episodes are adorable and romantic. There are flashes of darker themes, but overall you are having a blast. Hannah and Garrett pretend to be dating, and chaos ensues, tee hee. You would never predict episode 7 after watching episode 1. In episode 4, there are two scenes, one short and one massive, showing things I’ve never seen before on film (and I’ve seen everything). I racked my brains: “Wait, has this specific scenario been presented before in this way?” I couldn’t believe what I was watching.
Rom coms play out a couple of ways: complications pile up, outside events “conspire” to keep the couple apart, or in a sustained state of misunderstanding. (This is, incidentally, how Hannah and Garrett’s breakup goes in the book: changes were made for the series and I think they work so much better.) Misunderstanding and miscommunication don’t play a large role in Hannah and Garrett’s romance. The plot isn’t manipulated to keep them apart. What happens is trauma rises until it is unavoidable. Theirs is a good relationship threatened by their respective traumas. They try to communicate, and they do pretty well, until something huge happens and they both fall apart, unable to help each other. This is real. This is how it goes with trauma.
Saying what doesn’t happen in Off Campus, what ISN’T present, is more useful than saying what DOES.
There’s a scene in episode 7 where Garrett, our hockey playing lead, is in an emotional spiral, mid-game. It’s bad. His girlfriend Hannah is not there, because she, too, is in a spiral. The spirals are unconnected, and they are not spiraling about each other. Hannah is not at the game. You feel like she canNOT go to that hockey arena, it is NOT safe for her there. Garrett has no idea what’s going on, and he normally knows what’s going on with her, so he keeps texting her, and then calling, asking her where she is, he needs her. She is taking care of herself, though, she’s triggered, she needs to be safe. Finally, after talking with her advisor, Hannah feels more centered and listens to Garrett’s frantic voice mail. Because we’ve seen where Garrett is at, I fully expected him to be mad at her for not being there when he needs her. Instead, he says, “The game’s starting and you’re not here. Did I do something wrong? Are you okay? I really could use a pep talk right about now. Just call me, please.” He’s more concerned than mad. She finds him in the green room at the arena, where he is pretty much out of control with anxiety. When he sees her, everything in him relaxes, a sigh from his FEET comes out. He says, “Please just text me next time. I was worried.”
Yes, you could have him lash out because he needs her and she wasn’t there. But we’ve seen this ad nauseum – to the point it’s practically propaganda: This is how men are, they don’t emotionally regulate themselves because of how they were raised, and women need to make allowances because this is how men get. Also, she DIDN’T text him back, after all, what did she THINK would happen? (As though it’s a given that she needs to sacrifice her mental health to take care of his.) We expect these scenarios to play out a certain way and so you wince when she walks into the room, don’t yell at her, you have no idea what’s happening! Do boyfriends always lash out in anger when you don’t call them back, though? Maybe, just maybe, when some men in the real world are worried, they don’t automatically fly into a rage. Garrett’s behavior here is totally in character. He’s a mess, but with Hannah he feels safe, she won’t judge him. She, however, has her advisor to lean on, friends to help her process things. He can’t tell a friend what’s going on, he can’t pull his coach aside, because he has only confided in her. But he’s right, she should have at least texted him, saying, “I’m fine, something’s up, I’ll see you soon.” You can understand why she didn’t, though. She was literally having a panic attack. She’s right too: she’s told him he definitely needs to tell someone else what he’s dealing with – a friend, his coach, a therapist. She can’t be the only one he leans on, as evidenced by his meltdown at this moment. They’re both messed up but they’re both doing their best under extreme emotional pressure to be there for each other. I’ve watched YouTubers react to this show and when this scene happens, literally every single person says, “Oh God, please don’t take it out on her, you don’t know what’s going on.” And lo and behold, he doesn’t. I won’t applaud men for the bare minimum, like not flying off the handle at your girlfriend before you know the full story, but I’ll give it to you and I’ll give it to Garrett … and to Off Campus, for providing an alternative to the expected narrative. Also: notice the complexity of the issues in this one tiny sequence. You can’t really “pick a side”. You can see where each person is coming from.
You don’t expect the unexpected in a show like this.
Cliches abound yes, but let’s look at the cliches NOT present:
there isn’t a mean-girl clique.
No one’s bullied.
the boys don’t jockey for position amongst themselves, pounding their chests, wasting precious time. Everyone’s trying to show up for each other, even if they fall short.
Nobody is judged cruelly for their appearance. (“Look at her shoes, omigod, why is he into HER.”)
The two groups – hockey players and theatre kids – do not “other” each other. No jock recoils homophobically from the seriously gay Drunk Shakespeare experience. They are freakin’ into it because it’s fun. And once Hannah is “in” with the hockey boys, the theatre kids wear hockey jerseys and scream in the stands.
Ttrauma is present, but the idea behind the whole show is: find a safe person and tell them (but make sure they are safe). Let others in. We all need each other and a community is stronger than the individual.
It’s wild, frankly, to watch a show where everyone is pretty much respectful to each other, and where there isn’t an “in” group or an “out” group. The hockey kids are new to the theatre scene, the theatre kids are new to the hockey scene, but both groups find value in each other. (Hilarious moment: at Drunk Shakespeare, football player Beau pokes hockey player Dean and asks, drunkenly, “Are these drama kids better at drinking than us?” Quick answer, as a theatre kid myself: Yes. Yes, we are.) This provides space for a new model for interactions: if we’re respectful, then we can all have fun, and isn’t that a cool “way out” of the trap these types of movies have been in? The Breakfast Club addressed this head-on. (I would have loved a Breakfast Club “sequel” taking place the following week in school. Will the bond remain or will social pressures be too much?) The idea that jocks and artsy kids could never find common ground has been treated like a Hard Truth forever. But maybe there’s another way. Maybe we just try to be nice and welcoming to people?
Theatre kids cheering at a hockey game
Hockey players having a blast at Drunk Shakespeare
Additionally: hockey players bonding with theatre kids or band kids and vice versa isn’t as weird as you might think. (Uhm, hi Travis and Taylor.) These people have all been pursuing impossible difficult dream since they were kids, they have had to sacrifice things to pursue their dream, have been dedicated to one thing since a very young age. Not everyone is like this. Linklater explores this in Everybody Wants Some!!, where the baseball guys attend four different “scenes” (disco bar, country western bar, punk rock bar, theatre kid party), and have to adapt. A baseball player crushes on a theatre major, and they have a serious discussion about their respective passions. Like I said, not everyone has a passion like this. It’s a bond. There’s not that much difference between guys who have been devoted to baseball since they were three feet tall and people who have been doing jazz hands since they were eight.
One wonders if there was pushback to any of the trope-disruptions from the Amazon execs, adjacent to tech-bro dudes, in charge of things. “Why do they get together in episode 4?” “Shouldn’t we drag it out, using miscommunication and outer interference from hostile friend groups and competition from other parties?” Showrunner Louisa Levy: “Or … how about they just … like each other enough to get together? In episode 4. What if we spent the second half of the season exploring ‘what comes next’, AFTER the ‘happily ever after?”)
It’s probably assumed by the powers that be that the trend of nasty teenagers doing dark teenage shenanigans filled with backstabbing and jealousy is what people want. Look at Euphoria. They’re not wrong. But the success of Off Campus cracks that edifice. Without being smarmy or unrealistic, Off Campus says, “Hey, let’s try something new.” Maybe Ted Lasso was the real sea-change in the culture. People went nuts for it because we were in a pandemic and it was comforting to see nice people trying their best. lol
There are some elements that do not work for me, and my fingers itch to tweak the script. I want to re-arrange a couple of things in episode 7, basically truncating the B-plot present, and moving it to episode 8 entirely, and I want some minor things underlined slightly to clarify. Like, what’s going on with Logan. More radically, I want to cut out an entire character, one added for the series who doesn’t appear in the book. There are a couple of scenes I wish were present. I say all this as someone who watched the series cold. Back in 2015, the Off Campus book series launched the whole “hockey romance” trend, but I didn’t read the books. (I have since read the first and the third book, giving me a huge admiration for the excellent adaptation: most every change made for the series is for the better … but some things created for the series do not work for me at ALL. And some things are very clear in the books but murkier in the show).
There are a number of specific group events depicted in Off Campus which play such major roles as atmosphere and context, not to mention a reason to put the entire cast at the same place at the same time – I was shocked to learn some of these weren’t in the books at all. The books don’t feel as populated as the series. Real thought has gone into making these group events specific: the block party, the costume party, the karaoke night, the “friendsgiving” gathering, and – most notably – the Drunk Shakespeare night, a debauched performance of Midsummer Night’s Dream complete with drunken audience participation. All entirely invented by Louisa Levy et al. These events feel so real: the costume party is an annual tradition and so is Drunk Shakespeare. There’s a familiarity to the ritual of it. These sequences are a truly genius stroke, and I can’t imagine Off Campus without them. There are clearly some real theatre nerds on the writing staff.
Team overview: Cast, creator, crew
Season 1 is based on the first book in Elle Kennedy’s series, with elements from the third book woven in. The book series revolves around the love lives of four hockey players attending the fictional Briar University. Each book focuses on a different couple, although the characters wander in and out of each other’s stories. Each book has dueling first-person narratives, guy and girl, so we see the same events through different eyes. Apparently Amazon is going to do the whole book series (they are currently shooting Season 2 in Vancouver).
Showrunner Louisa Levy tackled this project with passion and courage, to be honest, courage because the books are beloved, and the fandom is intense. Levy knew she couldn’t please everyone. Some things needed to be changed. For example: in the book Hannah breaks up with Garrett. In the series, Garrett breaks up with Hannah. In the book, Garrett knows something is “off” with the breakup, and he declares a “Campus-Wide Hands-Off Law”, where he warns he will beat up anyone who hits on Hannah. He does this almost as a joke, to make her aware of him and how he doesn’t buy her reasoning. (I feel no attachment to this plot point, but fans adore Garrett for this show of … persistence? I’d call it controlling and weird, especially since the whole book is about Hannah learning to heal from having her autonomy taken away, a fact of which Garrett is intimately aware.) Whatever, book fans adore Garrett’s “law”, and Levy knew she’d get roasted for excising it (and she was), but she stuck to her guns. She knew it wasn’t right. Book Garrett would do this, Show Garrett would never.
In the book, Hannah breaks up with Garrett, not because she’s pissed at him, but because his mean father pulls her aside and threatens to cut Garrett off financially if the relationship continues, she’s a “distraction” from Garrett’s NHL goals. So she sacrifices her happiness for him! And she can’t tell Garrett why because she promised his ABUSER dad she wouldn’t say anything. She lies, even though her heart is breaking: “I want to see other people.” Garrett is SO confused. Later, when Hannah reveals the truth, Garrett tells her he has a trust fund already from his grandfather: even if his dad cut him off, he’d be more than set! Oh my gosh and we broke up over this! If we had just TALKED to each other months ago we would have avoided the last five chapters of the book! In the series, Garrett breaks up with Hannah because he’s terrified of turning into an abuser like his dad. They “misunderstand” and “mis-hear” each other in the breakup scene, but it’s because they are both in full-on separate melt-downs. The scene is fantastic, with a great structure, and, again, really trauma-informed (the whole series is). You can totally see where both of them are coming from, and you can also see they probably should have tabled this discussion until the following day when they’ve both calmed down.
In the books, Garrett is a rake, growling and teasing and laughing with a low raspy laugh, and talking about women in the crudest of terms (it’s first-person narration, we’re inside his head.). He says stuff like, “She loves my cock.” etc. Which is fine, I’m happy she loves your cock, but spoken out loud it’d sound incredibly weird and off-putting. The books are pure smut. I love smut but I’ve read better smut in Supernatural fan-fic, to be honest. I’m not here to rain on anyone’s good time. Whatever gets anyone off should be celebrated. I’ve seen comments on the series along the lines of “you can tell these male characters were written by women”, and, sorry, this is stupid. The book was written by a woman, too, and the guys there are snarling sometimes-sexist Indiana Jones rakes who call women “baby doll”, etc. (IMO, Dean is the most well-written character in the books. The “Dean book” will be season 2, and I feel like Stephen Kalyn is already playing the layers we see in Dean’s book. The loneliness. How he thinks about consent: this is in the book as well. His “promiscuity” is kind of a joke at first, but it’s the real set-up for his character development, some of which we see play out in the series. Kalyn was asked what he likes most about the character and Kalyn said, “He really listens and he really pays attention to everything.” This is a quality you SO might miss about the character but Kalyn bakes it in there so we can sense it even if it’s, as of now, background noise and subliminal.)
A real strength of Off Campus is the mostly unknown cast. They all have credits and some are recognizable from other things, but nothing to this level. Jalen Thomas Brooks is in The Pitt, Belmont Cameli was in the Saved by the Bell reboot, and he also was in Alto Knights, which I actually saw! Ella Bright was on a British series for seven years (Malory Towers), basically growing up onscreen. I recognized Stephen Kalyn from Gen V, even though his role was small, John Hueston was in Heartbreak High. Mika Abdalla was in Snack Shack, a movie I really liked. Antonio Cipriano has a gorgeous singing voice, and has done musicals in the West End and regional theatre, also on Broadway (Jagged Little Pill). I think most of the guys have done some modeling. They’re all crazy gorgeous. Ella Bright is 19, but the rest of them are in their mid-late 20s. For perspective on this generation’s timeline (my nephew’s generation, so I’ve watched this play out with him and his friends): these people graduated college, if they went to college, as the pandemic happened. They moved to Los Angeles, ready to start auditioning just as the world closed down. They sat around, posting on Instagram, working out, waiting. They were 22 years old and they couldn’t burst out of the gate because … the industry went away. Surreal. After the pandemic came the actors’ strike. Some of these people had been working for at least five or six years when the pandemic hit, and they had to pause their career before it built momentum. During the pandemic and strike, Cameli made money as a math tutor. This is how NOT known these actors were. Ironically, Ella Bright, the youngest in the cast, was a child actor and has the most acting experience.
Front, L to R: Mika Abdalla, Ella Bright, Louisa Levy, Belmont Cameli.
Back, L to R: Antonio Cipriano, Jalen Thomas Brooks, Stephen Kalyn, Josh Hueston
You get so used to seeing the same people in everything. Here, you don’t have preconceived notions about these actors or their characters. Stephan Kalyn IS Dean Di Laurentis. (Dean might be difficult for Kalyn to shake, actually. He’s been cast in the Housemaid sequel. We love to see it.) These actors became massive stars overnight, going from 100,000 followers on Instagram to 2.1 million in a weeks’ time. I worry about all of them. I wish them all well.
Belmont Cameli plays Garrett Graham, star center of Briar University hockey, and team captain. His father, Phil Graham, was a legendary player for the New York Rangers, played by Steve Howey (member him in Shameless?) Graham’s fellow teammates are his bff John Logan (Antonio Cipriano), Dean Di Laurentis (Stephen Kalyn) and John Tucker (Jalen Thomas Brooks). There are other players we get to know, but these are the main four. They live together “off campus” in a huge house, party central.
Meanwhile. Hannah Wells (Ella Bright) is a music major. She lives with her best friend Allie (Mika Abdalla), who wants to be an actress. Allie has been with the same guy since freshman year, Sean (Riley Davis). They’re like a comfortable married couple. If Hannah has ever had a relationship, we don’t hear about it. (She does in the book, and it was sexually traumatic, but again, I’m only going off what the series shows me.) Hannah harbors a from-afar crush on Justin Kohl (Josh Hueston), lead singer of a local rock band.
These two friend groups include Beau Maxwell (Khobe Clark), a football player, Dexter (Miles Gutierrez-Riley), a theatre student, Kendall (Karis Cameron), one of Garrett’s regular hook-ups, hockey player Birdie (Josh Chambers), the goalie Simms (Frankie Randysek), a student from Czechoslovakia, and Logan’s younger sibling Jules (Julia Sarah Stone), who hangs around the hockey house and runs an Instagram gossip page called Fifth Line (get it?). Jules was invented for the series, a choice I understand but do not like. (And I didn’t like Jules even before I knew they were invented for the series.) Brandon Scott plays Hannah’s advisor in the music department, a supportive figure for her.
There are four directors, each of whom directed two episodes: Silver Tree, Samantha Bailey, Erica Dunton, Dawn Wilkinson. Although the tones shift in extreme fashion, and, let’s say, the end of episode 6 has nothing in common with the “oh no there’s only one bed” scene in episode 2, you don’t feel like you’re in two different shows. The style is still consistent: thoughtful, intelligent, emotionally grounded. Louisa Levy hired all women, too.
Colin Hoult and Nick Thomas split the cinematography between them, 4 episodes a piece. Off Campus has a distinct visual identity, setting it apart from so much else right now, some shows feeling thrown-together and generic-looking. So much dialogue, so little time to establish an environment. But Off Campus creates an environment. There is a LOT of hockey in Off Campus, thrilling sequences, camera operators on the ice, low to the ice, moving fast, wide shots where we actually see the plays. (They hired NHL players to coach the actors, and also skate/double for them.)
Stephen Kalyn, a Canadian, was the only actor with hockey experience. The actors had a two-week hockey boot camp, to get them acclimated. They trained every day. The hockey sequences were a grind: unlike actual hockey players, they would be in skates for 14 hours. Hoult and Thomas, though, have a sense of the romantic, too, shadows and colors, warm light, cool moonlight, atmospheres changing depending on the time of day, like Garrett’s room. The camera moves, too, are ambitious.
Nicole Brik, Nathan Easterling. Gordon Rempel, Lisa Robison are the editors, each did 2 episodes a piece. I mention the editing in my post below. The editing is often funny, including visual jokes, contrasts and juxtapositions, careful cuts between disparate sequences. Not an easy job: the series swings from comedy to hockey to drama to pain, etc.
Art director Gwendolyn Margetson and set decorator Leor Froelich (and their respective teams) filled the frame with objects and furniture and knick knacks that make every space feel lived in. Their work is character-driven. The hockey house, Allie and Hannah’s room, the diner/bar, what’s hanging on the walls, what’s on the bookshelves and nightstands – you could squint back there forever. Each object tells a story, as they do in our own apartments and homes. Watch how the diner decor changes over the course of the season. Must be Halloween, because suddenly there are pumpkin decorations everywhere. This world is bustling with people who have lives.
Whoever handles the technology aspect of Off Campus – the texting, the Spotify play lists, the Insta posts, etc. – did such a great job. Entire worlds go on in people’s phones. We know this in reality but shows/television sometimes struggle to portray technology and how we use it. They make text messages float across the screen, or we hear the texts in voiceover, or the apps don’t look right. In Off Campus, technology is recognizable as what and how we all use it. There’s a sequence in episode 8 where Hannah and Garrett, separated, hesitate to look at each others’ Instagram stories, because we all know that if you “view” someone’s Insta story your name will show up. You can scroll the person’s main account all you want, the person can’t “see” you. But STAY AWAY FROM THE STORIES. RESIST. Analog media plays a heavy role in Off Campus, but technology is handled and acknowledged, and these characters are like most of us. Their phones are always in their hands.
Allie’s Titania dress
Charlene Akuamoah, the costume designer, is a genius. Everyone has a distinct style of dress. Real thought has been put into Allie’s style, into Hannah’s. Hannah’s sweaters, tank tops, hi-tops. Dean has a distinct style (those sweaters). The costume party in episode 2 is Akuamoah’s tour de force. I am still discovering hilarious costumes on extras in the background. Drunk Shakespeare costumes were amazing as well, and Allie’s Titania dress should be in the Smithsonian.
Praise is also due to Katherine Kadler and Natasha Martina, the intimacy coordinators. There is a lot of sex in Off Campus, but the sex is unusual in that it is character-driven. Heavy subjects like sexual assault and its aftermath are addressed, sometimes in bed. Sex is presented as a fun romp (so refreshing in our mostly-sexless and yet prurient media-world, and appropriate to this college story: these people are not high school kids), but if you’re lucky sex can be healing and transformative as well. Sex depicted onscreen is not often vulnerable and Off Campus shows vulnerable sex. Handling this is a lot for these young actors, many of whom have never done a sex scene before. In their press tour, the actors were asked about these scenes constantly, and all mentioned how great the intimacy coordinators were, how everything was choreographed so everyone felt safe, the crew hidden behind a tent, as is the custom (or at least it should be), leaving only the necessary people there with the actors. Everyone was concerned about everyone else’s comfort, everyone was looking out for each other.
There is so much music in Off Campus (High School Musical is a clear influence), and the soundtrack is incredible (the music budget had to be astronomical). The music is diverse, from ’80s bangers like “Dancing with Myself” to contemporary artists like Remi Wolf or The Beaches, who have gotten an enormous boost from Off Campus. There’s a lot of “live” music too. Justin’s band plays mostly covers (hysterical, considering the flop that is “Yellow Haze”). They cover Ariana Grande, Pink, All-American Rejects, so we’ve got some 2000s bangers as well. The classics included – the old-school “Baby Now That I found You” by The Foundations, or Elton John’s “The Bitch is Back”, or in an already iconic scene, J.Lo’s “On the Floor” – re-entered the charts due to Off Campus. The karaoke night is practically a live musical. I have discovered so many cool new artists.
The first four episodes have a certain feel and the last four episodes plunge into the depths, becoming a straight-up drama. The timeline is condensed but also jumbled up. We don’t have to wait five episodes for the characters to show complications and subtleties. Huge things happen early and fast in Off Campus. You keep thinking, “Wait, is this just the second episode?” “Wait, they’re doing this in episode 1??”
Episode 1 “The Deal”
Directed by Silver Tree
The series opens with a split screen sequence, Garrett Graham, star center of Briar U hockey, skating around on the ice, and arena employee Hannah mopping the floors. Split screens are used quite a bit in Off Campus – a clear nod to When Harry Met Sally and other rom-coms. Off Campus starts, in other words, with a throwback. The throwback is openly corny. As I said, episode 1 might be a hurdle for some viewers who might find it derivative. It IS derivative, by design. In episode 8, post break-up, the split screen is used in an innovative way: Garrett and Hannah, miserable, sit in a lecture hall at opposite ends of the room. They’re in the same frame, the same shot, but there’s a line down the middle of the screen.
Garrett and Hannah zone out in pleasure doing their own individual thing, “dancing with themselves”, if you will. This is a multi-layered theme, playing out over different scenarios. “Dancing with myself” has a sexual connotation, of course, which enters the chat in episodes 3 and 4, but there’s more to this sequence, where each is alone on their side of the split screen, while being in the same location. Finding a partner is amazing – and healing, as Off Campus shows – but it ISN’T “endgame”. We need to be okay dancing with ourselves, and we need our community too. One person isn’t the magic pill to make everything okay. The “happily ever after” comes in episode 4. So now what?
If this were the opening sequence in a more conventionally-told story, Hannah would have been shown as a drudge, mopping the floor, headphones on, serious face. This would highlight the differences between the two characters: He’s a star athlete, zipping around glamorously on the ice, and she’s a wallflower with a mop! But no! She’s using the mop as a microphone! She’s dancing like The Breakfast Club kids at one point, another “nod”. Later in the episode, there is a huge scene where we see her singing and dancing by herself again, this time in response to being triggered. She’s not just being adorable, she’s using one of her coping skills.
Without knowing the characters’ backstory, this opening sequence makes you comfortable: You think you know who these people are. She’s adorable, dancing around and singing to herself. She’s quirky and clumsy, she might even be a manic pixie dream girl! We’ve got Hannah pegged. We’ve got Garrett pegged too. He’s a serious athlete, alone on the ice, grinning cockily, and then heading to the showers, where we get closeups of his absolutely insane body once he takes off his gear. He’s solitary, he’s hot, he’s COOL. She’s not athletic, she’s beautiful, but in a girl-next-door way. He’s a babe with a tattoo across his back. We categorize people all the time based on first impressions and we do it here.
Let’s get this out of the way:
Time for Some Tough Truths
The bar for male behavior is currently in hell, so we don’t want to over-congratulate men for doing the bare minimum, like being respectful towards women. Off Campus is well aware of this and sets about dismantling toxicity, creating a boundary around the friend group: no toxicity allowed inside the perimeter, because that’s how friend groups actually operate. I’ve seen cynical chatter like “what college boy would talk like this blah blah” … As though every college boy is rapey and awful. I’m sorry, but my friend group in college – still my friends now – was a similar mix of men and women – and nobody was a rapey asshole. There were rapey assholes at school, of course, and many of us had bad run-ins with those types, but we weren’t friends with them. Nobody tolerated that nonsense. Just so we aren’t wearing rose-colored glasses: I don’t know one woman who hasn’t had a bad-to-worst experience with men – literally not one (the first three times I saw a penis in real life – THREE – was against my will, and without my consent because I couldn’t consent at 11, 14, 18 years old. There’s a reason the bar is in hell. Don’t blame US.) But groups of people, even in high school, self-select. Some people are status-conscious in high school and put on a fake personality to fit in. The struggle in adolescence is real. But I hung out with the drama club nerds, we were not cool but we were in plays and we were goofy and … we were ourselves. If you aren’t status-conscious or materialistic, find your people, you can do it!
If you are dating a new man, meet his friends as soon as you can. If he’s friends with douchebags who don’t seem to like women, who only value money, etc. then you should think twice. These are his FRIENDS. I’m a snob about friends. I don’t allow assholes into my world and I am friends with all kinds of people: artists and fishermen and teachers and real estate agents and grief counselors. They all are nice people who treat people with respect. I am not friends with any man who’s red-pilled, or who is homophobic, or shows antagonism towards women. I go on these fucking dates and I know it’s just a matter of time before the guy says something about how men and women are different. If you LEAD with that, I already know. Also if you say the word “female”, I’ll sneak out the back exit.
Off Campus does many things well but one of its most brilliant strokes is creating a believable friend group among these elite athletes that does not include slut-shaming or toxic male behavior. Yes, everyone parties and sleeps with a lot of girls, but that’s not necessarily toxic. Everyone involved appears to be a willing participant. Off Campus is very specific in what it’s doing: if these guys are cocky and confident, it’s because being a hockey player at this level requires an ego. But as friends, they’re all more or less emotionally intelligent, they have interior lives, they talk to each other about things (with some major exceptions), and don’t call women sluts or judge women or whatever, they support their friend who might actually be falling for one girl … all of this, to me, just shows that green-flag-men attract green-flag-men. I’ve seen my guy friends struggle sometimes with this: nobody wants to confront the red-flag asshole in the group, even though everyone knows the guy’s a red-flag asshole.
Once you REMOVE the cliched “dumb jock” element, once you basically decide NOT to include at least one toxic bro … all kinds of other possibilities open up and the storytelling is improved immeasurably. As I said: the friend group in Off Campus feels a little like my friend group back in college: the theatre kids blended with the football/frat boys due to some crossover participation in theatre. There were three or four fraternity brothers who tried out for and got in a lot of the plays. Extroverted and athletic, they could easiy hoist girls in the air during the dance numbers in musicals. Useful in theatre! These goofballs spent their weekends doing dumb shit like trying to snowboard off the roof of their frat house into the snow drifts below, breaking their ankles, and not being able to participate in their sport OR in the plays. There was a lot of that. My friend David was a football player and a theatre major. Nobody thought it weird to have cast parties at a fraternity, where straight frat guys stole Mitchell’s feather boa and did sexy dances for the cheering crowd. Nobody was worried about their masculinity being threatened. Like, we were having so much fun, please leave toxic gender roles behind and join the party. I’m not friends with men who can’t talk about their feelings. Having lots of sex doesn’t mean you’re not a good person. I can’t believe I have to say this but there are some pretty puritanical people out there, even (sadly) in the younger generation. If everyone’s consenting – and Off Campus is huge on consent – then sleep with whomever you want. Just be safe. Go forth. Use a condom.
Off Campus doesn’t push its luck by removing toxicity from the world entire. We aren’t in La La Land. Heavy horrible shit is present. People have been through hell. Parents are terrible, there’s sexual assault, there’s parental/spousal abuse … But within the friend group, people are at least doing their best to be kind to each other, the way good friends are. Sometimes they fail, sometimes they don’t do their best, but that just makes everyone human.
All of this, all of what I just said, is instantly noticeable in the scenes in the hockey house, where you keep waiting for toxicity, you keep waiting for misogyny, you keep waiting for toxic-bro shit. It doesn’t come. This might be Off Campus‘ most radical innovation.
Episode 1 some observations, long and short, the “how” of it all
Editing shoutout: Whatever Garrett does in his frame is mirrored by Hannah in hers. This is filmmaking 101 but I am sorry, in this day and age where we hear that executives design “content” to be listened to while people do laundry … I appreciate purely visual stylings. Off Campus has a visual identity.
Analog exists in this modern story, creating important connective tissue, placing the series in a continuum. Boom boxes, cassette tapes, hand-written song lyrics in notebooks, movies and music that pre-date streaming… This could feel like pandering to an older audience, or a clue that the story was written by millennials. I think, though, a case could be made that analog connects us to our two lead characters, both of whom love “old” stuff.
The tattoo across Garrett’s back was Belmont Cameli’s idea, and came from his wrestling coach in high school who used to say it to them as a motto. Loose translation: No free lunch.
Hannah is seen working in the ice rink only in episode 1. She has two or three work-study jobs, she is a scholarship student. She is always running late. Her job in the rink explains why, later, she knows her way around the arena. But we only see her working here in episode 1: inadvertently it makes her job seem like an artificial way to throw them together. Additionally: considering her past, would she EVER work at a hockey rink?
Please note that whenever Hannah needs a piano, wherever she is, poof, one appears. .
Let me explore the look on Belmont Cameli’s face when he takes off his jersey to consider his name – GRAHAM – on the back. First time through, I interpreted his expression as gritty and determined: “My name will mean something, gotta keep grinding.” Second time through, his expression seems totally different. Belmont Cameli never “telegraphs” anything. He does not clue you in or make it easy for you. There are times when it seems like he is doing nothing. His performance rewards multiple viewings. Ella Bright is more straight-forward: the depths are stirred but it all shows on the surface (not necessarily a bad thing, although less interesting to me in terms of film acting). Cameli doesn’t do this. Garrett walks around with completely unmanaged trauma he has learned to hide (even from himself). Hannah has trauma, too, but she got help and learned coping skills. His last name, then, isn’t about his prospects in the NHL, “Graham” is a reminder of his secret, his toxic relationship with his dad and his name, what he’s been through and never told. What’s actually there on his face is a little flicker of something else, a whisper of a trigger he’s used to ignoring, an uneasiness he skips over. Cameli IS playing all this – it’s totally there – but he has the confidence enough as an actor to not “show” it. Audience preconceptions play a role. If you’re like “Oh, I get it, he’s a cocky jock”, you’ll miss the subtlety of what Cameli is doing.
Off Campus is a hard-R. You see Garrett fully naked in the first scene, just to get you acclimated. You don’t see his penis but you will see penises later. Multiple. Be advised. Hannah stares at Garrett in the shower. No, she GAWKS. The camera gawks, too. Ever since nudity started being “allowed” in film, we’ve seen such scenes, but the situation is usually reversed, a man staring at a naked woman. These are sequences of overt objectification. Off Campus flips the script, objectifying the man. Magic Mike XXL did the same thing (Off Campus shares some DNA with Magic Mike XXL, both films filled with green-flag-men). I’d throw in Richard Linklater’s Everybody Wants Some!!, too, as a helpful comparison, with all those friendly hot jocks running around. Garrett busts Hannah gawking at him. What’s not expected is what he does next. The power move of it all is insane.
The philosophy professor is played by Jennifer Spencer. She’s had a successful career, but I must mention she plays the store manager in the Supernatural episode Plucky Pennywhistle’s Magical Menagerie.
Miles Gutierrez-Riley plays Dexter, good friends with Hannah and Allie. He is not a major character, but is constantly around. You could categorize him (or write him off) as the “gay best friend” trope. However. In episode 4, he is basically handed the second half of the episode, depicting one of the coolest fictional “rituals” I’ve ever seen: the Drunk Shakespeare theatre experience, where Dexter plays Puck in Midsummer Night’s Dream as well as Master of Ceremonies. The stereotypical “gay best friend”(TM) – as normally seen in straight-romance shows/movies – is rarely given a sequence like this. Literally the whole cast of characters attends Drunk Shakespeare, but Dexter is the star. More importantly, Dexter doesn’t vanish when Hannah isn’t onscreen, as is typical of the “gay best friend”. I will grant he is not filled out as a character, he has no backstory, but he continues to exist when Hannah and Allie aren’t present. In Episode 5, he shows up for the “friendsgiving” celebration, shyly, since he doesn’t really know these hockey guys. He has a blast, joining the impromptu hockey game. In the final episode, Dexter is seen doing shots with Tucker at the bar. They were complete strangers two months ago, with zero overlap in their worlds. A straight hockey player, a gay theatre kid, never the twain shall meet. The moment showcases one of the most central themes of Off Campus: the importance of letting people in to your world, of going deeper than the surface, of how crucial it is to find “your people”. If your family sucks, create a chosen family. Everyone’s friend group expands over the course of Off Campus. The hockey boys are not homophobic. Jules is non-binary and everyone “they/thems” them without hesitation. Like, it’s not even a “thing”. Jocks who are not homophobic do exist, like the straight frat boys wearing Mitchell’s boa, or determinedly learning the cakewalk in rehearsal for some musical. Watching those big jocks work on learning an old-timey dance, brows furrowed, a gleam in their eyes, competitive with themselves, determined to master the cakewalk or the kickline or whatever, still makes me smile. Welcome to my world, the world of jazz hands, jump in, boys, the water’s fine, your masculinity is unharmed. Can we please see more of this? Kthx.
Beau Maxwell plays a huge role in Book 3, and he’s present in the lecture hall, sitting next to Garrett, but I was confused, since I hadn’t read the books. He’s always with the hockey guys but he’s not on the team. He’s friends with Dean, but how are they connected? I didn’t clock him at first as someone to pay attention to, he was just Jock #3. Knowing who Beau is and how he is connected should have been clarified early: “This is Beau, he plays football, he’s tight with Dean, he is important”. I admire the script’s reluctance to spell things out, and its willingness to rely on inference. The show trusts the audience to put things together. Exposition is woven in subtly, but I could have used exposition with Beau. Please just tell me who he is and why he’s there so I can make sure to pay attention.
Garrett: “Fuckin’ hell, you aced it?”
Hannah: “Do you mind?”
Garrett: “What. Only you get to look at things you shouldn’t?”
People are referred to so much by their first and last names. Justin Kohl Garrett Graham Joanna Maxwell. Allie is the main offender here, but it shows up elsewhere. “Go talk to Justin Kohl.” “You saw Garrett Graham naked?” etc. These people have high status, yes, but it gets a little ridiculous! There is a funny offshoot to this: Garrett does not know Hannah’s name and instead of asking her, he takes a shot in the dark and calls her “Mona”. When informed “Mona” is not her name, he says, “It is an M though, right?” Dude, just ask, “What is your name?” She saw your penis earlier today. It’s okay. He also refuses to call Justin by his correct name, instead calling him Jordan, Julian, Jacob, etc. Love the petty.
Dexter categorizes Justin as Hannah’s “manic pixie dream boy”. Off Campus is self-aware. It knows what it’s doing with these references piled on top of each other. Maybe you could say they are lulling us into the comforting snooze of thinking we know where all this is going.
Justin, played by Josh Hueston, is a cool rocker dude, wearing leather jackets, rings, and one of those pants chains. In the next episode, Garrett mentions that Justin is “in Beau’s frat”. Come on, Off Campus, who are you kidding. No WAY is Justin in a frat. Not in a million years. In the book, Justin is a football player, so it makes sense, but brooding leather guy in the series … in a fraternity? By the same token, Hannah crushing on the football player frat guy in the book doesn’t make much sense. Here, he’s in a popular local band called After Hours, and they play at Malone’s, where Hannah waitresses. She idolizes him and his music. This change from the book helps the story make much more sense.
When Garrett asks Hannah to tutor him, he is arrogant, definitely a guy used to getting his way, and maybe a little lazy in social interactions since everyone wants to be around him. Allie and Dexter roast him to his face, and he barely acknowledges it. He tells Hannah she owes him: wasn’t she gawking at his naked body earlier? We know how it will go, right? He will put on a charm offensive to wear her down, he will spend time doing corny shit – maybe set up little traps, maybe even blackmail, so she can’t HELP but tutor him. She will still be annoyed and he will still be cocky but they will come to an agreement. Uh-uh. That’s not what happens at all.
Hannah’s pink bike helmet became an internet meme the second the series launched.
I don’t want to hear the words “pop showcase” ever again. Hannah decides to write a pop song, because (wait for it), winning “the pop showcase” (stop) comes with a scholarship. Is this how scholarships work now? At an expensive school like Briar? The “pop showcase” (no) will dominate the rest of the season, sad to say. She struggles for episodes on end to write a pop song. There are good (and horrific) reasons why she has a mental block. Will she eventually debut her pop song at the “pop showcase” (stop)? What do you think?
When Allie first meets Garrett, she throws shade: “What do you want, Garrett Graham, petals to walk on? Maybe another fancy gym that costs thousands of dollars while the theatre department is falling apart.” This is also exposition: Allie is a theatre major. I understand her frustration, but judging from the Carnegie-Hall level of accommodations in the music department, the arts at Briar can’t be doing too badly. My God, where do you hold classes, Lincoln Center?
Daveed is Hannah’s advisor. We see him conducting the orchestra. Later, in a beautiful scene, we learn he is a composer. Unfortunately, most of Daveed’s scenes have to do with the “pop showcase” (sigh) discussions, but he plays a thematic function. He is involved with Hannah’s life as a student. He cares about her. He’s not afraid to speak the truth. He treats her with respect. In episode 7, when she’s falling apart, Daveed is the one she goes to first. The role is well-written, the script has a good ear. Daveed tells Hannah her scholarship “isn’t happening this year” (three weeks into the semester?), adding in frustration, “Budget cuts. Don’t even get me started.” Sounds like every teacher on the planet, especially those in the arts: “Don’t even get me started about the budget cuts.” Give Daveed a couple drinks, and you’ll get an earful.
Hannah is going to school on a classical composition scholarship. In episode 2, she tells Garrett she wants to be a film composer. How interesting! Can I hear more about this? What are her favorite movie scores? What made her want to do this? Does she have a favorite film composer? We never hear about Hannah’s goals again, except for the “pop showcase” goal (cease and desist). Off Campus doesn’t drop too many balls, but never mentioning Hannah’s interest in movie scores again is a huge fail, especially in a series packed with music.
Hannah is late to everything.
Introduction to the other hockey players, Tucker, Dean, and Logan, who live in a palatial house “off campus”. Something about the scene is too exposition-y, the tone feels off, “casual” and banter-y but presentational, like they’re performing for us. Add to that the split screen, with the three of them shouting “Where the hell is Garrett” and thanks I hate it. The sequence was probably designed for fans of the book so they could have a moment to exclaim, “THAT’S DEAN”, etc.
Broad character types continue: Tucker – in a pink apron – cooks apps for the party, saying they need “dippables”. Dean makes out with a girl, basically OVER Tucker’s food and Logan comes downstairs holding up the used condom that clogged the drain. In case we’re confused, Dean says, “Shower sex is hot.” Teasing banter about Tucker’s cooking and Dean’s prolific sex life, and … I wish half of this had been snipped. Behavior can tell the story.
I love Tucker, I just wish we were given more depth. Tucker “gets his own book”, and Amazon is planning on “doing” all of the books, but in Season 1 he is basically the guy who cooks for the house. He does get some fun things to do in episodes 4 and 5, he sings a song in the karaoke sequence, you love him. I feel like they needed to fill out the character more. We get information on Logan and Dean. Tucker’s odd man out and I don’t like it..
Hannah is lost, enraptured, staring at Justin playing with his band, while she and Allie waitress at Malones. The girls are talking about the “pop showcase”, and whether or not Hannah is a Taylor or a Gaga. They segue to “Justin Kohl”, and Hannah says if he’s not interested in her “maybe I won’t feel this way about anyone ever again.” She’s barely spoken to him, and the stakes are way too high! Allie somehow “gets it”, though, or gets what she can get with the information she has. “You never have crushes, and the fact that you’re down bad for Justin Kohl” (again) “is a sign he’s special.” The logic isn’t quite there, but Allie is so excited Hannah has a crush on someone. There’s something deeper going on than Bubbly Friend helps Socially Awkward Girl approach a guy (the very guy covering an Ariana Grande song fifteen feet away). Hannah catastrophizes, and Allie tries to interrupt the catastrophe thought pattern. She also says, “Just because he’s in a band and has tiny tattoos doesn’t mean he’s some untouchable rock god.” Facts. The Hannah-Allie friendship is one of the highlights of the series.
In a more cliched series, Hannah and Allie would be presented as friends in early episodes, but then something will come between them. There will be back-stabbing or jealousy. They will stop communicating. This is how girls’ friendships are, right? We’re catty, we’re secretly jealous, we don’t like it when our friends thrive, right? The cliche would have Allie jealous of Hannah’s success in music. Or jealous that Hannah got a boyfriend, while she broke up with hers. I’m sorry but I literally do not have one friend who is like this. My friends and I have been supporting each other and cheering each other on since we were 14 years old. Nobody has back-stabbed anybody. We aren’t treacherous. Similar to the green-flag non-toxic boy hockey players, girl friend groups also self-select. The world isn’t Euphoria. Hannah and Allie are all up in each others’ business, taking care of each other.
Sex scenes as character information: trigger warning
In another well-designed sequence, we see what Hannah is doing late at night, compared to what Garrett is doing. Hannah tries (and fails) to write a pop song for the “pop showcase” (stop it) while Garrett, across town, hooks up with Kendall in an extremely explicit and lengthy sex scene. At one point, Hannah takes a break and lies on the couch with her Rubik’s cube (Ella Bright, incidentally, is a Rubik’s Cube whiz: I love the incorporation of her skills.)
I came up watching 1970s movies and David Lynch movies so I’m not shocked seeing naked writhing bodies, boobs and butts etc. I don’t agree with the new trend of people who think all sex scenes are unnecessary unless they “advance the plot”. I think many of these people are young, and therefore grew up bombarded by porn in ways a Gen-X-er like myself did not (thankfully). I grant that nudity/sex can be used in gratuitous ways that make me worried for the actress, but sometimes these scenes are character-and/or-relationship building. Character IS plot (at least in the best stories.)
We could have seen Garrett and Kendall go into his room and shut the door. End scene. We would have known what they were doing in there. However: Who we are as individuals, our personal history, does not magically disappear when we are in bed with someone. We don’t become generic Having-Sex people. This idea will be HUGE come episode 4. We bring everything into bed, including our trauma. How do both parties navigate this?
Considering how widespread sexual trauma is, it’s sad and shameful that these issues aren’t handled more often in film, particularly how sexual violence can potentially inhibit sexual responsiveness in women for years to come, a painful legacy where the body remembers, and sex, even with a loving partner, is fraught with triggers. If many women come to bed with sexual trauma in their past, then most men are going to have to deal with this if they want to be a supportive partner. (I am speaking heterosexually because of Garrett and Hannah, and also my own history, but the same concept applies.) Off Campus creates space for this incredibly important subject.
Episode 3 is called “The Orgasm”, but orgasms take up most of episode 3 and 4. Tee hee titillating, but not really. What has happened is serious and devastating. Having an orgasm with yourself is one thing (although maybe your trauma means you can’t experience sexual pleasure at all, and you dissociate entirely), but being able to have an orgasm when someone else is in the room, especially if that person has a penis … if you don’t know the terror of this, as well as how COMMON it is, then consider yourself lucky! But don’t stop at feeling lucky: educate yourself. This is a common “thing” and you might as well be informed. Off Campus “goes there”. (Shout out to Six Feet Under, which “went there”, as well, although not in as much detail.)
Off Campus is frank and sensitive in the handling of Hannah’s “issue”. As someone who basically went through a similar thing, having racked up only traumatic experiences in my young life, and somehow tripping over a person who was like “uhm have no idea what’s happening but let’s figure it out”, I was amazed by what I was watching. I can only wish Off Campus was around when I was 22 and really needed it. I would have been like, “Oh, this is a thing that happens. I’m not alone.” (I found my way, I’m good now, but I remember the isolation and shame.)
From the trailer/poster, you would never ever know Off Campus is about this, devoting two episodes to it.
Segue to sex as information: Garrett is shown going down on women three times over the course of eight episodes. Don’t tell me this isn’t deliberate on the part of the showrunner and the creative team. (The intimacy coordinator had her work cut out for her.) He could have been shown doing any number of sexual activities, but he is shown doing that. Leap-taking: her pleasure matters to him, even a random hookup. Duh, he wants her to have fun too. (Bare minimum. No congratulations.)
A man going down on a woman is rare in film. If we saw girls going down on Garrett three separate times, we’d be in more familiar territory, and it would tell a different story about who he is as a lover (not that this makes sense in the real world, I’m just talking about how visuals are used in a story).
When women are shown going down on a man in film, the connotation is usually “wow, this sex is WILD” or “his WIFE doesn’t do that for him!” “This chick is WILD.” Like it’s some outrageous and also maybe degrading activity for her, taboo and forbidden, instead of being a fairly standard activity engaged in by nearly everyone who has sex with each other, including “nice” girls. Incidentally, men going down on women is not some huge taboo event either. Am I insane? You give, you receive. At the very least, it’s just good manners.
Garrett shown having sex before we get to Hannah is information, then, about him as a character – one of the more unexpected things about Off Campus. This information will come into play later when things get serious with Hannah. The same is true for Dean, the most ethical slut in the series. Pro tip: Don’t underestimate Dean.
One missing piece, for me: in episode 4’s big scene, Garrett says to Hannah, “There’s nothing more vulnerable than sex.” But … has it been vulnerable for him? In the moment, he’s supporting Hannah where she’s at. He’s being thoughtful and gentle. We’ve seen him having sex, though: was it vulnerable with Kendall or Zoe? Pleasurable maybe but vulnerable? In the book, he researches online what might be going on for a girl in this particular scenario (adorable), because he’s a little freaked and he wants to go into the interaction prepared. He educates himself. In the book, when he talks to Hannah about vulnerability, he admits he’s quoting some Google result. I wish a little bit of this was included in episode 4, because – at least as far as we can tell – sex has not been vulnerable for Garrett. What goes on with Hannah is his first experience of vulnerable sex.
I appreciate the prominent placement of condoms on the bedside table in Garrett’s room. We see them a lot. Sometimes in closeup. Product placement (Skyn) I can get behind, unlike Liquid IV which I will get to ad nauseum in episodes 2 and 3. You are going to be sick of hearing me bitch about Liquid IV.
We don’t know who Kendall is, but the way she approaches Garrett at the party tells us they’ve clearly hooked up before. After they have sex, Kendall says she’s missed Garrett and he laughs, thinking she’s kidding. They then have a discussion about what’s been going on, expectations, etc. For me, this is when Garrett came into focus as an individual. He says, “I’ve been very upfront. Like I said before, I can only offer casual.” There are times when he’s too blunt and even callous, but none of what he says is a lie. He hasn’t strung her along, he hasn’t played mind games. It’s understandable that Kendall has caught feelings. This is one of the risks you run when you “hook up” with someone on the regular. When Kendall says, “I want to be your girlfriend”, Garrett looks legitimately confused. “Why?” he asks (and it’s a real question, lol). Once we know his backstory, the moment could be read as self-loathing, an inheritance from his childhood. Later, in episode 3, he talks to Dean about Hannah and says, “I’m not sure I’m the kind of guy she should be trusting this with.” These are real concerns for him. He asks Kendall, “What’s my major? What’s my favorite band? What’s my mother’s name? Listen, I don’t know any of those things about you either.” I respect the transparency. I think Garrett does a pretty good job saying what he means. Kendall doesn’t LIKE it, but she can’t say she’s been lied to or tricked. I love how Cameli plays this scene. He runs the risk of you not seeing the subtlety of what he’s doing, and writing Garrett off as a stereotypical cocky entitled jock. But that’s not what is actually happening.
I have some issues with the “puck bunny” thing, “puck bunnies” being “hockey groupies”. When Hannah is horrified, Garrett says, “They call themselves that.” Okay, show, if you say so. These guys are college athletes, not professionals, and they have groupies, college girls who hang around the hockey house waiting to be picked by one of the players? Maybe I went to a different kind of college. I wouldn’t have minded if these girls were presented as college girls who like to party and the hockey boys have the best parties, especially with Tucker cooking yummy stuff. (Additionally, the hockey boys aren’t rapey and gross. Only in Off Campus is a house full of hockey players the safest place for a drunk girl to fall asleep in the couch.) I like that Kendall doesn’t disappear from the story after she gets naked with Garrett. In episode 2, she’s nice to Hannah at a game, in episode 2, her costume at the party is so funny, in episode 4, she’s there at Drunk Shakespeare, where she and Garrett have a little conversation healing the rift, where Kendall gets to be real and not a stereotype, she’s there at the “friendsgiving” celebration in episode 5, skating on the ice, having a blast. She’s part of this extended friend group. I like that for Kendall. But … aren’t you in college, too? You can’t put “puck bunny for four years” on your resume.
The guys’ morning workout scene is outrageous sweaty eye candy, with some moments so over the top they call to mind Rocky and Apollo frolicking in the sea.
I would argue this sequence establishes the guys’ close friendship in a more organic way than the party scene where everyone “presents” their quirks almost direct to camera. But let’s be real. The purpose of the scene is to give you a chance to drool over these hot men.
An unexpected scene follows: The guys sit around hashing out the breakup between Garrett and Kendall. Garret has filled them in, something you don’t normally see in jock-bro stories. Logan’s POV is that Garrett and Kendall were dating because “you’ve been hooking up all semester”. In what world is that “dating”? I know I come from the ’90s and we didn’t call it hooking up, but sleeping with a guy for a couple of months does not mean you are dating. Nuance will be added to this idea, come episode 6 and 7: you can be in an intimate relationship without actually knowing you are in one. I mean, it happened to me, so I understand. The show uses this idea twice, though, so I wonder if they’re trying to downplay the fuck-buddy-ness of it all? It’s a little weird to hear these guys all agree Garrett and Kendall were “dating”. Come on. You can establish they’re guys who sleep around but who are ethical – as much as possible, anyway – with their partners (just shown in the scene between Garrett and Kendall), but we don’t have to pretend hookup culture doesn’t exist. I do like that nobody slut-shames Kendall. Nobody is rude about Kendall. Nobody is rude, in general, about the girls. Again, the bar is in hell and their behavior is bare minimum but it is much appreciated, nonetheless.
Graceful exposition alert: we learn Garrett’s dad Phil Graham is a legendary NHL player, and he and Garrett are estranged. Garrett’s been ignoring his dad’s texts, one of which sounds almost threatening: “You can’t ignore me forever.” Logan is Garrett’s best friend in the books, apparently, but this is honestly not in evidence in the series (for various reasons: some of the choices made with regards to Logan are incomprehensible to me). Logan is the star of the second book (have not read it), but I am only going off what I see in the Amazon series. I’ll get into this disconnect more as we go on. Logan doesn’t have all the information about Phil Graham. Garrett has told no one – literally no one – what happened to him and his mom. Logan says, “I know Phil can be a bit of a dick–” and Garrett interrupts, “He’s more than a dick.” If Hannah said “He’s more than a dick” to Allie, Allie would press, “What do you mean? What did he do?” Logan instead says, “But he’s still your dad.” Everything Logan says here creates an involuntary and yet nearly invisible response from Garrett.
Watch Cameli’s work in this scene. It’s so non-self-aggrandizing (as an actor), and so subtle you might miss it. Cameli does not play the trauma, he plays the hiding of it. (Like Robert DeNiro says, “It’s important not to indicate. People don’t try to show their feelings, they try to hide them.” Incidentally, Cameli worked with De Niro in The Alto Knights. Also incidentally, an old friend of mine is in Alto Knights.) Even though Logan has his own family trauma, he doesn’t see Garrett’s. Garrett is rich and privileged, Logan is a scholarship townie kid. Logan’s commentary always includes some dig: Garrett has it made, must be nice to have a hockey legend dad, etc. I’m sorry but it’s hostile. Yes, he doesn’t know Garrett’s childhood, but maybe trust that your friend has a good reason for cutting off his dad? Garrett is not mad or sad in this scene. He’s triggered. We might miss these small flashes on first viewing – like the expression on his face when he looks at his jersey – tiny twitches, uneasiness – easily mis-read, but Cameli tracks it meticulously.
A YouTube reactor observed that Off Campus presents two kinds of PTSD: “regular” PTSD, resulting from a traumatic singular event, and complex PTSD, the result of years of persistent childhood trauma. This is a helpful lens for the show, helpful context for how trauma “shows up” in different ways for Hannah and Garrett.
We get our first Garrett flashback to childhood, but it’s the briefest of glimpses. I admire Off Campus‘ handling of trauma flashbacks. Non-chronologically presented flashes accurately imitate how triggers are experienced. Buried trauma can’t be faced directly until you feel safe enough to look. Unfortunately, those memories can ambush you. You are not safe. This is shown in very thoughtful and deliberate ways. Confronting your trauma is a necessary part of personal growth, especially if you want to let someone else into your world: Off Campus is actually ABOUT this. We slowly gain information as we watch Hannah and Garrett struggle, separately. When things explode to the surface, the unexpected is still in play. Once they get together, the surprising thing – unbelievable, if you’ve seen any romantic comedy or drama – is there is no outside conflict. They choose each other. Their friends support them. Yay! The conflict exists in their unmanaged trauma. This feels very real! I hate when some traumatic event is used as a plot point or shock value, a shortcut to audience engagement. Trauma like this is a reality for so many people.
Hannah and Allie’s dorm room suite is bigger than my apartment.
Allie hears Hannah’s self-doubt and says, “Hey, be nice to my friend Hannah.” I will steal this line. In episode 7, we finally understand why Hannah has writers’ block and it’s truly horrific. Here, we get the briefest most disturbing glimpse triggered by Allie asking, “What did you write about in high school?” The choice was deliberate to place this scene directly following Garrett and Logan’s scene, where we get the first Garrett flashback. Pay attention. The two of them dealing with simultaneous triggers will repeat. Allie does a much better job being a friend than Logan, who can’t resist throwing in a little dig about Garrett being lucky to have a dad who’s “into” hockey.
Member I said Hannah is late for everything? She forgot she was working the breakfast shift at Malone’s. Hannah, you have to work on time management.
Della, the owner (?) of Malone’s, is supposed to have a Boston accent, but … as someone whose entire family hails from Boston, her accent leaves a bit to be desired.
The hockey boys and puck bunnies are clustered in the back of Malone’s, arranged like a damn Caravaggio.
Enter Justin Kohl (first name and last name, of course), picking up a food order. What follows is the most awkward interaction to ever occur on planet earth. Hannah tries too hard, and Justin is not friendly, doesn’t try to make her at ease. She laughs too much, she makes a Dirty Dancing reference – “I carried a watermelon!” – and he doesn’t recognize the iconic quote. She’s a nobody to him.
Hannah: “Did anyone ever tell you eavesdropping is rude?”
Garrett: “Did anyone ever tell you your references are dated?”
Funny and yet it clues us in: He knows the Dirty Dancing reference. This pays off later in the episode.
Enter another trope: enemies to lovers. This will soon morph into friends to lovers. Episodes 1 and 2 are trope-heavy by design: they place you in a cliche and then immediately start chipping away at the cliches’ confines. He’s rude to her, but in a teasing way, and she’s rude to him, period. Considering the Caravaggio puck bunnies, maybe it’s fun for him to have a girl who does not find him charming, who is impervious. The script here is good:
Garrett: “You shouldn’t fawn over him.”
Hannah: “What?”
Garrett: “That guy. You’re too available.”
Hannah: “Like the girls throwing themselves at you over there.”
Garrett: “That’s a different scenario. I don’t ‘do’ girlfriends. They know that.”
Hannah: “Congratulations, Casanova, but I don’t need your help.”
Garrett: “What if I paid you?”
Hannah: “To take your dating advice?”
Garrett: “To tutor me, nerd.” (Watch how Cameli softens “nerd”. As with most of his moments, what he’s doing is super subtle, but effective.)
Hannah: “You could just ask my name.”
Garrett: “Usually girls just tell me.” (Hannah is now openly grossed out by him. lol)
When Garrett says he needs to pass the class in order to play, as though she’s supposed to give a shit about this even though he refuses to even ask her name, she snaps, “Why? Because you get off on beating people up?” This hits him and he does not regain his equilibrium for the rest of the scene. He doesn’t fire back angrily, he doesn’t tell her she doesn’t know what she’s talking about, the ego drains out of him, you can see it happen. Off Campus prioritizes character development early. We don’t have to wait two or three episodes to see below Garrett’s cocky surface. We’re already there. Why is she so vehement? What is going on? Why is he basically frozen by what she says? To repeat: he’s not sad or mad. He’s triggered. Remember the stalker-y texts/calls we’ve seen him receiving from his dad in the last 24 hours. Remember the conversation with Logan. She’s hostile but he’s actually heard her. He is not okay.
Phil Graham is at the hockey house and greets Dean, Tucker, and Logan with hugs and compliments about their development as players. The guys are star-struck. Logan hugs Phil, even though he and Garrett literally just talked about Garrett’s problems. No wonder Garrett does not feel safe opening up to his friends. Phil does not hug his son. There’s a gendered “critique” here, I think: Hannah has a support system. Nobody knows her backstory, but she has Allie, Dexter, Daveed to bolster her up. Garrett has no one. Men suffer in silence, sometimes, for outdated and harmful cultural reasons. (This is why I hate that John Mayer song: “Boys you can break, you find out how much they can take.” You CAN “break” boys – you can break any child – but why would you want to do that? Fathers be good to your daughters, but boys you can break? We have far too many broken men out there. Garrett is a broken boy. Stop breaking boys. Fuck you, John Mayer. )
I watched a lot of cast interviews. They are a raucous bunch and I am here for it. I got fascinated by Belmont because … as per the point of this whole post … he is a rather unexpected type of person. Cameli is an exuberant person, free and silly (I mean …), with theatre nerd tendencies: he is the opposite of nonchalant (as the kids say, he is CHALANT all around), he fluctuates wildly between being a flashy dresser – silks and loafers and vests – and wearing hoodies, sweats and kooky sunglasses, he’s a good dancer, he has a big laugh and unruly Einstein hair. He’s an Italian from Chicago, a high school jock. He was a stoner (apparently not anymore). His Instagram is filled with pictures of him dancing wildly at clubs, smoking cigarettes, sometimes wearing nail polish. (In fact, the Instagram feeds of the entire cast feature group mayhem in Vancouver bars after-hours. Playing beer pong, for God’s sake. The media training hasn’t kicked in yet. Soon everyone will be more buttoned up, so let’s enjoy their joie de vivre, complete with underage drinking, while we’re allowed to see it.) Cameli nerded out about Orca whales while on a press junket – like, you’re being interviewed by Teen Vogue about your new hit show and you’re going on and on about Orca whales – and, way back in 2018, when he was 20 years old, with one credit to his name (kind of), he donated a kidney as part of a transplant chain, which collectively saved the lives of seven people. Cameli is nothing like the repressed Garrett. He’s created an authentic character (and … has never really had to do this before, remember, but he is READY). Garrett is trying his best to set a boundary with his dad, who – infuriatingly – doesn’t respect his son’s boundaries, an ominous sign, particularly in a series placing such importance on boundaries and consent.
Just curious: do college hockey teams, or any college sporting team, have afternoon games? Why? Nobody in the student body could come.
I adore the Big Sean needle drop for the segue to the hockey game, players zooming around the ice, roving spotlights, a manic crowd. Nice detail: an advertisement for “Malone’s” is included along the walls to the rink. Garrett steps onto the ice, in a total emotional spiral.
I never would have noticed this, but Cameli referenced it in an interview: for this scene, he wrapped two of his fingers with tape. On one, he wrote “44”, Garrett’s jersey number, a reminder to the character that he is his own man with has own jersey number. On the other finger, clearly seen in this shot, he wrote “EG”, the initials of Garrett’s mother. Cameli said, “I had the idea when I was building the character. Garrett’s mom was the first love his life.” I love a smart actor.
As Garrett moves into the face-off, locked by his father’s gaze in the stands, a flood of memories rush in, just as they do with PTSD. It’s made clear visually that the past isn’t in the past, it’s Right Now. There’s a terrible closeup of his father washing his bloody knuckles as child Garrett watches. The opposing starter taunts Garrett, “Making Daddy proud, Graham?” Garrett gets a penalty, and he’s like an animal in a cage, twitching and looking over his shoulder at his dad. The whole sequence is masterfully done.
Hannah works at the rink (only in episode 1, though), and is restocking concessions while Garrett has a full-on meltdown on the ice. Kendall and Dean’s puck bunny stroll by and they just happen to be talking about Garrett, Kendall saying, “Garrett’s playing like shit.” Two guys approach Hannah from behind, and you hear one of them also saying, “Graham’s playing like shit”. The sound drops out, Hannah freezes, her hands curling up in the lobster-claws of a panic attack. Please notice, again: Hannah and Garrett are both getting triggered in the presence of people who have hurt them, even though we don’t know the full story yet. Neither is in a position yet to help the other. Hannah flees, running through the corridors she was seen mopping earlier, finding refuge in the green room (the hockey rink is also used for concerts, etc. Harry Styles played there, according to the poster?) In the green room is … whaddya know … a piano. Meanwhile, Garrett throws his helmet at the wall in the locker room. We see her struggling to cope, we see him lost.
Garrett wanders the corridors trying to shake it off, and hears someone singing. He peeks through the green room window and sees Hannah dancing around and singing (Elton John’s “The Bitch is Back”.) This scene, I’ve heard, drives some people crazy because it is so damn long – she sings the whole song, and we switch back and forth between her and the hockey game, watching his transformed focus and energy on the ice. I’ll get to this critique in a bit. In Off Campus, when someone sings a song, they sing the whole thing. High School Musical is a huge inspiration for the series, after all. The scene carries the emotion and meaning without a word of dialogue spoken. There’s a deeper character-driven resonance. Hannah has coping skills. She isn’t a “manic pixie dream girl” who gives our hero the strength he needs to go back on the ice. She is coping with what just happened to her the best way she knows how. Garrett has no idea that what he is witnessing is a woman handling a PTSD flashback. Hannah is further along in her healing journey than Garrett. The panic washes off of her and Garrett catches the vibe, captivated by the private joy of the girl he’s been annoying all day.
The block party closing out the episode is a massive sequence. I’ve seen some frustration in YouTube reactors about the length of some of the scenes. The complaint might be a result of the short-attention-span thing affecting us all, but the length of the scenes cannot be denied. The show wants us to care about the characters before we care about the plot inching forward, and to do this, we need a little bit of space and time. Every single character we have met thus far, except for Phil, is in attendance at the block party. The scene hammers home the idea that Off Campus includes a romance, but in actuality it’s an ensemble piece. Remi Wolf performs three songs, hard to complain about since we love Remi Wolf. The scene features multiple conversations: Hannah and Allie, Garrett and Logan, a brief interaction between Allie and Dean, there are hundreds of extras, AND entire stretches with no dialogue at all – perhaps the most unexpected thing of all. A more efficient approach would make the “block party” two short scenes:
1. Hannah being pushed by her friends to go talk to Justin Kohl.
2. Garrett interrupting Hannah and Justin’s conversation and proposing “the deal”.
Boom. Done. But Off Campus has no interest in connect-the-dots efficiency. What’s important to convey is the texture of the event and the relationships swirling around AT the event. There’s a captivating moment when an actor’s face is allowed do the storytelling. A huge emotional shift occurs in Garrett – well, it already happened when he watched Hannah dancing and singing – and this is entirely – and I mean entirely – internal. He tells no one, but we can tell how changed he is. Extraordinary! As I mentioned earlier, some of the story elements would benefit from more development over the eight episodes … but I wouldn’t sacrifice these stretchy meandering sequences: episode 1’s block party, episode 2’s costume party, episode 3’s karaoke night, and episode 4’s Drunk Shakespeare.
I went to a big state university and as far as I know we never had a block party like this.
Allie, Dexter, and Sean encourage Hannah to go over and talk to Justin Kohl. Dexter and Sean suggest getting some shots for “liquid courage”, and Allie swoops in, one of the most important moments in episode 1. She scolds Sean, “Remember Hannah’s friend who got roofied in high school? We do not pressure Hannah to drink in public.” Inference as Exposition. We learn later that when Hannah told her about her “friend”, presumably when they first met, Allie guessed right away, and never said anything because she intuited Hannah would tell her when she was ready. Hannah doesn’t tell people because people look at her differently, as they did in her home town. Allie, without ever letting on, quietly and powerfully sets herself up as a protector, policing Hannah’s boundaries for her, stepping in if necessary, as she does here. To go back to Logan: Logan doesn’t know Garrett’s secret truth either, but he has not picked up on context clues because he’s blinded by, honestly, envy of Garrett’s wealth and status and legendary dad. Allie does not waste time making it about herself (“why didn’t you tell me? Don’t you trust me?”), and never changed her behavior towards Hannah, didn’t pity her, just supports. Boundaries are SO important in Off Campus, and this includes consent and all the ways we need it, in almost every interaction we have.
As the party rages, Garrett sits off by himself staring at his phone. When Logan comes over, Garrett holds out his phone and asks, “The waitress from Malone’s. What’s her name?” He’s found a picture of her on the Malone’s Instagram page. Logan expresses shock: Hannah waits on them every day, how can Garrett not have noticed her? Because you can bet Logan noticed her. Tucker and Dean tumble over, pouring shots of something, joshing around (Dean to Tucker: “Would you take your tampon out and relax?” Dean.), and Garrett goes back into his phone, tracking her down by scrolling through Malone’s followers. He’s got her name now. He was not interested literally 15 hours ago. “Usually girls just tell me their names,” he said to Hannah earlier that day. We hear the other guys offscreen bickering and laughing, as Garrett basically falls (emotionally) into his phone.
Garrett’s search for Hannah (not Mona) jump-starts what happens next at the block party, the scene that closes out the episode, although the real jump-start was earlier, when he spied on her singing “The Bitch is Back”. Okay, she inspired him. A more superficial show would have Garrett value her only for that, like she was his lucky charm in hockey, she changed the course of the game. Nope. There’s the “he falls first” trope. You wouldn’t expect a guy like Garrett to “fall first”. You’d expect Hannah to get swept away by the fake relationship, while Garrett remains all-business, maybe even bummed out because a puck bunny hit on him last night and he couldn’t go for it because it would blow his cover. Let’s track this: Earlier that day he told Hannah, “I don’t ‘do’ girlfriends.” Something has happened since then. As I mentioned, the “something” is only discerned by watching his face. He doesn’t say a word. You have to actually WATCH Off Campus, you can’t just listen to it. Garrett looks soft, all of a sudden, making him unrecognizable. His expression is where the show REALLY begins.
Hannah’s put “Briar Music” at the top of her profile, and her feed is filled with photos of her playing different instruments. I mentioned the affinity between athletes and artists, something I have observed in my own life. How many young actors were high school athletes who got injured senior year and a guidance counselor suggested trying out for the school play? So many actors start this way. Hannah being a music major means she – like him – has a dream she’s chasing. He’s going to mention it to her in about two-point-five minutes. Music is a huge hook, and will be a bonding agent for them as people.
Logan watches Garrett scroll through Hannah’s page with an almost suspicious look on his face. He will, unfortunately, have this look for the rest of the season. Is he jealous because he “likes” Hannah? He’s liked her for three years and did nothing about it. To quote my dad, “You snooze, you lose.” Does he think something is “off” because Garrett, famously, doesn’t “do” relationships? Does Logan think Garrett is being shady? Is this an example for Logan of Garrett having things Logan wants? Or, does Logan have a crush on Garrett? To be honest, this was the only option that really made sense to me, behaviorally, especially after Garrett and Hannah are official. Why are you still mooning at them from across the room? In the book, Logan asks Garrett if he can have a try at Hannah after Garrett’s done with her, which is absolutely disgusting (so thank God THAT’S not included). Logan has no love interest and/or hookups (that we see) in the tv series. I wish Logan spoke about his feelings to Tucker or Dean – these characters do talk to each other about real things – but the presence of his sibling Jules inhibits him. Jules taunts him about his “dumb crush on Hannah” in every interaction, and Logan denies it for seven episodes. This is one of the many problems I have with Jules, who we’ll meet in episode 2. Jules is always around. Apparently, in the books, Logan doesn’t want Hannah specifically. He, unlike Garrett, wants a relationship, wants what Garrett and Hannah have together. This is not at all clear onscreen, and the result is not Cipriano’s fault. He’s lovely onscreen, and doing what the script requires … but what the script requires is … confusing, not to mention a bummer.
There’s a deliberately structured sequence showing the two friend groups – hockey boys and theatre kids – exuberantly enjoying the block party and Remi Wolf’s performance. Activities mirror one another: Hockey boys jump around dancing, Hannah and Allie dance together, Garrett tosses popcorn into Logan’s mouth, Allie and Hannah feed each other cotton candy, a puck bunny (sorry) takes the boys’ picture, and Sean snaps a group pic. We’re not so different, get it?
First encounter: Dean and his regular puck bunny make out in the “photo bus” as Allie and Sean stand there watching, irritated. AS Dean kisses the girl, he looks directly at Allie. Not exactly the most romantic meet-cute of all time.
Garrett, after goofing around with his friends, goes right back to where he was before, stalking Hannah’s Instagram, leaning down to listen to a clip of Hannah singing (the lyrics: “Page one, it’s just the prologue” … hmmm). Garrett will go back to this clip again and again. It’s a safe space for him, and he doesn’t have any of those. Hannah is standing 20 feet away and this is what he is doing. Love, 21st-century style. There’s this tender smile on Garrett’s face as he listens to Hannah sing. Hannah has no idea that that annoying arrogant guy who keeps trying to talk to her, calling her “Mona”, that insanely hot guy she saw in the shower, is now attached. He’s not even in denial about it. My first time through, I watched this small sequence, thinking, “Wait, we’re doing this NOW?? This is happening already??”
Remi Wolf singing is always in the background throughout the block party, but sometimes her song surges into the foreground. The sound design is superb, by the way (how and when the surrounding sound drops out, the creepy exhales in Hannah’s flashbacks, the muffled voices in Garrett’s flashback – he’s blocked out the words, but remembers the sounds). Off Campus‘ soundscape is as rich as its visuals.
Allie and Dexter push Hannah off to go talk to Justin, like proud parents. Unfortunately, some drunken guy spills beer on Hannah, and, unfortunately, she is wearing a black bra under a white tank top. (Speaking of bras, SOME lingerie company needs to put out a line of bras alled “Hannah’s bras”. I would buy them all. They are all so cute and clearly designed for girls who are … stacked. Like Hannah. Like me.) Justin notices the commotion and asks, “Are you okay?” Listen, I didn’t like him on sight. I mean, yes, I’m oKAY except my TITS are showing now. Hannah makes some comment about her “stupid shoes”, taking the blame for her wet T-shirt … She is so awkward it’s nearly unwatchable. When I first saw the series, I thought Bright over-played the awkwardness, and I still feel that way a little bit. But the awkwardness adds to the overall feeling that Hannah is crushing from afar, idolizing Justin, almost like she’s a high school kid which … inside … because of what happened to her … she is. Trauma stops time. Having an unattainable crush probably feels safer to her than dealing with an actual interested man in front of her. Her behavior with Justin is in stark contrast to the ease she has with Garrett, even this early on. Hannah doesn’t connect the dots: She does not feel comfortable with Justin, she feels comfortable with Garrett, even if she’s just telling him to go fuck himself. Hannah ignores her wet T-shirt, and tries to converse with Justin. He is openly disinterested. Justin, you are very pretty, but you are also a tool.
A familiar figure approaches the duo from behind, calling out, “Wellsy!” The day before, Garrett called out “Mona!” from the same angle. Now he’s made up a whole nickname and backstory. (In just two months, an endearing detail, the entire hockey team will also be calling her “Wellsy”.) Hannah does not turn around when she hears “WELLSY”, because … that’s not her fucking name. That’s nobody’s fucking name. Garrett is all insouciant concerned “boyfriend”, taking off his jacket and draping it around her, scolding her, “Babe, I always tell you to wear the jacket and you never do.” Hannah’s expression: “Babe?”
A moment to leap a bit ahead to track the condensed timeline, maybe the most Unexpected thing in episode 1: The day before, Garrett called Hannah “Mona” and didn’t ask her name even when he knew he got it wrong. Today, he saw her singing and dancing at the hockey arena, and now he is trying to figure out who she is by scrolling through the restaurant’s Instagram page. In a 24-hour period, in other words, he is changed. He’s already “in”. This is so not how it usually goes in these stories. Yes, he proceeds to then cock-block Justin at the block party, and then proposes “the deal” to Hannah. He’s a little cocky and obnoxious but don’t forget: 20 minutes ago he was hunched over her Instagram page, listening to her sing. He notices Hannah had a drink spilled on her, her bra is exposed, and Justin hasn’t offered her his jacket. When Garrett comes up to Hannah and Justin, he’s interrupting the awkwardness he witnessed earlier at the diner, but he’s also putting his jacket over her to cover up her basically exposed boob (a sly unspoken dig at Justin’s ungentlemanliness). In the conversation between Hannah and Garrett that follows, when Hannah asks Garrett if he loves hockey, he doesn’t give the surface answer, he tells the truth: he doesn’t know, he’s always done it to impress his dad. He already can’t lie to her. Or, he doesn’t want to. Has he said this to literally ANYbody? She asks about his mother too, and he tells her his mom died from cancer. Remember him saying to Kendall earlier, “What’s my mother’s name?” Garrett is INTO Hannah, like REALLY in, and it happens in episode 1. Normally with these tropes, he’d start falling maybe around episode 3. He’d suddenly realize “oh my gosh I like her, even though she’s not a hot sexy babe.” (which is ridiculous because Ella Bright is gorgeous, but we know how these shows PRETEND perfectly beautiful girls aren’t “hot”.) We end episode 1 with Garrett into Hannah and Hannah oblivious to anyone but Justin. This is a fascinating subversion of the Expected.
Real question, Hannah: Do you really want a guy who only notices you because you’re “dating” a high status guy like Garrett? Do you really want a guy who’s only interested in you because you’re taken?
Justin is suddenly interested once Garrett barges in, calling her “Wellsy”. Or, at least, Justin is interested in Garrett. (‘Twould be an interesting plot twist.) Suddenly, Justin starts chatting up Garrett, telling him how much he loves hockey, “you annihilated Eastwood today”, etc. Oh, okay. I see you Justin. Hannah is totally confused. Why is Garrett DRAPING his arm over her shoulder? Garrett, meanwhile, only has eyes for Hannah (he is so much further along in his feelings than poor Hannah, who isn’t “along” in her feelings for him at all). Because Garrett is so attentive to Hannah, Justin suddenly thinks she’s worth talking to, and says, “You’re Hannah, right?” Garrett answers for her, “Hannah Wells.” This is so funny, and so transparent, considering the whole “most girls just tell me their names” thing. I’m just going off what I see on his face: he’s excited to get the chance to say her name because now he knows it and he won’t forget it. He loves knowing her name. Don’t blame me. That’s what I see.
Hannah: “What the hell was that? And how do you suddenly know my name?”
Garrett: “Don’t worry about it. And you’re welcome.”
Hannah: “For?”
Garrett: “Now Jacob knows who you are.”
Hannah: “Justin.”
Garrett: “Whatever.”
I gasped, reader, when Garrett suddenly, without warning, reaches out, hooks his finger into her waistband, and pulls her towards him. He’s not rough with it, he’s gentle, but still … I love that neither of them reference that he has done this. Nobody says anything, they ignore what just happened. (This gesture will repeat in later episodes.) The expected would be Hannah saying, “Hey, get your hands off of me”. What is not expected is her sensing something else is going on with him, he’s not just pulling her towards him as a “fake boyfriend”, it’s like he suddenly comes into focus for her: she wonders out loud why he keeps asking her to help him: “I haven’t been particularly nice to you.” I love a self-aware queen. Everyone gets to be self-aware in Off Campus. It’s such a relief watching something where I don’t have to hang out for hours on end with un-self-aware characters.
The sound of the party drops out leaving a calm sphere of quiet around them. She’s confused by him and he’s suddenly shy. He can’t have had a plan for this conversation, but now that he’s here, now that he’s pulled her towards him by her waistband, he decides to actually let her know him.
Here’s how such a conversation would go in a conventional superficial movie:
Garrett: “Listen, I just made Jacob jealous, he’s looking over here right now!”
Hannah, huffily: “His name is Justin and get your finger out of my damn SKIRT.”
Garrett: “Look at him.”
Hannah looks, sees Justin staring, realizes Garrett is “onto something, and looks back at him, inspired and determined, holding out her hand: “Okay, let’s do this thing. Deal?”
Garrett, cocky because he got what he wanted, taking her hand, “Deal.” Aaaand, scene.
In this scene, though … He wants to be close to her. She’s too far away from him. He’s seen her now, dancing by herself, playing music on her Instagram. He wants to know her. None of this is normal, especially not for a first episode. Things are happening VERY quickly. His tenderness is not normal, his openness is not normal. It reminds me of that famous line in When Harry Met Sally: “When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.” I honestly don’t think it’s too much of an exaggeration to say this, more or less, is what’s going on right now for Garrett.
Hannah asks him if he loves hockey. You can tell from the look on his face that nobody has ever – EVER – asked him that. Off Campus cares deeply about consent, not just in sex, but in everything. His boundaries have been compromised since before he has a memory, and he’s consented to very little that has happened to him, bad or good. He says things to her here he’s probably never said to anyone else. Why, though?
Because love is sometimes like that, stupid.
Both actors play this scene beautifully, quiet and simple, a real listening-and-talking exchange.
Hannah: “Why do you care? I haven’t been particularly nice to you.”
Garrett: “You’re a music major. I saw your Instagram. You sort of disappear when you play. I don’t mean that in a bad way. I mean … you love it. I can tell.”
Hannah: “Don’t you love hockey like that?”
Garrett: “I don’t know. It’s just something I’ve always done. To impress my dad.”
Hannah: “And does it?”
Garrett: “Nothing impresses him. Not really.”
Hannah: “What about your mom?”
Garrett: “She died. Awhile back. Cancer.”
Hannah: “Oh.”
Garrett: “Look, I don’t believe in favors or shortcuts. I don’t want to pass this class because somebody handed me the grade. I want to earn it. And I’m pretty sure you’re the only one who can help me do that.”
Hannah: “So, what, I help you study for the mid-term and you play my fake boyfriend to get Justin’s attention?”
Garrett: “Something like that.”
Hannah: “You’d still have to pay me.”
Garrett: “Obviously.”
Hannah: “Don’t forget. I’m not your girl, Graham.”
Garrett: ” ‘This is my dance space, this is your dance space. I don’t come into yours, you don’t come into mine.'”
Hannah: “You’ve seen Dirty Dancing!”
Garrett: “It was my mom’s favorite movie. Still a dated reference, though.”
Poor Kendall. He literally said to her, “I don’t have time for a relationship.” less than 24 hours ago.
Garrett openly admits he’s been scrolling through her Instagram. He admits he watched one of her clips. You should NEVER admit these things, right? Especially not if you’re a cool star athlete! He tells her he doesn’t want his grade handed to him, an important context clue about his character. These subtle things are wrapped up in the cliche of “the deal”: a confusing blend, because you know exactly what this is, establishing a fake relationship, you’ve seen it in 100 rom coms, but … they’re not talking like they’re supposed to. Garrett and Hannah are in a genre, but they don’t know the rules.
Garrett: “This is why this is perfect. You’re not interested in me and I’m not interested in a relationship.” Interesting wording there, Garrett.
Guys, what are we even doing here. Can’t we just skip the fake relationship part and get married? Tomorrow? Because this is ridiculous.
Props, Costumes, and Technology
Garrett’s playlist. Too good.
Hannah’s A+ paper is on Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Women. The thing is actually readable too, because you know I zoomed in.
Garrett’s F paper is on “moral authority”, super interesting considering how his storyline – his childhood living under the “moral authority” of his abusive father – proceeds. This also plays into his struggles in the class. He understands what he is reading. He gets all of it. What he can’t understand is how these old dusty philosophers are all saying different things but they’re all right. He wants to know the right answer. Welcome to one of the major tips on How to Watch the Series. There are two villains, well, maybe three. Everyone else is human and when arguments happen, you can usually see both sides.
Garrett’s bedside table. Watch. Condoms. Phone. Hungry: Fuelling Your Best performance, by former NHL player Ryan Walter. It took a little digging based on the information I had but I found it.
Foreshadowing: Dean’s chess board.
Creepy text from Garrett’s dad
Foreshadowing plus costume shout-out: Allie enters the dorm room-penthouse-suite wearing her boyfriend’s sweatshirt with the word “VERMONT” on the front. Having Allie wearing a sweatshirt shouting VERMONT on the front is funny. Allie’s boyfriend is obsessed with Vermont. Vermont has huge symbolic meaning to Allie (although we know none of this in episode 1). This sweatshirt comes into play in episode 4, and rears its ridiculous head during Drunk Shakespeare. I love it when shows keep details like this in mind, to be discovered on a second viewing.
Foreshadowing: Karaoke poster on the telephone pole outside Malone’s. Hannah has no idea she will be attending said karaoke night in episode 3 with all the hockey guys, whom she does not yet know, and that the earth-shaking episode 4 will be a result of what happens at karaoke night.
Hannah compiles a playlist of Justin Kohl’s music, naming it, fatefully, Crushing. What do you want to bet she will regret this later? How much fun did the technology team have coming up with the songs on Hannah’s recommended list? One Direction name drop, the second in the episode.
I’m a little shocked that a random post from Malone’s about pizza has received 143 comments. What the hell are they all talking about? And please forgive me but one of the people who’s liked the post is “thezoeyyouknow”, one of Garrett’s hookups who Snapchats him at inopportune moments and is busted – by Hannah – getting eaten out by Garrett when he is supposed to be studying. Oh, puck bunny. You’re in college. Don’t you have homework?
My first thought was: Malone’s, a local diner/bar, has over 4,000 followers? But then I looked up a local ice cream place in my town and it has over 6,000 followers.
Garrett stalking Hannah, trying to find her in Malone’s followers. How does one create this? Is it all CGI? Do you create a bunch of fake followers, make a private main account, and then fuck around until it looks like an actual Instagram page? I love the creativity of making up all these fake people and fake usernames.
Hannah has 896 followers, two of whom are visible: Allie and, intriguing, John Logan, who has known OF her for three years and hasn’t made a move.
