Sydney Sweeney's 4-Hour Netflix Series Is One Of Her Best

While Sydney Sweeney has gone on to do more famous projects in the years since her breakout role on a Netflix series, this underrated teen drama remains one of her best projects to date. The $401 million box office success of Sydney Sweeney’s psychological thriller The Housemaid proves that Euphoria’s breakout star is an A-list Hollywood actor, even though a few of her earlier projects had a hard time finding their audience.

While Sweeney’s other major 2025 release, the underrated boxing drama Christy, lost millions upon release, The Housemaid’s success and the swift announcement of its sequel saw Sweeney bounce back in record time. At only 28 years old, the actor has already earned critical acclaim for her roles in Sharp Objects, Euphoria, and The White Lotus, as well as weathering the financial under-performance of Eden, Madame Web, and 2022’s Americana. Meanwhile, Immaculate, The Housemaid, and Anyone But You have been box office successes for the star.

However, one of Sweeney’s best projects remains criminally underrated almost a decade after its initial release. Netflix’s teen dramedy Everything Sucks! was a critical success upon its 2018 release, but the one-season wonder was canceled by Netflix before the show could truly hit its stride. Starring Sweeney as the dramatic high school junior Emaline, Everything Sucks! centered on the teenage population of Boring, Oregon, in 1996.

Everything Sucks! Is One of Netflix’s Best Teen Shows

While not as acerbic as the latter or as outright nostalgic as the former, Everything Sucks! garnered comparisons to the cult classics Stranger Things and Freaks and Geeks as the show shone a spotlight on the small-town dramas of its young antiheroes. With a killer cast that included Jahi Di'Allo Winston and Peyton Kennedy alongside Sweeney, Everything Sucks! shared its blend of sensitive drama and moments of laugh-out-loud character comedy with Netflix’s equallty acclaimed, but longer lasting, Sex Education.

Setting the series in the ‘90s allowed the show to indulge in its fair share of memorable needle drops, but Everything Sucks! was more than a mere nostalgia-fest. Characters like Emaline and Kate had substantial depth, with the latter’s crush on Sweeney’s character providing the show with both poignant and funny musings on the experience of coming of age in small-town America. Like Netflix’s I Am Not Okay With This, Everything Sucks! took this story of a teen’s sexual awakening and used the plot to capture a universal sense of alienation and yearning that comes with adolescence.

Sydney Sweeney’s Breakout Role Remains Underrated Years Later

Sadly, like I Am Not Okay With This, Everything Sucks! only had one season to tell its sensitive, surprisingly unconventional coming-of-age story. The series was canceled after a mere ten episodes, leaving viewers with a perfect binge-watch but also a story that felt like it had a lot of untapped potential at its core. Since the series ended in 2019, Kennedy has gone on to star in the movie Pond Life and Grey’s Anatomy, while Winston starred in Netflix’s horror comedy movie We Have A Ghost as well as Apple’s underrated satirical comedy show Government Cheese.

Sweeney’s profile has only risen in the years since Everything Sucks! ended, but the star hasn’t returned to the show’s blend of comedy and drama since. Her more melodramatic roles in Euphoria and more broadly comedic role in Anyone But You both garnered critical acclaim, but it would be fun to see the star return to dramedy after Everything Sucks! proved to be such a fun watch. 2019’s Pete Davidson vehicle Big Time Adolescence was Sweeney’s only other big contribution to the genre, and, judging by that Hulu hit and Everything Sucks!, the star is overdue for a return.