High School: The Tegan and Sara Story

『A Genuine Coming-of-Age of Twins Between Division and Resonance』

🎥 Series Overview

🎬 Title: High School (2022)
🌍 Countries: 🇺🇸 USA / 🇨🇦 Canada
🎞️ Genre: Drama / Comedy / Coming-of-Age
🗓️ Production & Release: Amazon Freevee, Season 1 (8 episodes)
⏳ Runtime: Approximately 22–31 minutes per episode
📢 Director: Clea DuVall
🖋️ Screenplay: Clea DuVall et al.
📖 Source: Tegan and Sara Quin, Memoir High School (2019)
📺 Platform: Amazon Freevee

👩‍💼 Cast: Railey Gilliland – Tegan Quin
Seazynn Gilliland – Sara Quin
Cobie Smulders – Simone

🧩 In-Depth Story Exploration (Spoilers)

🎸 A Duet of Identity

“High School” is set in a late 1990s high school in Calgary, Alberta, and depicts the adolescent years of identical twin sisters Tegan and Sara. They share a common interest in music but experience intense confusion and conflict regarding personal identity, sexual orientation, and their relationship as sisters.

This series is not merely a nostalgic teen drama but genuinely explores the pain and joy of discovering queer identity and the complexities of sisterhood.

👯‍♀️ Tegan and Sara: Separation and Solidarity

As identical twins with an extremely close bond, Tegan and Sara struggle through adolescence with a fierce effort to establish independence from each other.

• Identification and Separation: The twins are constantly perceived by those around them as 'one entity,' but entering high school, they build separate friend groups, styles, and private lives to assert their individual identities. This process sometimes manifests in competition and secret sharing that hurt each other.
• Different Paces of Queer Journey: Their 'love stories' are closely linked to the process of discovering and accepting their sexual orientation. Tegan and Sara recognize their queer identities at different times and in different ways, sometimes hiding or failing to acknowledge these experiences to each other. Sara realizes her orientation earlier and struggles with confusion, while Tegan discovers it later, wandering through uncertainty. Despite being twins, their journeys do not run parallel.

🎶 Music as Anchor and Language

Music in this series is not mere background; it serves as the primary language and salvation through which Tegan and Sara communicate and express themselves.

• Outlet for Emotions: For introverted and confused teens of the late 1990s, music was the only safe outlet to express anger, confusion, and hidden love. Playing guitar and creating songs in their rooms becomes a process of self-reflection and liberation.
• Reaffirming Bonds: When the twins, who tried to assert independence from each other, reconnect, it is through making and performing music together. Their recognition as a duo highlights that their sisterhood is reestablished not only through blood but through artistic resonance.

⏱️ Late 1990s Sentiment: Temporal Isolation

The series realistically recreates the late 1990s, emphasizing a sense of isolation and difficulty different from contemporary queer narratives.

• Lack of Information: In an era before widespread internet and LGBTQ+ communities, Tegan and Sara struggled to understand and name their feelings. They searched for people with similar experiences, and this information isolation made exploring their identities even more painful.
• Depiction of Surrounding Figures: Their mother and friends reflect the ambiguous and sometimes prejudiced attitudes toward sexual orientation prevalent in the 1990s. This explains persuasively why the sisters sometimes hid or denied their identities.

🌟 A Genuine Record of Growth

“High School” leverages the power of autobiographical storytelling to successfully capture the awkwardness, desires, and universality of identity exploration in adolescence. The series authentically portrays the love, confusion, and self-acceptance of queer teens, ultimately delivering a moving message that true sisterhood and identity are realized when differences are acknowledged and solidarity is embraced.

🎯 Personal Rating (Preference-Based)

💕 Love Scene Intensity: ♥♥
⭐ Rating: ★★★★