The following review contains spoilers for the first four episodes of Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies, now streaming weekly on Paramount+.
The first time I performed Grease, I was nine years old at Girl Scouts camp. We did a medley for our parents that included both “Born to Hand Jive” and “Cool Rider” (even though the latter, technically, was from Grease 2). Afterwards to celebrate, my mom rented the movie for the first time. I was hooked.
That fall, I wanted to be a Pink Lady for Halloween. Pink Ladies are not a common child’s costume and we’re talking pre-online shopping days, so my mom called a local professional costume shop. They had the coveted satin jacket, but I was so small that my mom ended up triple rolling the sleeves to make it fit. By fifth grade I had memorized the entire Pink Ladies Pledge and taken to performing overly dramatic renditions of “There Are Worse Things I Could Do” to an audience of my own reflection in my bedroom mirror after school.
Being Black and Puerto Rican and gay (though, I didn’t know that last part quite yet) didn’t stop me from seeing myself in the lily-white, straight halls of 1950s Rydell — not that it ever would have. In fact the only reason I mention this at all is to say, by all accounts, I am the core audience for Paramount+’s Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies. I know that anyone reading this website wouldn’t assume that I’m some off-the-wall right wing pundit bemoaning the “wokefication” of Grease for finally including POC and queer characters, but I also want you to know that I’m not some staunch traditionalist. As far as I’m concerned there have been queer, Black, and Latina Pink Ladies since at least 1997, when I first put on the jacket.
Which is why it pains me that I don’t love this prequel.
In Rise of the Pink Ladies, it’s 1954 — roughly five years before Rizzo, Frenchy, and Sandy are going to rule the school — and horny Puerto Rican-Italian nerd Jane Facciano (Maris Davila) is spending the last hazy days of summer going at it in the backseat with her boyfriend, preppy jock Buddy (Jason Schmidt). Teens being horny is a backbone of Grease lore and Rise of the Pink Ladies is often its strongest when directly tackling the sexist double standards and purity policing forced onto teen girls. Jane, still relatively new at Rydell after moving to the California suburban high school from New York last year with her family, is made the target of a slut-shaming rumor campaign after Buddy lies about how far they went at the drive-in.
Meanwhile, Olivia (Cheyenne Isabel Wells), an aloof bookworm hot girl Chicana, is also left reeling after rumors swirl about a “relationship” she had with her English teacher last year — relationship put in quotations by me because a grown adult can’t have a consensual relationship with a teen girl, a fact that isn’t glossed over in the show but can never be emphasized enough. Nancy (Tricia Fukuhara), a Japanese student who dreams of a life as a fashion designer in New York, is left alone after her two closest friends dump her to become boy-obsessed. Cynthia (Ari Notartomaso) is a tomboy who dreams of being inducted into the T-Birds, no matter how badly they treat her. Cynthia’s obviously queer coded right away and the team behind Rise of the Pink Ladies has promised make good on queer characters in future episodes, which is one of the reasons we are gathered here today. While I get the sense that Cynthia’s episodes are still ramping up, it must be said that Notartomaso is already a scene-stealer right from the top, its impossible to take your eyes off of them.
When Jane announces that she’s running for class president against Buddy, she makes new friends in Olivia, Nancy, and Cynthia — with Olivia, whose brother is the head of the T-Birds, becoming her campaign manager. For Pink Ladies casting director Conrad Woolfe, in creating these archetypes, “Our North Star… was Rizzo. Stockard Channing is just so amazing, and that was the essence we wanted to pull for all of these characters, for all four of these Pink Ladies especially.”
And thus, the original girl gang is born.
On the surface, Rise of the Pink Ladies hits all the important nostalgic beats. So far there’s been a T-Birds’ mooning, a bonfire pep rally, Principle McGee (for now she’s Assistant Principle McGee), a sleepover in Frenchy’s pink Sandra Dee bedroom. The premiere episode alone includes homages to “Greased Lightning” and “Beauty School Dropout.” It doesn’t take long for a middle school aged Frenchy and Rizzo to make a cameo, either. If you’re a fan of poppy TV musicals about high school outcasts — High School Musical, Glee — there is a lot to love in music producer Justin Tranter’s work. It’s also beautiful to look at, with impeccably slick production design and choreography.
For me, this is also where the series begins to fall apart at the seams. I have yet to make it through even one single episode of Rise of the Pink Ladies without asking myself if a meteor is going to come any minute now and strike all the students of color (and their families!) before the prequel ends and the original series picks up. After a while, I started making a joke that around every shrub was a The Last of Us mushroom zombie that only ate the Black and brown kids. That there must be a reverse migration style mass deportation back to Mexico, Japan, and the Southern states. Because somehow Rydell goes from a beacon of 1950s racial harmony in 1954 to the all-white school we know it becomes in ’59.
If she was interested in telling an updated take on Grease that tackles school integration (and to be clear, I think if we’re going to return back to these classic namesake properties, we should be updating them) — I’m not sure why showrunner Annabel Oakes chose to focus on a prequel instead of setting her series in the 1960s, after the events of both original movies. In that situation, the linear progression of time could have done lot of the work for her. If we imagine a world where, say, after Michelle Pfeiffer’s Pink Ladies hang up their iconic jackets, the group disappears for a few years , only to be picked up again by newly arrived POC and queer students who are outcasts and find power in the iconic Pink satin — very little else of the show would have to change. Except that I would stop daydreaming about a zombie apocalypse worthy of a drive-in cinema.
One of Autostraddle’s writers, Drew, helpfully suggested that instead of letting the question of “where did all the POC exactly go?” get the best of me, I could compare the budding Grease-verse to the James Bond franchise. After all, there have been, and will continue to be, an infinity amount of Bonds, Qs, Ms and Money Pennies — and I’ve never required any of them to have continuity. What’s to stop Rise of the Pink Ladies from taking place in a multiverse where the infamous Frenchy (Jane’s little sister) is actually Puerto Rican and both the Pink Ladies and T-Birds have origins more closely aligned with the very real Mexican-American 1950s culture that birthed “Greasers” in the first place.
Except even that instance doesn’t solve what I believe to be Rise of the Pink Ladies’ greatest fault. The show is in a rush to pat itself on the back for a more (overtly) queer, POC-based adaptation, but seemingly has little concern about the factual realities that race plays in these characters lives. It would be one thing if (as is often the case in Broadway musicals), the racial-blind casting simply meant that race wouldn’t be brought up at all. Instead confusingly, if not upsettingly, Rise of the Pink Ladies seems to want to pick and choose when race matters.
At one point Hazel (Shanel Bailey, another knockout performer), a Black student who recently transferred to Rydell, shows interest in joining the Pink Ladies. In hushed tones during one of their classes, Wally (Maxwell Whittington-Cooper), a Black football player, warns as much as he chastises: “Hazel, you’re not getting mixed up with those Pink Ladies, are you? They like to stir up trouble. [Hazel says: so?] So trouble just might hit you differently than it would hit them.”
But following that same logic, would this worry of “trouble” not also be true for Nancy, who’s Japanese-American family would have been held in interment camps not barely a decade earlier? When Nancy would have only been in elementary school? Or for Olivia and her brother Richie, Mexican students living in a California that’s only had integrated schools for seven years at that point? Or even for Wally himself, who has a blonde, white cheerleader girlfriend? A full 13 years before Loving v. Virgina?
Later in a following episode, Nancy tells Wally, who is feeling down about losing a game, that you can’t look to others for validation. It’s a lesson that she learned as a child because “when I was little, kids used to throw rocks at me and call me a ‘dirty Jap.’ They blamed me for the war… I was still saying ‘pa-sketti.’”
Of course, that is horrifying. But it’s also fantastical to believe that young Black boy in 1954, less than a year before the murder of Emmett Till, would need to be told a story about the difficulties of racism. Let alone in the context of being hard on himself over a football game.
Jane’s mother, Kitty (Vivian Marie Lamolli), attempts to wave off her dark skin tone in public by passing as Italian instead of Puerto Rican. She ignores Frenchy’s bewilderment over hiding her heritage (“I thought I was calling my abuelo, nonno this whole time!”) and shudders when Richie bows and calls her Señora in public. When Jane decides to make boycotting a bigoted, exclusive country club for the fall dance part of her campaign platform, Kitty objects. This is the closest the show has gotten to tackling the complications of race head on — Kitty’s passing attempts are easy to write off as self-hatred in less deft hands, and to its credit Rise of the Pink Ladies instead takes time to show how they’re rooted in strategies of survival.
That survival, of course, also pays a steep price of loneliness and isolation. While visiting Olivia and Richie’s parents, who are so excited that Rydell’s next student body president might be Mexicana (they don’t quite get “half Puerto Rican” but hey, the heart is there!), Jane wistfully explains that she doesn’t know much Spanish. Rather than dig deeper into the ways that their relationship to race has strained Kitty and Jane’s relationship to each other, Kitty’s entire passing subplot is swept into a campy musical number between Jane and Buddy at the Frosty Palace, where Jane publicly “comes out” as Puerto Rican to applause from her fellow Pink Ladies. There was so much more to explore.
Rise of the Pink Ladies wants the privilege of deciding when and how questions of race matter, but that’s not how race works — not on a fictional television show where teenagers sing on cafeteria tables for fun, and not in life. Without any serious consideration to historical specificity and its impact on the lives of Rydell’s students of color, all Pink Ladies does instead is open up an unsatisfying — and distracting — Pandora’s box. Even if it is one shimmering in bright pink glitter.
Still going to watch it for the Grease nostalgia but I’m glad to know it’s faults and strong points before going in. Definitely keeping this all in mind when I do watch the show.
By the way, Carmen you don’t happen to have any photos of nine year old you in the Pink Lady jacket, do you?
I was about 9 years old when Grease 2 was released. I see many movie scenes and stories in Rise of the Pink Ladies. Greasers and Socs, that was more of The Outsiders. I see a bit of West Side Story as well. Plus Grease and Grease 2. I like Rise of the Pink Ladies. Sure sure, some episodes are a bit dry. But it is supposed to be fun and make you have respect for people who are different from you. We all over analyze everything these days. I say put your thoughts and feelings aside and try to imagine your self a young middle school girl watching this. I think from a different perspective, you will see this is a show to not write off so quick. Almost every generation has their “Grease”. Let the current young people have theirs as well.
The current young people have High School Musical: The Musical: The Series. I had fun reading this review!
I do not know many Middle School kids who watch High School Musical. It was big when my now 25 year old was in high school. Or are kids rehashing shows?
High School Musical: The Musical: The Series is a Disney+ series that started a couple of years ago and launched Olivia Rodrigo.
Nova, I am so sorry to disappoint! But I have zero pictures!
Nooo!!! You should redo it this year for halloween.
Thank you for this review. I also couldn’t understand why they opted for a prequel when creating a more inclusive spin-off, and the first four episodes have not cleared up my confusion in any way. The way the show engages with race is so glaringly…uneven, especially when sexual politics, for example, seem to be addressed with more care. Agree that making it a sequel wouldn’t be enough in itself to correct those failings (even if it would ward off a racist mushroom zombie apocalypse).
Love the original Grease, I am black and I hate this show! It is just too gay pandering. I hate civil rights movies for the same concept, too black, o wr the top pandering.
Complaining about “gay pandering” on a gay website
Right!?
I guess it’s a good sign that Riese’s SEO work is paying off, but some of these commenters are so lost.
I really enjoy it! Please people…Can’t anyone relax anymore and just watch a show for the only purpose of fun, instead of overanalyzing every single thing between opening and closing credits?
Nobody is stopping anyone from uncritically enjoying media, though, obviously, this review isn’t made to be especially helpful for those people. It’s normal for people to seek to understand what they’re watching on a deeper than surface level. When you critically examine a show (or anything), you can appreciate it in new ways in addition to the ways you already liked it and if you dislike it, critical examination can help you articulate why. I didn’t get the impression that Carmen hated her time watching this show, but she was able to use her critical lens to address why she didn’t love the show like she expected to; and in doing so, she could share it with us, the reader. Now, we are forewarned if we would likely run into the same hangups as her, and forearmed with the language to talk about our issues if we do. Also, as an aside, I don’t think over-analyze is the right word because it seems race is a pretty prevalent topic explored in the show, so how the show handles race should be a primary topic of examination to understand the show and its ideas/themes.
i think if you want to “relax and watch a show for the only purpose of fun” you probably shouldn’t read reviews of the show, you should just watch the show and relax for the only purpose of fun
I agree!! I want to watch a show to decompress after work. Not analyze the show. These types of reviews kill shows. Some of us just want to watch a show just because!
Then you should just watch the show and not read reviews. For many of us, analyzing the content we consume is just as important as uncritically watching things.
You can just watch the show and accept that other people have different ideas of fun (like I had fun reading this review, thank you Carmen for writing it)
MTE, although Autostraddle is more queer than gay, imo.
It really shows how thoughtless and what they really want is none of anyone not a conforming het, though. One musical number and one montage is minimal gay. One doesn’t ID as a woman and the other could be bi, pan, such makes it more queer, but less gay. I get more gay on NCIS Hawaii and romance is understandably backseat there.
Some of what is happening in Pink Ladies feels more like steps back, like they’re perpetuating some old trash rep rather than subverting or actually showing a better journey, but I’d rather they not repeat those mistakes at all. Kind of like how Thelma thought it could exploit gratuitous female nudity while acting like breaking the fourth wall to call attention somehow negated the exploitation.
“The way the show engages with race is so glaringly…uneven, especially when sexual politics, for example, seem to be addressed with more care” — yes, exactly this!!
Carmen, thank you so much for reviewing Rise of the Pink Ladies. I’ve seen the first two episodes and I wanted so much to love it. You laid out perfectly why it is a challenging show to watch.
The League of Their Own reimagining/reboot is the gold standard now, I think.
Oh my goodness, are you reading my mind!? I’ve said this no less than two different conversations about Rise of the Pink Ladies this month! I do wonder how my experience watching it would be different if ALOTO hadn’t existed.
@Shira since my last comment didn’t display where I replied.
It hurts so much that there won’t be another full season of A League of Their Own, out of all the cancelation frenzy. You’re bang on about how A League of Their Own handled reboot/make/history. It’s the master class and set a new standard, indeed.
I think the biggest miss step was Max going through with having sex with a man, where as stopping and him being a gentleman about it would have gotten across the same point without the trope.
Hello there. I’m a huge fan of Grease. I’ve seen the movie about a hundred times. One of the things I noticed that you comment on is that, Mexican-Americans, created greaser culture. I’m an African American and with a quarter Chicano ancestry. I grew up in Los Angeles, listening to oldies and reading Teen Angel magazine throughout my teenage years and I still listen to oldies. You mentioned that Mexican Americans created greaser culture. Do you mean Pachuco and Cholo culture? Mexican Americans were called greasers,which was considered derogatory, but there were white greasers also. In fact if you look through Chicago history, whites were greasers all the way into the 1970s. But I digress. I agree with everything you’re saying about “Grease: rise of pink ladies. I think they need to make it a little bit more authentic to the 1950s and all that comes with it.
You are absolutely right! My brain did some very unfortunate cross-wiring while I was getting my ideas out. I’ll get this fixed. thank you.
I thought they were called Greasers because in the 50’s the men used to use grease in their hair. My father was a 50’s Brooklyn NY Greaser and he said that was what the reference was.
Anybody else a little worried that when they promise to “make good” on queer characters in upcoming episodes, the RotPL people are talking mostly about Richie?
(I’ve only seen the first episode, so may be way off base. Hoping I’m wrong!)
To me a sequel would’ve been horrible, a prequel is much more interesting. Also, there are POC students in the original Grease but almost all of them are in the background (very Hazel like).
I can understand the feedback of wanting the show to dive deeper into prejudices of the time though and I’d be interested to see where it goes with it. For one, I don’t think Hazel’s story will find a resolution. I think she’ll still feel invisible at the end.
The original Grease always did a good job of blending timeliness and dark themes with positive themes. It always did this balancing act between the two but mostly kept things light, but it’s moments about race were even more smoothed over.
Perhaps then trying to stick too close to the original had hindered then from really pushing those boundaries but hopefully we see that change.
NO SPOILERS but I can broadly/vaguely say that there’s at least one sapphic storyline coming at some point in the future.
well this encapsulated so many of my feelings about the show! there was so much to love about it, especially the costumes, the musical number, and the individual performances. but i was so distracted thinking “are young people gonna watch this and walk away thinking that racism was truly this low-key in the mid-1950s???”
I think it’s a fair thing to be distracted by!
(And I agree re: the costumes, musical numbers, and performances btw. they are all great.)
as always, a home run! you articulated so many of the thoughts i had (and screamed about) while watching the first episode. it bothered me so much that i haven’t been able to go back yet. somehow i just knew that it wasn’t going to be able to make good on the promises it made about being a more inclusive reboot. like, they gloss over the fact that the mexican leader of the t-birds rejects the lily white cheerleader in the first episode? hello! anyways, thanks for giving words to all of my issues with the show. i hope they handle the queer storylines better than the racial ones
Sai this is so nice, thank you! I’m also hoping the queer storylines are handled with more nuance and care once they show up.
I’m not interested. Leave the original alone!!
CHicana?? Her Spanish accent is thick Puerto Rican…unless I missed a plot element. Also, the term Chicano/Chicana is offensive to certain segments of the Mexican-American community.
I’m curious, because I am Mexican-American and have used Chicana/o as a personal identifier – why is it offensive?
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