‘Off Campus’ is the series millennials have been waiting for — and deserve

If you didn’t have the pleasure of living through the ’90s film and TV landscape, let me tell you now — it was a weird time.

Yes, there were gems: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Clueless, Practical Magic (praise be, the long-awaited sequel is out soon) and a host of other iconic teen dramas.

But there were also some seriously terrible tropes that make rewatching tricky — minimal diversity, toxic friendships, impossible body standards, questionable understanding of consent — and that’s before you factor in the behind-the-scenes abuses we now know were rife in the industry. In short, it was a deeply confusing time to come of age.

So it’s some comfort that trash TV (by which, I mean the wildly popular Off Campus) can fit in a healthy dose of utter nonsense (see main character, age roughly 19, wondering if she will, like, ever-omfg-fall-in-love-in-her-entire-whole-life) with steamy scenes and some surprisingly heartwarming moments. Oh, and hockey. It’s essentially Heated Rivalry for straight people.

Are the teenagers tuning in? I honestly can’t be sure, but it’s hitting hard with millennial women — raised as we were on plotlines that make no sense, makeover scenes, fake dating for no discernible reason and crucially a finale that involves a high-stakes competition of some kind.

Kids, if you’re reading, this is not how life works. If someone offers to fake date you to make someone jealous before a big recital, the answer should always be no.

For the uninitiated, the plot — adapted from the bestselling books by Elle Kennedy — centers on music student Hannah Wells (Ella Bright) who is hopelessly mooning after a boy who doesn’t know she’s alive. “Just because he can play the guitar and has tiny tattoos, it doesn’t make him some untouchable rock god,” Hannah’s best friend Allie (Mika Abdalla) tells her. Where were you when I was in my 20s, Allie?

At this point, we must take a moment for Allie, clearly the best character in the show, who dishes out sage advice, ends a boring relationship so she can live her best life (hook up with hockey player Dean, whose storyline is set to be an integral part of Season 2) and dresses up as J.Lo. Icon.

Back to Hannah, who, as well as dealing with unrequited love, must write a song for the pop showcase so that she doesn’t lose her scholarship (see, classic teen drama high-stakes competition).

Enter our male lead, Garrett (Belmont Cameli), star of the hockey team and serial dater who says he WILL NEVER HAVE A GIRLFRIEND (lol). He agrees to fake-date Hannah to make band boy jealous, in exchange for her tutoring him in philosophy (welcome back, plotline from 1999, we missed you). Spoiler alert, but not really, the fake dating turns into real dating, and an epic romance begins. Oh and loads of steamy scenes.

NB: If the philosophy is what you’re tuning in for, they’ve shoehorned in a weird scene about Kierkegaard, but otherwise you’ll be disappointed.

As far as teen dramas go, Off Campus ticks every box — ridiculously attractive cast, banging soundtrack, angst, romance, female friendships that aren’t toxic (take that, ’90s shows), jocks who are actually nice and a fair amount of backstory.

Where it steps it up a notch is in dealing with sex, consent and sexual assault in a way that makes my heart ache a little bit for the millennials who grew up watching films that used date rape as a punch line. Instead, we see men considering that women might be concerned about drink spiking, men waiting for women to be comfortable before having sex, men communicating their feelings. “You can tell these men were written by a woman,” a (male) friend of mine observed. If that’s the reason, gents, sort yourselves out.

Such is the impact of Off Campus, that my Insta feed is now full of women of a certain age (ahem) reminding themselves, “I am an adult with two children and cannot have a crush on fictional hockey players.” Ladies, crush away. You’ve done your stint at the altar of poorly written toxic male leads; it’s your time now.