The Body is streaming on Netflix now. This is a non-spoiler review of the full first season.
The first episode of The Body, titled “Slutty God,” opens with a Bible verse: “Now you are Christ’s body and every one of you is a part of it.” After watching all eight episodes of the new Netflix Catholic high school drama/satire/fever dream, it’s clear that series creator Quinn Shephard did the the extra reading on that passage from First Corinthians 12: “And God has placed in the church first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, of helping, of guidance, and of different kinds of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret?”
The Body dabbles in all of the above, literally and metaphorically. Going too deep on it will quickly get into spoiler territory, but The Body mounts a sermon — in the fallout of a high school dance team’s hazing ritual gone wrong — about, well, the body. Is it for pleasure, for purity, for sacrifice? Is it a vessel? What happens when it, both as an individual, or as a parochial community, becomes ill or becomes susceptible to magical thinking? How does one affect the whole?
But let me pull back on the divinity school existentialism here, because while The Body wrestles with all of those things, it is first and foremost a wild and raunchy show about teenagers behaving badly. Set in 2004, the series follows the St. Mark’s dance team — go, Lions! — that initiates their newest member, Grace (Sofia Wylie), at a Halloween party held at an abandoned nunnery nicknamed Devil’s House because, as the myth goes, all the nuns who lived there went crazy. They all take ecstasy and offer Grace as a “prank” sacrifice to the devil so the team can make it to Regionals. But something terrible happens to Grace, setting off an infection of visions and religious hysteria across the team and the town that blurs the line between self-inflicted delirium and unexplainable phenomena. Trying to manage a gaggle of teenage girls and the church’s growing zeal is priest and school principal Father Franklin — whom the girls call Daddy Franklin — played by Nnamdi Asomugha as a stoic nearing his breaking point.
At the center of the mess is Lions’ co-captain Anya (Kristina Bogic, who brings pathos to the cheer captain trope) who, out of necessity, befriends Lisbeth (an excellently freaky Geena Meszaros), a new student who weasels her way onto the team and whose shady past seems to come in handy amid the chaos. Alongside weathering the hysteria and keeping secrets, Anya struggles deeply with her sexuality, refusing to admit her feelings for her best friend and co-captain Elise (Sara Boustany, playing one of the last bastions of sanity throughout the season) is anything more than something that happens when she’s drunk.
The Body is full of sex (and sexual repression) and partying that’s just a sidestep away from Euphoria or Elite, another one of Netflix’s horny high school series. Its litany of influences (or, at least, easy references to explain The Body) are numerous. It’s Yellowjackets (which returns for a final season later this month) if they never crash-landed in the woods. It’s Bring It On if it was overtly queer (so, But I'm a Cheerleader) and R-rated. The Mean Girls, duh. It has shades of the religious fervor found in movies like Carrie, Saint Maud, and The Testament of Ann Lee. Hell, it even has a little sprinkle of Ken Russell’s The Devils’ DNA. (Confess!) Shephard — whose previous work also grapples with the plight of young, often prickly women — channels these touchpoints and shapes them with her own voice into a series that feels immediately relatable yet fresh.
The show’s cast of under-the-radar young actors absolutely works to its benefit — though you might recognize Jackson Kelly, who plays Lisbeth’s brother Leo, as the troubled kid from Season 1 of The Pitt. Without the baggage of being known as “that person from that TV show,” the girls on the dance team, in particular, feel like… well, a Catholic high school girl’s competitive dance team. For as large as the ensemble is, most don’t come off as one-note. Shirley Chen is especially good as Maddie, a Lion who struggles with an eating disorder and intense Catholic guilt. But for a series about a dance team, there’s not nearly enough choreographed dance scenes. When the Lions finally perform at Regionals, it’s hard not to feel robbed of seeing more clever, funny, and beautiful sequences.
The Body is full of the demarcations of 2004: Razrs and Sidekicks, a Kelly Clarkson ringtone and general early aughts soundtrack, bedazzled track suits and bebe shirts, the background of the Bush/Kerry presidential election, and so on. Perennially, the student body mostly has rich parents. The series scratches at teenage conservatism and family wealth — a boy loudly celebrates Bush winning; Anya has an indoor pool and glam squad — but doesn’t go much further. Much like the teenagers themselves, The Body accepts these as just the way things are, focusing on the intensity of personal feelings. But given that the show has eight one-hour episodes, it could have used a little extra something in the back half as the inner turmoil becomes slightly repetitive.
As the last few episodes begin turning more surreal, The Body goes out on a nebulous ending that is equally frustrating and fascinating. It feels like it’s doing the obligatory streaming show thing, where a non-conclusive ending is an entry to more seasons if the data shows enough viewer interest. But it would certainly be a more interesting creative choice to end the show here and let viewers stew in the ambiguity.