Sometimes it takes a comedy to show how angry young women have become. With good reason. Hulu begins streaming “Plan B,” a female take on the raunchy all-night teenage odyssey.
Ethnic outcasts in their South Dakota high school, Sunny (Kuhoo Verma) and Lupe (Victoria Moroles) form a bond. A straitlaced Indian girl who gets chastised by her mother for getting a 96 on a test, Sunny is ready to break out. Lupe outrages her male relatives with her punk hairdo and goth makeup. Essentially a good girl, she kicks over a tacky angel statue on her front lawn and then puts it back up again lest she offend anyone in heaven or on Earth.
As these things go, Sunny’s mother leaves town on a business trip, paving the way for an ill-planned “rager,” where Sunny loses her virginity, not to her secret crush, but to the guilt-ridden Christian boy with the annoying habit of performing magic tricks.
Our heroines awaken the next morning with vicious hangovers and with Sunny frantic that she has ruined her life with unprotected (and gruesomely unarousing) sex. Their search for the Plan-B “morning after” pill sends them on a long quest for a Planned Parenthood or any clinic that hasn’t been shut down to please politically connected religious fanatics. Sunny’s predicament is further complicated by the “Indian Mafia” of pharmacists she encounters.
“Plan B” doesn’t only riff on this real-life Gilead, but the fact that it co-exists with a debauched and libidinous teen scene fueled by easy access to drugs, liquor and pornography. Not to sound “woke,” but it’s hard to see which end of “the patriarchy” is more oppressive.
Look for Rachel Dratch as a social hygiene teacher trying to teach abstinence using a film modeled on early hip hop videos.
The leads are terrific, projecting an innocence and a hunger for wisdom and experience, no matter how rudely arrived at. Directed by actress Natalie Morales, “Plan B” follows in a rude tradition of teenage road movies, but due to Verma and Moroles, possesses a sweetness all its own.
— Amazon Prime begins streaming the episodic series “Panic.” Based on a novel by Lauren Oliver, who also scripted this series, “Panic” follows in the metaphor-heavy tradition of “The Hunger Games.”
Teens trapped in a dead-end Texas town become eligible to play the “game” once they graduate from high school. Half myth and urban legend, “Panic” alarms cops after a pair of teens die trying to cross a highway wearing blindfolds. But kids play anyway, gathering in throngs in a town without many adults and where nobody seems to speak in a Texas accent. “Panic” is as slow-moving, preposterous, pretentious and dull as “Plan B” is refreshing and fun.
— After a long hiatus, “Lucifer” returns for its fifth season on Netflix.
— “Cruella” launches in movie theaters and streams on Disney+. Will this be the summer that crowds return to the cineplex? Or did COVID break the popcorn movie habit?
— A teen in the 1982 coming-of-age comedy “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” (10:30 p.m., AMC, TV-14), Jennifer Jason Leigh appears in the Netflix psychological thriller “The Woman in the Window,” with Amy Adams, Julianne Moore and Gary Oldman.
TONIGHT’S OTHER HIGHLIGHTS
— Precious cargo on “The Blacklist” (8 p.m., NBC, TV-14).
— “WWE Friday Night SmackDown” (8 p.m., Fox, TV-PG).
— The Celtics host the Brooklyn Nets in NBA action (8:30 p.m., ABC).
— Baez needs help on “Blue Bloods” (10 p.m., CBS, r, TV-14).
CULT CHOICE
— Blinded in combat on Guadalcanal, Al Schmid (John Garfield) tries to adjust to civilian life in the 1945 drama “Pride of the Marines” (8 p.m., TCM, TV-G), the first of many war movies that TCM airs over the three-day Memorial Day weekend.
SERIES NOTES
A Kennedy-era sitcom gets a new hue on “The Dick Van Dyke Show: Now In Living Color” (8 p.m., CBS, r, TV-PG) … An unusual incident on “Charmed” (8 p.m. CW, r, TV-PG).
A neighborhood nuisance on “Magnum P.I.” (9 p.m., CBS, r, TV-14) … “Dateline” (9 p.m., NBC) … Not-so-good trouble on “Dynasty” (9 p.m. CW, TV-PG).
LATE NIGHT
Jimmy Fallon welcomes Julianne Moore, Dave Bautista and Twenty One Pilots on “The Tonight Show” (11:35 p.m., NBC) … Shaquille O’Neal, Patton Oswalt and Chase Rice appear on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” (11:35 p.m., ABC, r).
Sen. Bernie Sanders, Cue Card Wally and Brian Frasier-Moore visit “Late Night With Seth Meyers” (12:35 a.m., NBC, r) … Naomi Watts and FINNEAS appear on “The Late Late Show With James Corden” (12:35 a.m., CBS, r).
