Going Online: Heartbreak High
Part 1 of my Netflix analysis series
Netflix’s brand trends towards producing and acquiring shows that encourage binge-watching. By moving away from appointment television, and by allowing users to schedule viewing at their leisure, Netflix opens up the doors to the very common practice of binge-watching. Jenner (2016) argues that due to our ability to schedule shows ourselves that “the way to ask for our attention changes significantly… [with] increasingly complex narrative structures [which] demand our attention in a way that scheduled television rarely can,” (p. 269). Appointment television only needs to hold our attention for the length of one episode and includes commercials as a palate cleanser. Now, with the ability to watch episodes, or seasons consecutively, Netflix’s shows must strive to keep viewers’ attention for an extended period of time.
This manifests itself in Heartbreak High (Heaton, 2022—present) through the non-linear presentation of the main storyline and key information being revealed in flashbacks. The major conflict is the broken friendship of Harper and Amerie which begins when Harper punches Amerie in the face in Episode One. The episode is told from Amerie’s perspective who doesn’t know why Harper has punched her— since she doesn’t know neither does the audience. Flashbacks slowly feed the audience pieces of the event that broke them up over the following eight episodes. Finally, in the last episode, told from Harper’s perspective, we see a flashback where she experiences trauma coming home from the festival she and Amerie were at together and that Amerie (though home) doesn’t open the door to her pleas, which lands Harper at home being beaten by her drunken father. Once we know this, we can understand why Harper was upset at Amerie. The use of flashbacks in traditional television would be difficult due to its scheduled nature, whereas the eight-episode season, available in full and the use of a storyline that spans the season asks viewers to watch it continually to keep track of the plot with more ease, hence encouraging binge-watching.