“The Class” is a six-episode documentary that follows a group of Bay Area high school seniors and their college adviser during the 2020-21 school year. From its opening moments, you know in your bones that the “Where are they now?” updates at the end are going to wreck you, and indeed they do.
The mini-series, available on the PBS app and website, is a Covid story, a coming-of-age story and a stress test for how much you can watch someone procrastinate before your brain explodes. (I barely made it.) The students are all ambitious, successful, capable — they get good grades, participate in sports, sing in the choir. But then their school closes for a year during the pandemic, and everyone’s spark dims. Remote learning is awfully remote, and the idea of going to college on Zoom is not particularly motivating.
“I think when the dust settles, this is going to be really bad,” sighs Cameron Schmidt-Temple, known by his students as Mr. Cam, their devoted adviser who is the heart — and the tear ducts — of the documentary. He relates deeply to his advisees at Deer Valley: He is an alum, who graduated in 2015, and he is applying to graduate programs, so he knows the indignities of the personal essay. He has so many spreadsheets. He texts, he video chats, he gives pep talk after pep talk. But his Google Calendar invites can do only so much against the entropy of despair.
While the emotional access here is unimpeachable, “The Class” can, like its subjects, lose a little focus, and scenes of football and basketball games drag on. We learn very little about the actual academic work the students are doing (or not doing) or how the even more vulnerable and less accomplished students at the school fare.
The college application process can be overwhelming in the best of circumstances. And beyond the catastrophes specific to the pandemic, the students here also face tragedies and instability on other fronts; a parent and a mentor both die during the show, and one student sinks into a suicidal depression. The sense of loss grows and grows, so much so that when activities resume at long last, even a flag called on a touchdown play feels like another injustice.
“Describe the most significant challenge you have faced,” the essay prompt asks. No wonder the kids have a hard time knowing where to start.
SIDE QUESTS
