John Green has become one of the most popular writers in young-adult fiction today. His most popular book has probably been The Fault in Our Stars, but many of his books are beloved by a wide selection of readers. Two of his books, The Fault in Our Stars and Paper Towns, have been adapted into movies, and so questions eventually rose about whether some of his other books would get the same treatment. In particular, Green’s first book, Looking For Alaska, was in talks to get a movie adaptation for YEARS, not too long after its initial 2005 release. However, plans kept getting halted, and so a movie adaptation found itself in limbo for a long time. While I was always upset about news of any delays when they were coming out, in the end I think that it was all for the best, because it led to the adaptation that we did get. Rather than making a movie out of Looking For Alaska, the creators actually gave it an 8-episode mini-series treatment for Hulu, and so that is now the form that this adaptation exists in. And thank God, because this mini-series is FANTASTIC.

I’ve already reviewed the book of Looking For Alaska, so I won’t go too in-depth with what the plot is. Still, the basic gist is that a high-school boy named Miles Halter finds that he’s looking for something more in life, some grand adventure or calling, and so he heads off to Culver Creek Boarding School in search of what he calls his “Great Perhaps.” While there, he makes friends, gets in a rivalry with some rich kids, and falls in love with an enigma of a girl named Alaska. This is all I’m going to give away, but I definitely recommend both the book and this series.

The John Green adaptations have been interesting. I found The Fault in Our Stars movie to be about on-par with the book, and the Paper Towns movie to be worse than the book, but Looking For Alaska is the rare adaptation where I actually liked this MORE than the book. That’s not a slam against the book either, since sometimes what I was enjoying about the show was simply seeing moments I loved from the book acted out on screen. However, it’s telling that the book isn’t much longer than 200 pages, and this has been stretched out to about 7-8 hours of television.

This is a very risky move, since it becomes apparent that things are going to be added into the show that weren’t in the book. You run the risk of upsetting the book lovers or doing things to characters that aren’t cohesive with the original vision of the story. I do have one major complaint about a change that they made, but otherwise the changes/additions actually flesh out and develop the story more, and make it an even more interesting adventure to take. One of the biggest examples of this is with the character of Dr. Hyde, who is given a much more in-depth storyline in the show, and so he’s much more of a prominent character than he was in the book. This fleshed him out more as a character, and so it only made me love him even more.

I’ll go back to praising the show in a second, but while we’re on the topic of changes I do want to address the big problem I had. I did not like how the character of Alaska was handled here, which is kind of a big deal. Admittedly, I wasn’t completely sold on Pudge’s portrayal at first either, but I eventually did come around to him. However, Alaska just winded up becoming very unlikeable in the show. They gave her an SJW personality, which is really strange when you stop and remember that the show is set in the mid-2000s, and so not many kids were talking about “dismantling the patriarchy” back then. I thought this was a really weird choice for the character, and can only determine that the showrunners possibly wanted to make the show seem more “woke” in today’s culture. I’m not sure. Regardless, Alaska winds up being very unlikeable when she makes every conversation about gender, and this is a shame because of what the character is. I’ve read into why changes were made for the character, and read that the showrunners wanted to portray Alaska as more of a three-dimensional character, rather than the “manic pixie dream girl” male fantasy kind of character that she is in the book. To me, though, this was a fundamental misunderstanding of what the character is in the book, because in the book we see Alaska through the eyes of Miles, who is putting her on a pedestal and seeing her in an unrealistic, incomplete way because of that. It’s kind of one of the whole points of the attraction he has for her, and so it affected this aspect of the show for me. I also argue against Alaska not being a three-dimensional character in the book to begin with, though, because she has a lot of complexity in her storyline of how she deals with her mental health and childhood loss. Luckily, this aspect of her personality is also kept intact, and so once the show starts leaning into this a bit more midseason, she becomes a lot more likeable.

Anyway, aside from that rant on how one character was handled, I otherwise loved this adaptation. I have to give a huge shout-out to the actors in this series, because they really breathed a lot of life into some great characters. It allowed for a character like Lara, who I didn’t really care much about in the book, to be someone I really loved in the show, while also making a fan-favorite character like the Colonel even more awesome. In fact, Denny Love’s performance as the Colonel just might be the highlight of the show for me. He was completely entertaining, while also really nailing the heartfelt moments that the character has too.

Looking For Alaska was just one of those shows that made me feel something that few shows have been able to do. To say that the show made me cry wouldn’t even be giving it enough credit, because the show gave a ton of heartfelt moments that really resonated with me. There are some very memorable scenes here, both ones that are in the book and ones that weren’t. The show instilled me with that unexplainable feeling that’s hard to put into words, but that others will share if they’ve experienced the same thing. If nothing else, Looking For Alaska is a well-done adaptation of a great book, and one that allowed me to fall in love with the story all over again. It does have some problems, but overall this is surprisingly my preferred method of consuming this story. Its presentation is just spot-on, and so this was one of the best TV experiences I’ve had in a long time. Definitely check it out if you’re a fan of the book, but also check it out even if you’re not.

4.5/5