Kristy’s mom (Silverstone) is getting remarried to a really nice and really wealthy man (Marc Feuerstein), and Kristy (Sophie Grace) is struggling with changing her entire lifestyle and possibly losing the close relationship she has with her mom. Mary Anne (Malia Baker), who lost her mom when she was young, is trying to grow up a little bit while her extremely overprotective father (Marc Evan Jackson) is having trouble letting go. Claudia (Momona Tamada) excels at art but struggles with everything else in school. Stacey (Shay Rudolph) is totally boy-crazy and is also trying to manage her diabetes, while Dawn (Xochitl Gomez) is the new girl in school, and is just trying to fit into the club.
The show appears to be set in present day, with Instagram, iPhones, Queer Eye, Lizzo, and even jokes about data being stolen by Russia, but somehow, it also feels like it could have been set 10, 20, 30 years ago. Sometimes it looks like a memory, with muted colors and fashion that’s both bold and strangely unspecific, like an idealized idea of what life used to look like and also does still look like. It’s the childhood many of us might long to go back to right about now, even if it doesn’t actually resemble the one we lived. I didn’t grow up in a sleepy Connecticut town (or any town at all, but that’s beside the point), but this still feels oddly familiar.