Netflix’s Midnight Club finds heart in a mega PlayStation fan

The new YA series from Netflix The Midnight Club is the perfect horror starter kit. While there is a central plot about a maybe haunted mansion that slowly unfolds over 10 episodes, it’s also a collection of short horror stories told by the story’s cast: a collection of terminal children living in a hospice in this living mansion and in their last days through fear unite each other at night, Are you afraid of the dark?-Style.

This means The Midnight Club can take any form – in one episode it’s a film noir homage, in another there’s a riff The Terminator. And in the fifth episode, “See You Later,” the show takes on that rarest of forms: the gamer thriller.

“See You Later” features a story narrated by Amesh (Sauriyan Sapkota), who tells a story about Luke, an aspiring game designer (also played by Sapkota; in The Midnight Club Each cast member also typically plays the protagonist of the story they’re telling, who meets their idol at a video game store: Vincent Beggs (Rahul Kohli), a legendary game designer. Better yet, he invites him to a game he’s working on.

What follows is a twisted sci-fi tale in which a seemingly unbeatable video game is the vehicle by which Luke learns his world isn’t what he thinks it is, and that his heroic ideas about life and his place in it could distract from more everyday things that really matter. All in all, it’s not real The Midnight Club‘s best short story, but it takes on a touch of poignancy when held against Amesh’s bow throughout the show.

Photo: Eike Schroter/Netflix

Amesh established himself as a player early on The Midnight Club. In the group therapy sessions that the children all attend together, Amesh talks about his childhood playing every video game console that came out and how sad he is that he may not live to play the Sony PlayStation, which is not yet on the market. He’s embarrassed saying this, aware they’re small potatoes compared to the many other things missing from life in a room full of other teenagers who don’t look far for this earth either. But he can’t help it – he is. He likes video games.

Part of what makes Midnight association A wonderful show is the deep sense of affection it has for all of its characters, the way they are all taken seriously, even if they are messy, hateful, or not the best of storytellers (Amesh’s story is not good). Amesh’s love of video games might not be appreciated as classically in the show’s ’90s setting, but it’s as beautiful as Anya’s (series star Ruth Codd) desire to dance again, and it’s also an illustration of the show’s poignancy in Miniature.

Playing video games as a hobby means never being satisfied. There’s always more: a new console, a new sequel, a new update, something else to achieve or buy or watch. Coincidentally, so is being a teenager: constantly being pulled in the direction of your overwhelming feelings and desires, being sure that you were destined for greater things than your dreary present, that your best days always lay somewhere in your vague, uncertain future.

Amesh feels all of this, but he can’t accept it. Like all his new friends in The Midnight Club, he is destined to end his story somewhere close to where he is right now, as a teenager just beginning. Eventually, someone hands him this PlayStation, and observant viewers might find there’s nothing for him to play. It feels like an oversight, but maybe that’s the point. Amesh is glad he got the PlayStation. He doesn’t have to play it. He just wanted to be known while he was still here.