Netflix's New Superbad-Esque Comedy Fixes The Worst Part Of A John Hughes Classic

"The Mick" creators and "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" writers Dave and John Chernin made their feature directorial debut with "Incoming," a coming-of-age sex comedy for Netflix about a group of incoming freshmen attending their first high school party. It's a raucous, raunchy, ridiculous night of debauchery featuring a 14-year-old running a control room of spy cams, plenty of upperclassmen making the beast with two backs in random open bedrooms, a science teacher desperately trying to appear cool by taking shots of Fireball and ripping bongs with students, fist fights leading to broken noses, accidentally falling into a K-hole, running from the cops, and drunkenly sharting out a night's worth of Taco Bell binge-eating.

"Incoming" is an attempt to merge the tradition of beloved high school stories with the over-the-top screwball sex comedies of the 1970s and '80s, and when it works, it really works. Similar to recent high school comedies like the queer fight club of "Bottoms" and even dating as far back as 2010's "Easy A," the plot of "Incoming" is in direct conversation with films that came before it. Dave and John Chernin are Gen X/Millennial cusps, meaning they were at the perfect age to discover and be influenced by the teen films of John Hughes, but aged into the generation that realized some of those story elements have aged like a bucket of sour cream left on a mini-van dashboard in the middle of August.

While the majority of "Incoming" centers on Benji ("The Black Phone" star Mason Thames) attempting to win over the girl of his dreams, there's a gross-out side plot involving his friends Connor (Raphael Alejandro) and Eddie (Ramon Reed), who steal the car of the latter's boyfriend's mom to try and sneak into the big party. The result is a moment straight out of "Sixteen Candles," but thankfully, "Incoming" subverts the trope and fixes the worst part of the teen movie classic.

"Sixteen Candles" is mostly about Sam Baker (Molly Ringwald) trying to impress the boy of her dreams, Jake Ryan (Michael Schoeffling), but one of the more memorable — and horrific — side stories regards the Geek (Anthony Michael Hall) and Jake's drunk girlfriend Caroline (Haviland Morris). The film sets up Caroline as a popular girl the audience is meant to despise for the crime of being the girl standing in the way of Sam and Jake's love story, and for getting blackout drunk at a huge party. Jake, stone-cold sober, tells the Geek, "I have Caroline passed out in the bed upstairs. I could violate her 10 different ways if I wanted to." It's a harrowing line meant to imply that he's "bored" with his girlfriend but is instead a casual admittance to how easy it would be to sexually assault her.

Jake convinces the Geek to take a drunk Caroline to do ... whatever he wants (?), but not before confusing a drunk Caroline into thinking that Jake is the one driving her home. So, the Geek gets her in the car and the result is nearly getting in a car accident, having sex with her, pretending he was also too drunk to remember (which we know is B.S.), and her weirdly saying, "You know, I have this weird feeling I did," when asked the next morning if she enjoyed the sex she can't remember.

It's a really gross scene exacerbated by the fact Jake uses this moment as justification for breaking up with her. Yes, the heartthrob boy that Sam writes about wanting to "do it" with on a note in class intentionally set up his girlfriend to have drunken sex she could not consent to have as a way to dump her for "cheating." It's such a shame that this plot exists in the film (and the blatant racism surrounding Long Duk Dong but that constitutes its own article), because "Sixteen Candles" is also home to one of the best scenes in John Hughes' entire filmography, and is a formative piece in the explosion of teen cinema history.

Connor and Eddie aren't able to get into the big party in "Incoming," so they steal a car for some joyriding in the hopes maybe they can find a way in. Once they arrive, however, the blonde and popular Katrina Aurienna (TikTok star Loren Gray) gets in their car. The duo now have the most popular girl in school, blackout drunk in the back of their car, because she drunkenly confuses them for her Uber. She demands the pair take her to Taco Bell (also claiming that she lives there) and they fulfill her request, resulting in an incredibly sloppy backseat mukbang. At one point, Katrina passes out, and instead of taking advantage of her, the duo tries to figure out what to do with her.

Unfortunately for them, Taco Bell fights back with a vengeance and she unconsciously defecates all over the backseat of the car. The boys debate whether or not they should leave her at the fire department as someone else's problem, but they eventually decide to clean her up, clean up the car, and take her back to their house so she can safely sleep it off. They even go to a store to purchase supplies to hose her off and put on new clothing while washing her poop-stained dress.

When she wakes up in Eddie's house the next day, she immediately responds with violence, assuming the two have taken advantage of her. But when she realizes that they took care of her when she was extremely vulnerable, she thanks them for being gentlemen and even invites them to sit with her and her upperclassman friends during a school assembly (which is unheard of for freshman). Their social status improves in high school not because they "scored with the most popular girl in school," but because they saw a vulnerable girl in need of help and did the right thing — even when it came at the expense of their comfort.

As teen culture evolves, the tropes in teen movies must evolve with them. When it comes to the case of "geeks get the drunk, popular blonde in their car" trope, "Incoming" got it right.

"Incoming" is now streaming on Netflix.