The Runarounds Review
Director: Jonas Pate, Steven Tsuchida, and Kyra Sedgwick
Date Created: 2025-09-02 02:25
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The Runarounds Review: Starring William Lipton, Axel Ellis, Jesse Golliher, Lilah Pate, Zendé Murdock, Jeremy Yun, and others, this Prime Video series has 8 episodes and is directed by Jonas Pate, Steven Tsuchida, and Kyra Sedgwick. The show is about a high school class of seniors who basically give themselves one summer to make their band successful or accept that their fantasy is lost.
The Runarounds Review
At the start, the series seems to be a classic underdog tale. But as the episodes move forward, it also opens up beyond the thrill of broadcasting live in front of the stage. It reveals the strained relationships, damaged relationships, and the bitter reality that pursuing one’s dream is all about sacrifices.
Prime Video series The Runarounds’ sole genuine resource is authenticity. Since the lead actors are actual musicians, their concert songs are not fake or artificially created, artistic-sounding songs. Performing on network television adds the rough, raw edge of a new band, giving it its shot at stardom. That at least made it at least seem they were being authentic when they’d perform their concert songs.
Their dynamics among themselves were no less core. They bicker, quarrel and even betray each other’s trust, but in spite of all that, they can always find a way back to each other. Bez choosing loyalty to the group when offered a singles deal or the group taking care of his sick mom when they were touring elsewhere were moments that made the show pleasantly warmhearted.
I also liked that the show never shied away from being grimy. Wyatt not speaking to his drug-addicted mother, Charlie being devastated when he gets the news about his dad or Sophia demanding stability and not promises—these were all plot points and brought depth. It was never about the singing and the performances and what each of these kids had to contend with in life.
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At some point, The Runarounds Series also tested my patience. Some episodes were longer than they should have been, and the emotional tension stayed longer than it should have. It crawled at snail’s pace at one point, and several subplots hijacked the main plot of the band’s journey.
Another point of worry for me was predictability. At the end of the later episodes, I could almost foretell what was about to happen with some of the situations. When Charlie went crazy and walked off the stage of one of the bigger performance shows, I just knew it was going to cost them the break they were hoping for. Although the show attempted at suspense foreshadowing, many of the twists had some type of payoff, where you could see where they were going to tie things up.
The ending left me no less confused as to what did happen, either. I mean, the band did end up getting a recording contract, and Sophia did end up serving as their official songwriter, so it did wrap up on a nice note at the end. It did kinda come out of nowhere and wrap up nice and tidy after subjecting the characters’ relationships to so much strain and tension.
More than anyone on the team, Charlie was complicated for me. His perpetual optimism about the team inspired me, but whatever untamed spunk drove him always did more harm to the people surrounding his life. To witness him struggle with love for Sophia and responsibility to the team showed both his goodness and bad places.
Emotionally, it was most likely Wyatt. That messed-up relationship with his mother made everything he did a sore spot, and it smarted when he ended things with her. It was cruel but believable. Bez’s trajectory echoed the pressure that is placed on young artists when they are lured with promises of solo fame. It wasn’t necessarily the “smartest” thing for his career to do, but it seemed to echo the value placed on loyalty, and that was nice in the series about ambition.
Prime Video The Runarounds Review: Summing Up
It is not a highly impactful series—it is occasionally slow occasionally, some of those plot twists are very predictable, and that ending was just a bit too convenient after all those twists and turns. It is, however, a series that warms the cockles, has a nice soundtrack, and has real performances. If you are a fan of band stories, friendship tales, and made-for-the-dream dramas, then give The Runarounds a shot because it doesn’t disappoint.
