Look, I get it - your teen loved Hunger Games and Squid Game and now they're hunting for the next deadly-competition fix. But Panic is basically 'what if we did that but cheaper and less thoughtful?'

The premise alone is a red flag: graduating seniors in a poor Texas town risk their lives every summer for prize money, and oh yeah, two kids have already died. This isn't a dystopian future or a social commentary - it's just teens doing deadly stunts. The show seems to present this as edgy entertainment rather than examining why economic desperation drives kids to mortal danger.

With a 7.3 TMDB rating and zero critical consensus, this feels like it landed with a thud when it dropped in 2021. No awards buzz, no cultural conversation, just another forgettable streaming series trying to capitalize on YA dystopian trends that were already stale by 2021.

If your 16-year-old is begging to watch it, fine - but have a real conversation about why watching teens die for entertainment is the premise here. There are better thrillers that don't normalize fatal risk-taking.