The stakes for the characters in Panic are sky high â literally life and death, as in a second episode challenge where contestants traverse a rickety steel beam between two grain towers stories above a crowd of their peers. But Panicâs 45-minute episodes, also written by Oliver, barely lift above a dramatic flatline. The series leans heavily on teen adrenaline but offers frustratingly few clues as to why itâs applied to Panic, whoâs coercing them, or why no one simply spills the beans. High-schoolers gather each summer to watch their friends skirt death by inches for ⦠what, exactly? Itâs a zombie of a series â all the parts of a dystopian-adjacent, horny teen YA thriller without a heartbeat of central mystery.