The Search

The Search is the first episode of the first season of the American-Canadian series High Schooled.

Summary
Derek must stay and babysit his sister, Amanda. He invites his best friend Ryan over, who meet Derek's crazy neighbor, Sean. When Amanda goes missing, it's up to Derek, Ryan, and Sean to find her.

Cast

 * Derek de Jong as Derek Lipton
 * Nicholas Merchant as Ryan Brahmer
 * Paul Ingersoll as Sean Riley
 * Ariadne Merchant as Amanda Lipton
 * Pat Kizer as Derek's Mom
 * Charlotte Henderson as Nicky

Production
The first draft of this episode was written in December 2015 by Nicholas Merchant. Its storyline was originally created by Merchant as an episode of his other show, Kevin and Alec. As Kevin and Alec 's third season stalled, and needing a plot to write a pilot around, Merchant used the story for High Schooled.

The episode's script was sent to Drake Vegas, president of Drakoloid, to help him determine if he should pick up High Schooled. Impressed with Merchant's work, Vegas immediately picked up the show for a 12 episode first season, which was later reduced to 8 episodes at Merchant's request.

The episode was written prior to a full season outline being planned. The characters were inspired by those from another project Merchant was working on: ''Lipton's Lab. When the full season outline was created, another of Merchant's show was merged into High Schooled, ''adding a fourth main character called Lauren. In order to have Lauren appear in the pilot, the second half of the episode was rewritten to add scenes with her. This was used as the shooting script.

As the rest of the season was being written, Nicholas Merchant, also the show's showrunner, decided that Lauren didn't fit as a character and was underdeveloped. He decided to remove her from the show and make the character Sean more substantial, as he would now be the sole main character other than Derek and Ryan. As Lauren had been essential to the story's third act, the episode was left with a major plot hole with Lauren's scenes cut. The Comedy Cubed release of the episode was postponed by a little over a month from April 10 to May 19 in order to have enough time to conduct reshoots. These reshoots fixed the plot and pacing issues caused by Lauren's removal, as well as giving Sean a bigger role and repositioning him as a friend of Derek and Ryan, as he was to become the show's third lead. Although an alternate cut that includes Lauren's scenes was completed, it has not been released. However, clips of Katya Edwards portraying Lauren can be found in the episode's blooper reel. Lauren would later be added to the show again in season 2, though she is played by a different actress.