Photo: @Netflix
Netflix’s new show, ‘Cheer’, is a six part docuseries following the nationally ranked Navarro College Bulldogs Cheer team from Corsicana, Texas led by their fierce coach, Monica Aldama. Trust me, I did not expect to get into this show or like it as much as I did. My experience with the world of cheerleading started and ended when my friend in college begged me to go to tryouts with her and I laughed through my failed routine and had never been so sore in my life the following day. It gave me a brand new appreciation for Cheer, that’s for sure.
That being said, I blindly went into watching this show thinking it could be a good “background show” (something I can just keep playing while I’m doing other things or scrolling through my phone). I was so wrong. I was hooked after the first episode. It made me think of one of my favorite shows, 'Friday Night Lights’, but for Cheer.
The show of course explores the actually sport of Cheerleading, but also unravels any preconceived notions you may have had about it in the past. It essentially invites you to unlearn everything you thought you knew about Cheerleading. To be a cheerleader means to be participating in an extremely dangerous sport, where you are constantly getting injured, are essentially training to be an Olympic gymnast from a young age, and then as soon as you’re done with college, the Cheer world is over for you. There’s no Cheer Olympics, your whole life has led up to the moment of a final competition (in this case, the National Cheerleading Championship in Daytona). Out of the forty people on their cheer team, only about half “make the mat,” meaning get to actually perform their complicated, dangerous, beautiful routine at the competition. That means those that don’t “make the mat” and it's their senior year...that’s the end of Cheerleading for them as they have to sit on the sidelines watching their team. Not once until watching this show did it even occur to me that these athletes train so hard their entire lives and there’s nothing waiting for them after being a Cheerleader in college. There’s no Olympics to go on to, or competitions for you as you get older, or sponsors waiting to sponsor you. You’ve reached your prime by the time you hit age 20/21.
Another huge part about this show that came as a surprise to me, is that they take a really intimate look into a lot of these athletes lives and backgrounds. There’s one girl who had her mom abandon her and her brother, and when her dad remarried he put them in a trailer alone to raise themselves even though they were just children. There’s a guy on the team that has gone through tragic loss at the age of 16, has been told he just doesn’t “have the look” that judges are searching for, but through all of that he remains the most positive inspirational loving and genuinely kind person on the team. I could go on and on, but the point I’m trying to make is that without even realizing it, you become invested in these athletes with their lives and their upbringing.
As a warning, get ready to see (well, mostly hear) a lot of different injuries happen. I’m not sure if they didn’t show the majority of them because they couldn’t, or just because the cameras didn’t catch them, but there are several episodes where the stress is high and five people get seriously injured in different parts of the routine. You can just hear the falls and the gasps, and the way they describe it after is so raw and terrifying. Whether a girl kicked someone carrying her in their face and broke their nose, or the positioning wasn’t right and a girl gets dropped on her head from 10 ft in the air….its brutal. There’s another scene where (I won’t give too much away) their coach knows someone has overdone it by competing too much that weekend, and he messed up his back. He still tries to make it through practice, crying almost the whole time as he has to catch the flyers over, and over, and over, with each impact being worse than the last.
I won’t tell you whether or not the series ends with them winning or losing the championship they are fighting and training so hard for, but let me tell you, it is an extremely stressful finale. My eyes were glued to the screen and I was so stressed out I was pacing around the room! Anything could change in an instant, and that’s part of what makes this show keep you on the edge of your seat.
Overall, give ‘Cheer’ a try, you won’t be disappointed!