Cheer

After finishing Last Chance U and needing something to restore my faith in the good old USA while I endure lockdown and witness presidents recommend the direct injection of bleach to cure what ails you, it was only natural that my next step on Netflix would be to enter the world of Cheer.  From the same producers of a documentary whose drama and story telling rocked my viewing experience, Cheer would offer me more of the same, I reasoned.  However, at a time we’re potentially looking to avoid drama (when there is so much happening out there in the world just now that’s all too similar to the opening scenes of a science fiction film), what was I doing launching myself into six episodes of the most compounding drama and tension?  I was this close to requiring an emergency service to cope with it.  Given that our public service heroes are kind of stretched just now (and so many are busy clapping them in some misjudged gesture that really only makes the clapper feel less guilty) I’m wondering if Netflix could part-fund their own – something for people whose real lives are now so strange, that the effects of their programming’s drama are causing enhanced trauma and, er, excessive entertainment.

While the rhythm of drama in Last Chance U reflects an episodic cycle, with a game per match delivering each climactic beat to the storyline, the world of cheerleading Cheer is built around ladders up to one singular moment.  The pressure and the tension, therefore, ramp up episode by episode.  There are no real peaks and troughs, no post-gearshift respite before accelerating again.  We build and build and build until it all comes down (like a dropped top girl) to the final cheerleading routine of precisely two minutes and 15 seconds.  This isn’t just atmospheric pressure from above.  The team we follow in Cheer, from Navarro College in Corsicana, Texas, have pressure coming at them from every direction.

Firstly, they’ve won the National Cheerleading Championship many times before.  Umpteen times, to be precise, regularly topping the podium since the start of the 21^st century.  Each year, they enter the championships under a crushing weight of expectation, from their formidable head coach, Monica Aldama, from their passive-aggressive assistant coaches, from squad alumni, their own families and, to a lesser extent, the wider Corsicana community, who are somewhat oblivious to the breath-taking achievements in stunting, basketing and, well, cheering, going on in their local area.

As a Brit, I now feel the need to pause for some exposition.  Mostly because cheerleading is a very un-British thing.  It’s about being supportive, cheerful and optimistic.  Our sporting events are characterised by rainy downpours, with hooliganism for the commoner sports, and exclusive elitism for the more expensive ones.  But cheerleading has long been an American solution to their need to prevent women getting crushed underfoot in violent sports.  Girls can’t play the game, but they can console themselves by cheering along the boys from the side lines and helping to point out to the spectators that they ought to do this too.  I know this sounds cynical, but we must expect nothing less of me than to point out the farcical.  That said, cheerleading is still a key theme in my most beloved types of TV shows, mainly because it features heavily in one of my top tropes: dramas set in high school or equivalent higher education locations (and rarely in post-apocalyptic dystopian futures ideally including zombies).  I can’t quote Bring It On as accurately as I can Mean Girls, but a recent re-watching after Sky-Plussing it off Comedy Central saw me easily able to identify what scenes had been tampered with to suit its daytime schedule outing.

So, by way of exposition, this is real-life Bring It On.  As there is no professional career league for cheerleading careers as such (or should this be ca-cheers?), Cheer further accentuates the importance of these final championships.  For many, it’s their last cheer.  It’s certainly not going to get them a scholarship, we are told.  But, like Last Chance U, the time is taken to get to know the most compelling characters from the Navarro squad.  As always, the challenges in their background are teased through in ways that relate to their current actions.  The importance of cheerleading to them, as an escape, as a survival instinct, as a route to self-confidence, is abundantly clear.  And you’ll have no time for British scoffing at pom-pom-waving and bra-loads of pep.  This cheerleading is a discipline that is part floor gymnastics, part airborne gymnastics, laser-accurate choreography and a bucketload of incredible toughness.  As rehearsals ramp up, the physio tape is used up in bulk stitching back together the various significant injuries sustained by our athletes.  Whereas our football players would skip out games to recover, the cheerleaders run straight back onto the mats, ready to be tossed aloft or to perform dozens of somersaults in one of many full-out practices where the same energy is used as on competition day.  These kids really bring it.  Oh, it has already been broughten.

From the girls, we hear about familiar insecurities, such as online trolling, fitting in with groups and escaping parents who left you out in a trailer (really).  The bruised ribs, high altitude drops onto heads and dislocated elbows are the easy part.  Comic relief comes in the form of Gabi Butler’s parents playing themselves as the deliciously unaware pushy parents momaging their protégée.  The boys’ stories, balanced out so males don’t dominate the whole narrative, address head on their truths in being part of a sport traditionally considered to be for girls.  They don’t get airborne, but many have had to emerge from communities with unsupportive views on minority sexualities, only to land in a part of Texas where it’s clear folk don’t take too well to their kind round these here parts.  Progress is a bit slower in some corners of the world, but you can be buoyed by Monica Aldama’s response to anyone who comes for her boys.

Over our journey, we bond with the team just as they do with each other.  From Whatsapp group exclusions at the start, to insider handshakes, communal hair-volumising and excessively large bow-application by the end.  Such is their self-assurance with each other that we are shown scenes of athletes addressing their teammates with unprompted (and unwanted) feedback whenever it suits them.  Way to be direct, guys!  It goes without saying, then (so I’m not sure why I’ve laboured the point so heavily – let’s call it lazy writing), that the drama climaxes at the championships in the most heart-stopping, mouth-with-vomit-filling way, but it’s the friendships and the athletes’ journeys along the way that make everything about Cheer so compelling.  For example, after a good full-out run through, the team celebrate by breaking out into re-enactments of their favourite show, Bad Girls Club, faux-beating each other with handbags and tearing out pretend weaves.  As Monica finally joins in hesitantly, you feel the urge yourself to run onto the mat and act like you’re teaching a bitch a damn lesson, such is the strength of the sense of belonging.  Go team!

Friday Night Lights

In life, it’s important to have goals.  I’ve only set very few over the years so I can focus on each in turn.  The first was to go to Oxford – something I decided at the age of about eight apparently.  Once that was achieved (it was expensive, and they still email me asking for money that I am never going to give them), the next was to become a published writer.  Still haven’t managed that, but I think one out of two in my 34 years is a pretty decent strike weight.  A completion rate of 50% is better than 0%.  So, while number two eludes me, other interim goals crop up.  One was to buy a flat, and that dominated the last ten years before this summer’s eventual Help To Buy transaction, and another was to watch all five series of Friday Night Lights.  And now, everybody, I have finally delivered that goal.  So let’s all read my blogpost about it.

First things first, I should declare my lifelong aversion to team ball sports.  I grew up in a household where football wasn’t a thing.  My dad’s only sporting interest involved filling our home with the bone-chilling screech of Formula 1 tires and Murray Walker’s whiny exclamations every Sunday, with many a roast dinner soundtracked by what became two of my least favourite sounds.  With nobody realising I was short-sighted till my teens and my appalling hypermobility-linked proprioception, taking part in any sort of PE involved me not only being unable to see any balls that were launched at me, but also an inability to position my limbs to intercept them successfully.  My adult life therefore is an extension of my childhood home: sport is not a thing.  I save hours every night by not having to watch soccer matches, and I replace the office chat I see pursued around me about whose team beat whose and which players will lift what cups by having an actual personality.  However, I love dramas about sport.  It’s a theme for good narrative tension, like zombies (see The Walking Dead) and prisons (see Prison Break).  Let’s be honest, I’ve written fondly about Footballers’ Wives, and probably repeated most of those points here, so Friday Night Lights falls into that category.

The show is based on a book that had already become a film.  I’d loved the film, so I remember adding the first series to my Lovefilm list back in the dark ages when DVDs were sent back and forth in the post.  I got through the first two series and then, pow, I couldn’t for the life of me get hold of the subsequent instalments up to and including the final fifth season.  This caused years of discontent, as everything about the show was brilliant and I was desperate to see what happened to the characters I so dearly loved.  The later series were available on a friend’s Amazon Prime account, but you had to pay for each one.  As a Millennial, paying for content is a cause of great internal conflict, so I kept my pennies and my anxieties about what becomes of the Dillon Panthers football team.  Finding out became a lifelong ambition.  But, with the new flat came the decision to get my own Amazon Prime and by this point all series were included in the monthly subscription.  I could finally complete my task and achieve my goal.  And the outcome?  This amazing piece of writing for all seven of my regular readers.

Let’s cover what the show’s all about.  We are talking American football here.  Set in the state of Texas, where this sport is a religion, the end-of-week evening illuminations in the show’s title refer to the significance of high school football matches in small-town America.  I’ve only been to Austin in Texas, so this is sadly not something I’ve experienced first-hand, but this can go on the list of lifelong goals now.  Our heroes are Coach Eric Taylor (the cracking Kyle Chandler) and his wife Tami Taylor (the equally cracking Connie Britton) – these wonderful characters are the heart of our show.  I might be in my mid-thirties, but I am available for adoption to these two.  With the whole town holding its breath for football wins each Friday, the sporting fixtures in their own right generate gripping drama.  But this is then compounded by the human stories around the sport, from the ever-evolving dynamic between Coach and Tami, to the players, their families and their friends.  The whole town of Dillon feels tangibly brought to life.

A word of warning: the whole thing is filmed in wobbly cam.  It’s as if the camera operator was trying to bat away flies throughout each shoot.  This gives an intimacy to the portrayals which is heightened by the quality of the performances throughout.  The show launched the careers of Taylor Kitsch and Michael B. Jordan, but you’ll recognise faces from an array of your favourite US dramas.  I’m going to focus on some of the peripheral characters whose actors’ names never make the emotive opening credits but whose work lifts the whole thing.  There’s Brad Leland as Buddy Garrity, a role that initially irritates before elevating itself to favourite position.  I also finished the show with a deep appreciation of Stacey Oristano as Mindy Collette.  There are too many more to mention, but the quality is consistent.  Sadly, one other element of consistency is the Taylors’ daughter, Julie.  She is annoying and stupid throughout.

On my part, I’ve also maintained the consistent approach of never understanding the rules of American football.  So much of the drama can hinge around things like who is the quarterback or how many yards are left, but not knowing what these really mean is no barrier to the show’s power.  Most remarkably of all, though, is each season’s ability to build on the previous while still finding a fresh direction.  Somehow, over the years, I ended up watching the third series twice, but it’s the perfect shift between the very different dynamics (which I won’t actually describe here as that would be giving spoilers) of the beginning and end of the programme’s lifespan.  I do remember thinking the finale to the third season was the whitest thing I had ever seen (and I grew up in semirural Surrey), but the subsequent series shift in focus to reflect and include a more holistic view of American culture.  And then, either way, your heart breaks as everything draws to a close and your life must continue without any news episodes.

So I’ll chalk up Friday Night Lights as another chapter in my love affair with America.  I’m even writing this from a Chinatown hotel room in New York, wondering why the US hasn’t got the memo about waste as plastic bags are given out freely here still and the entire hotel breakfast was an exercise in plastic landfill generation (disposable crockery and cutlery…).  But I’ll also chalk it up as an exemplary contribution to the canon of quality boxsets.  Intense drama, plausible characters, a subject matter that isn’t overdone and, even though I’m conflicted about this as I wanted more, it ends before it runs out of steam.  No matter the day of the week or the time of the day, I cannot recommend Friday Night Lights enough.