TV Review: Cheer

Let’s get a few things out of the way first: cheerleading is an insane sport. Upon completing the new Netflix series Cheer, one will quickly discover the many literal downfalls that come with getting on the mat. While the whole point is to get out there and express yourself, it comes at a great cost. Over the course of the season, many teenagers fall from the air and into a broken leg or arm. One girl gets fractured ribs that hurt so bad that it’s threatening to debilitate her during the cheerleading finals at Daytona Beach, FL. Upon seeing a few girls already land head-first on the mat, the audience gets their first rush of heart attacks. We wonder: how many girls are going to get a concussion in the remaining three episodes? If that’s not bad enough, the third episode features someone bluntly telling the camera that she’s already had like five concussions. There’s no sense that she’s quitting. 

This is all taking place at Navarro College in Corsicana, TX. They have a reputation to uphold, as head coach Monica Aldama has a proven track record of winning. She pushes her students to go further and better than they ever had before. She’s described as a Type-A personality, obsessed with bringing out the best in others. It’s why despite being 50 miles south of Dallas in the middle of nowhere, it’s a hot spot for anyone wanting to leave their mark in the cheerleading world. People come from all around to practice with her specifically, and there is this sense that everyone has a drive. Cheerleading is their life. Corsicana is so obsessed with it that director Greg Whiteley went so far as to interview law enforcement about it. Everyone knows the pressure to be great that comes with cheerleading, and in some ways a win for Aldama is a win for the town.

But the craziest part of all? Navarro is a TWO year school.

Monica Aldama

The Daytona Beach’s National Cheerleading Championship is open up to every college across the United States. That means that there are more prestigious schools out there with even more time to hone their craft that fall victim to Aldama. But how? People who flock to Navarro are largely inexperienced, lacking guidance in life. It’s the shift we all face as we graduate from high school and get our first taste of the adult world. Sure, some have been training with cheerleading academies since they were children, but to them, this is their Olympics. They have been honing their craft for this exact moment, a two year window that will define the rest of their lives. They sacrifice their bodies and health just to be among the elite group who can call themselves winners of the most prestigious cheerleading competition in the country.

There are those like Gabi Butler who are trying to cheat this limited window. Thanks to a strong Instagram following, she has managed to market herself as this inspirational cheerleader. When her family notices that people love her bikinis, they begin a new business. She is constantly seen taking pictures with Cheerleader Magazine, trying to uphold a positive image. Much like the other crew members that graduate from Navarro, they treat cheer like a job. They need to constantly be on their best behavior. They almost have to be vanilla, never presenting a controversial side that would frown upon the rest of the group. Aldama claims that it’s preparing them for the rest of their lives, and Butler’s view is the closest the series gets to the post-graduate program. When you’re no longer in top form, all you’ll have is to cheer on the next generation.

But why do cheer in the first place? It seems shallow to dedicate so much time to perfecting one moment in your life. Unlike the Olympics, most of the athletes only get to do the championship once. There’s no encore. It feels like the type of scenario where most cheerleaders will grow old and bitter that they didn’t do better in Daytona Beach. They trained so hard, broke their bodies for this art, and it didn’t come true. It’s the depressing undertone that exists in Cheer even when it’s the most jubilant documentary to make the rounds. Everyone here has a short shelf-life, and you can tell by their eagerness how much this means to them. Suddenly it all makes sense. They’re trying to prove their own self-worth.

La'Darius Mitchell

There’s a rotating cast of characters that the series chooses to focus on. There is the perfect athlete Mackenzie “Sherbs” Sherburn. To her cohorts, she is the triple threat who can do every move. So long as she performs, Navarro stands a great chance of winning. Others like La’Darius Marshall and Morgan Simianer come across like overachievers, putting so much enthusiasm into their performances that it comes across in the way that their hips sway. 

La’Darius is introduced cheering, his body swaying so much that words like flamboyant come to mind. It’s a touchy subject, as the series explores his complicated feelings about being called “fruity” (more on that later). He has trouble showing his emotions, which feels like a great ironic lynchpin for a show like this. 

Then there’s Lexi Brumback, who enters the picture as the outsider. During a pivotal point in the show, she is afraid to tell Aldama that personal pictures of her had leaked online. Given Navarro’s strict policy of presenting their best image, it’s impressive to see the teacher tell Lexi that she has her back. To put it gently, wherever Lexi goes, trouble courts her. She discusses her earlier life where she went to jail for beating people up. Before she leaves Navarro she gets arrested again. Her insecurity is clear, except when she is on the mat and able to perform backflips with the best of them. Whatever problems she has in life, they’re not there in her performance. It centers her, giving a deeper purpose to her life. 

Then there’s Jerry Harris. Let’s just put it this way: even when Jerry is not on the screen, he IS on screen. He is the team’s personal cheerleader, on his second year with Navarro. Having missed his chance to perform (“on mat”), he stuck with the team and continued to get into better shape. There is something affecting about him yelling enthusiastically across the room for his team. He’s not in it for personal glory, but the sense of family that he’s created. He gets the point of this time better than everyone else. I wish I had Jerry in my life. I got exhausted playing Just Dance on Wii and I imagined had he been there I would’ve kept going. While Aldama directs the team, I think Jerry guides them through their darkest times with a glowing optimism that is downright infectious.

On its surface, Cheer is one of the greatest documentaries of the year because of how thrilling it is to watch these performances in motion. The nonstop practice finds teenagers moving beyond their limits and finding new ways to move forward. It creates a mix of joy, witnessing athletes reaching their potential. It’s also full of anxiety because while Cheer is a real story and I have no reason to believe in them smudging details, it can’t help but reach hurdles. It’s not just the “Hell Week” that amps up practice in the week before the championship. It’s in watching everyone start to break down, their energy fading. You worry that one faulty move and half the team is out with stitches. It’s in part because we’re sympathetic people, but it’s also because Whiteley gets us to care beyond the pageantry. This is about everyone’s personal lives reaching a conjoined moment of catharsis.

And yet the obstacles happen almost immediately. Remember the concussions that I mentioned earlier? Well, that’s not holding anyone back. They may take a day or two to recover, but most eventually return to the mat. They need to see the team through. Where things go wrong are in the home stretch, when they’re near 30 days away from the end. The loss of Sherbs is the biggest. An arm injury forces her to bow out. She’s so talented that they need three people to fill in for her. It’s full of hurdles as nobody can quite perform the choreography correctly. 

WARNING: SELF HARM DISCUSSION

Beyond the broken bodies, there’s also the egos that begin to flare up as the day approaches. La’Darius is the most apparent. He’s not taking well to his new partner and you get the sense that he’s going to walk out. But of course, he won’t because it’s proven how much this means to him. In fact, the back half throws a curveball and La’Darius gets the show’s most emotional moment. There’s talk of a sexual assault that left him feeling insecure, making him feel triggered by people calling him fruity. It builds to a staggering moment on a backyard slide where he slits his wrist. In seeing the blood roll down the slide, he comes to the conclusion that him dying would mean that they won. To him, cheerleading was his way of proving everyone that he had more worth. It may be why every moment after this heartbreaking moment finds a more open, joyful La’Darius. 

The final two episodes get to the heart of why anyone would want to do cheer in the first place. In cases like La’Darius, it’s to push himself forward. Others like Jerry do it because he’s obsessed with the form. As they gather in a circle and give a hearty chant before going onto the stage, the effort has been building to this moment. You want to see them succeed, though you feel doubt as small flaws show themselves. The most prominent one comes mid-performance when one bad landing forces them to quickly train a replacement. 

This is it. It’s all over. There’s no way that Navarro is going to win now that half of their team is on a stretcher. One would think that, and it’s what makes the last-minute shuffling so much greater. Their win feels more powerful because everyone worked together for that moment. You even feel a deeper sympathy for Aldama, who lowers her guard towards the end and reveals that her hard effort was meant to help others, as she gets into the act. Everything fell into place and all the hard work paid off.

It would be one thing if Cheer was just about watching a team win. It’s the American Dream that we all chase. However, the chance to see them hanging out in their dorms is a chance to see their humanity. It’s in their ability to watch TV shows and form their own inside jokes (Jerry’s in the “bad girls club”), realizing that they’ve formed their own family. They now have people who will watch their back, and it’s so endearing to watch them do this in the most trying times. It’s about more than the competition. It’s about feeling wanted. It’s about giving value to people like Lexi who don’t know what it’s like to feel like a winner. It means something different for everyone, but it all creates this clear picture of why we risk so much for a moment. When it pays off, it’s the greatest feeling in the world.

Lexi Brumback

The series ends showing where prominent people in Cheer wound up following the moment of triumph. La’Darius and Jerry are still offering their talents to the cheer world, though the one that becomes staggering is everyone’s concern for Lexi. Nobody is sure what’s going on with her as she is last seen at a club, dancing blissfully. Is she just enjoying some time away from discipline, or has she regressed? Aldama is already shaping next year, but she spends the final moments wondering about Lexi if she’s going to be all right in the world. Everyone else seems to be, but there’s that one uncertainty. 

That’s where Cheer is left. The epilogue doesn’t give too much insight into the long term legacies of these characters, but that’s because they’re still young and capable of shaping their own future. Leaving us with Lexi feels appropriate because who knows what the future holds. We’re all in control of our destinies. Now that we have the skills to present our best selves, what are we to do with them? As much as this was about making the most of those two years, it’s about using the skills for the road ahead. It’s difficult, but so long as we have somebody cheering us along, it shouldn’t be all that scary to take that leap into the air.