Cheer, a sports documentary series, dives into the world of competitive college cheerleading. The show is compelling, often surpassing its counterpart, Last Chance U, which Cheer director-producer Greg Whiteley also created.
The two-season Netflix series is eponymously titled for an athletic performance that combines dance with a variety of gravity-defying, dangerous acrobatic maneuvers.
Monica Aldama (graphic courtesy Netflix and YouTube)
Cheer Season 1 rocks, but the show really hums in Season 2 when it returns to Corsicana, Texas, to chronicle perennial junior college championship contender Navarro College and its head coach, Monica Aldama, the Nick Saban of college cheerleading. Aldama has won 14 national championships – but she remains unsatisfied.
In addition to Aldama, a few first-season favorites are back, including the volatile La’Darius Marshall, who sees himself as a coach on the floor, and YouTube superstar Gabi Butler.
Jerry Harris is featured as well – at least until his much-publicized arrest for child pornography. In one interview, La’Darius essentially says that he’s ready to kick Jerry’s ass. Harris’s arrest casts a dark shadow over this season, and Whitley doesn’t shy away.
Cheer is about imperfect individuals lifting each other up, literally. Whiteley delivers their stories masterfully, and as he does with Last Chance U, Whiteley features subjects with complicated pasts, often from fractured homes. Competitive Cheer is their salvation. It provides structure, discipline, and, yes, family.
Cheer Season 2 also focuses on Navarro’s main challenger, Trinity Valley Community College, just down the road in Athens, Texas. Vontae Johnson, Trinity’s head coach, is, ah, less restrained than Aldama. A former football player, Johnson would fit right in with the Last Chance U hard asses.
While Last Chance U’s cast is almost entirely male, Cheer is coed. His assistant, Khris Franklin, Trinity’s former head coach, is more low-key and a bit somber. An odd couple, their brotherhood is a good watch.
Nicole Ostis (photo courtesy X)
Just as we’re ready for these two rivals to throw it down at the nationals in Daytona Beach, all hell breaks loose. COVID-19. Daytona is cancelled. Harris gets arrested. Amidst all this, Nicole Ostis’s weakness is revealed, kind of, Dancing with the Stars, which she’s a huge fan of. When she agrees to participate in the show, she leaves Navarro for a substantial period, and La’Darius goes full-tilt Antonio Brown, exiting the Navarro program loudly.
Meanwhile, Trinity can smell blood, and they’ve brought in studs, including Navarro’s former choreographer and three formidable male tumblers affectionately known as The Wienies. The Wienies eat, sleep, and tumble – and, well, that’s it. Perhaps the best Wienie is DeVonte Joseph, who is undersized but is built like a Marvel superhero.
Initially, DeVonte wanted to be a basketball player, but his size pushed him into tumbling. DeVonte’s only weakness appears to be that he performs with a pronounced scowl. Johnson and Franklin want him to smile so that he can win over judges, but DeVonte feels that that’s “gay” (his words). Will DeVonte smile in Daytona?
There is no shortage of conflicts and twists and turns in Cheer Season 2, and it’s compelling right until the climactic final episode in Daytona, which is both triumphant and heartbreaking.
Expect to be craving more Cheer.
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Jon Hart is the author of Unfortunately, I was available.
