Cheer Brilliantly Navigates Scandal and Fame In Its Second Season
In January 2020, on the eve of the pandemic, Netflix struck gold with the release of a new docuseries Cheer. The show followed a competition cheer team at Navarro College, a tiny community college in Corsicana, Texas, and their journey to nationals at the end of the season. What really made Cheer work, though, was the beautiful storytelling of several featured cheerleaders’ journeys to get to Navarro and the way cheer allowed an escape from the heartbreaking, scary trials of their upbringings. At Navarro College, each teammate is met with the loving support of Coach Monica Aldama, an expert cheer coach who truly cares about each cheerleader as her own child. Within weeks upon its release, Cheer became a household name, and when the show announced it would return for season two in the new year, fans were curious which angle the show would take, as so much had seemed to unfold in the 20 months since its release.
While the rest of the world experienced the Cheer pop culture explosion from the outside, the beginning of season two addresses this phenomenon from the perspective of the Navarro cheerleaders themselves. The introductory episode highlights the mass media frenzy with soundbites, talk-show cameos, and headlines and paints the picture of how the young college students juggled the PR work they were being thrown at in addition to their studies and rigorous cheering schedules. At one point, the cheerleaders are shown at practice, in uniform and ready to go, making Instagram stories for various news publications and Monica creating promotional videos with the team in the background. One can’t help but wonder why it is that the cheer team took so many opportunities – an inquiry that Monica addresses head-on, explaining that for a team of young people who have otherwise not been so financially fortunate, these opportunities and the money they produce could set them up for a lifetime of comfort. So, the team keeps bustling, grabbing up every opportunity possible.
Within this publicity, though, the team must keep pushing as usual for a win at a national cheer competition in Daytona Beach, Florida. Just as it did in season one, the show follows Navarro through weeks and weeks of intense practices in order to perfect their routine and hit it just right every single time. The show brilliantly uses different camera angles, speed, and corresponding music to show the magnitude of the stunts and tumbling passes the cheerleaders are able to pull off; with this, the viewer is able to see the routine and the complicated choreography and simultaneously feel enveloped into the point of view of the athletes. When a tumbler stumbles at the end of a pass or when a stunt comes crashing to the ground, the audience is able to feel that pain and disappointment on another emotional level because of the fantastic production work. Because of this, anyone who just enjoys watching quality TV will enjoy Cheer, not just those with any actual interest in the sport.
Cheer also confronts looming elephants in the room regarding its cast, specifically the once-adored breakout star Jerry Harris from season one. Harris was an iconic, embraced character who received undoubtedly the most PR work of the entire cast, with features on every talk show ever, a gig interviewing celebrities on the Oscars red carpet, and even a one-on-one conversation with President Joe Biden streamed worldwide. In September 2020, just six months after Cheer season one released, the FBI arrested Harris at his home in Illinois after investigating allegations of sexual misconduct and harrassment from twin fourteen-year-old male cheerleaders. The victims, Sam and Charlie, allege that Harris groomed and harassed each of them on social media for explicit photos, knowing well they were minors, and harassed them in person at cheer competitions without their consent.
In season two, specifically in episode five, “Jerry,” the show confronts the charges against Harris in real-time, as the camera crew was currently filming when the news broke. The episode features extensive interviews with victims Sam and Charlie, their mother, and their attorney Sarah Klein, each detailing the severity of Harris’ charges and how torn the twins were to report the charges given Cheer’s popularity. Simultaneously, the show gives a space for the current Navarro team to grieve the teammate they dotingly thought they knew, the same way one would grieve the death of a family member. Many were shown crying and questioning how they missed this glaring issue given the closeness they had with Jerry, and some showed raging anger at Harris for making these choices and showed no remorse. Also, as the show demonstrates how busy the cast was with presswork, when the arrest broke online, Monica was actively filming her season of Dancing with the Stars, and Cheer was able to show how the cheerleaders struggled to confront the situation without their trusted leader. Many were curious when Cheer was renewed for season two how the show would address this complicated and upsetting news, and while there is no perfectly appeasing way to confront an issue of such gravity, the show gets as close as possible.
Contrary to the first season, this season of Cheer takes a large portion of time to highlight Navarro College’s rival, Trinity Valley Community College. TVCC is widely considered to be the underdog, as they lost to Navarro in the Daytona Nationals at the end of season one. However, this season shows that the previous year's loss lit a fire under them, as the rival team began training harder than ever before and contracting better choreographers and teammates than those used prior. Just as Navarro highlighted different cheerleaders and their backgrounds, Cheer gives ample time to do the same for Trinity Valley and its coaching staff, adding a new layer of emotional appeal that leaves the viewer almost unsure of which team to root for. While the Navarro team is juggling their cheer training in addition to being a group of actual celebrities, Trinity Valley is able to focus on perfecting their craft and just improving. I won’t give away who wins in Daytona, but the paradigm of Navarro’s fame and talent juxtaposed with TVCC’s undying hard work is certainly compelling and keeps the viewer guessing until the very end.
Season one of Cheer presented itself as a fun quarantine watch with the occasional tear-jerking cameo about how cheer has saved Navarro’s star team members from upsetting homelives and upbringings. Season two does all of those things again, yet goes even further by addressing the complicated two years since its premiere, all within the same number of episodes as before. While the entire world was able to gawk over Cheer from the outside, now the show confronts the viewer with how the worldwide obsession affected the college-aged team itself. With this new angle plus new teammates, harder routines, ever-looming challenges due to COVID, and real-life scandal, Cheer season two is a much-watch for all, cheerleader or not.
By Annie Levy