[Warning: General spoilers ahead.]
If you were to believe the hype, YA TV is suddenly back in favor. If you’ve been paying attention and you consume a fair amount of television programming, you know that it never went away, you just had to work harder to find it. If YA is your thing, then yep, you’ve had quite the bounty for the last little stretch. Good on you. It’s about to get even better.
A grab bag of some of my favorite Canadians who cut their TV writing teeth on shows as myriad as my beloved Killjoys, Coroner, SkyMed, Cardinal, Jann, and Small Achievable Goals, and more are enjoying some well-deserved attention right now ahead of the worldwide drop of Crew Girl, which enters the chat this Thursday on Netflix. It’s also a wholly new IP and not based on a book series. I love that.
Boasting a predominately homegrown Canadian creative team and cast, starting with series creators Vivian Lin (who showruns) and Morwyn Brebner (who also created and showruns USA/Crave series Anna Pigeon) and filmed on location on Vancouver Island, yet, funnily enough, set in Massachusetts, the eight-episode first season is an easy, engaging, very fun watch. So much so that when I got to the end of eight and though I had two left and realized I didn’t, I actually said out loud, “Aw, man.”
And I say “easy watch” with much affection and appreciation, because no matter what age you are, unless you were hatched into the world fully grown, your adolescent experience shaped you in some way, be it, “Hell no, do not want,” or “Hell yeah, that was a time.” Whichever way it went for you, you bear its scars, and YA is a perennially familiar genre.
Crew Girl isn’t interested in inflicting any additional trauma or damage on you. It’s wonderfully devoid of abject cruelty. Refreshing, right? That’s not to say it’s absent of mean girls or jerk dads or pranks or elitism about financial aid, and general sexism about a young woman successfully staking a claim where women haven’t historically been welcome.
But it does all of that with a much lighter hand. I think we can use more of that. And it focuses a fair amount on the actual rowing, which is a great equalizer when the various personalities clash off the water and have to leave that behind to be successful on it.
Our entry point into the series is Teagan Tao (Bet‘s Miku Martineau), a California high school rowing phenom on her way to Stanford, she hopes, when a boneheaded financial gamble by her hotelier dad strips her and her mom Ella, (Jessica Paré) of their lifestyle, their home, and their sense of identity.
The head east to Massachusetts to Ella’s late parents’ home to start over. Believing Teagan’s education fund to be safe, Ella enrolls her at Eaton Prep, a tony private school chock full of more haves than have nots (and filmed in a fun wink nod at Victoria’s Hatley Castle, which has been used for Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters and Luthor Mansion). What Ella didn’t investigate and Teagan is horrified to learn is that while the school is recently coed, the rowing team is not.
Unable to help herself from gravitating toward the docks to watch the boats, she observes the boys’ team during practice and interjects her opinion on why they can’t get their speed where they want it. The coach recognizes that she knows what she’s talking about and before the end of her first week, she finds herself their shiny new coxswain. So, she’s back in a boat but not quite how she hoped.
This begets a little bit of a Snow White and the Seven (make it Eight) Dwarfs scenario where she becomes confidant, den mother, butt kicker, defender, champion, and for two of the guys on the team—working-class Cam (Kyle Clark), who she meets cute outside of school, and entitled and knows it but maybe doesn’t want to be anymore, Josh (The Way Home‘s Samuel Braun)—a potential romantic partner.
So, yes, there’s some love geometry here, and y’all know how I am about that, but see also above about “devoid of abject cruelty.” There’s no two-timing, just a lack of good timing that makes both Cam and Josh viable options for Teagan, provided all three can get out of their own way about their individual self-sabotage and self-doubt.
Teagan is generally ahead of the game on that front because she’s no longer beholden to any sense of identity tied to a title, money, or legacy because it’s already been stripped away by the time she lands at Easton. Her classmates and rowers are still working out who they are distinct from the privilege or lack thereof that have defined them up to now, but that they also technically do not own and are not responsible for.
The rest of the lads are an assortment of the cocky, Regis cousin Ryder (Connor Paton), trickster Damon (Vincent Muller), the flamboyant Perry (Connor Wong), the easygoing showboat Baloo (Jude Wilson), the soft-hearted Crab Catcher (Jarrett Carlington), and the thinker, Noah (Riley Davis). The show spends enough time with all of them that they’re distinct from one another, which is a really nice touch.
The rest of the supporting cast features an assortment of Hallmarkies, including Thomas Cadrot as team coach Matt, who had a long ago friendship with Ella; Hannah Swensen‘s Tess Atkins as assistant coach Lana; Sara Canning as crew mom Imogen, who’s initial attempts to befriend Ella are a little rocky; Olga Petsa as Juliet, Teagan’s one true friend who’s proud of her uniqueness in a sea of blazers and tweed but is also sorting through her own parental issues; Sage Linder and Alaska Leigh as Britney and Amber, the aforementioned mean girls and girlfriends of two of the rowers; Liza Huget as Principal Cabrera; Lucia Walters as the senator mom of two of Teagan’s classmates; and last but not least, Niall Matter as Josh’s dad, Richard, a rigid legacy and second-generation Regis with his own daddy issues who has weighed his son down with those same expectations.
Sidebar: I have to give a shout out to Paré in the role as a prep school mom because it kept playing with my head that one of the first things I saw her in 25 years ago was the Canadian drama Lost and Delirious. She played a wealthy prep school student having a secret love affair with her roommate, played by Piper Perabo. A then brand-new Emily VanCamp was her younger sister and Mischa Barton was one of their classmates. It’s a heartbreaking coming of age drama that has stuck with me since I first saw it. While it’s tonally very, very different from Crew Girl, it’s worth a watch if you can find it.
Lin and Brebner wrote the first episode and Lin wrote a couple more, including the season finale. Additional writers include fellow Killjoys alumn and The Lake creator Julian Doucet, Jennica Harper (Jann), and Jason Ip (Small Achievable Goals). The Hallmarkies ties also extend to the directors, which include Continuum, Warrior Nun, and Bet creator Simon Barry, Norman Buckley (Sweet Magnolias and The Chicken Sisters), Amanda Tapping (pick something), Jacquie Gould (The Chicken Sisters and Bet), and Alysse Leite-Rogers (When Calls the Heart and Hope Valley: 1874). The series is also gorgeous to watch, showing off all the beauty in an around Vancouver Island.
Crew Girl lands on Netflix around the world at 3:01 am ET Thursday, September 10th. Clear your weekends, YA peeps! This is a fun one. Here are a few sneak peeks.
One note for the family viewers or folks who might watch with their kids–while there is plenty of spandex and a range of skin and gun shows on display among all the athletes, the series is firmly PG (also not a complaint in the slightest), so you won’t need to injure yourself getting to a remote.
Photos and videos courtesy of Netflix.
