Netflix’s YA Rowing Drama ‘Crew Girl’ Capsizes and Sinks: TV Review

Created by Vivian Lin, Netflix’s latest YA series “Crew Girl” brings audiences into the competitive world of rowing. The show follows 16-year-old Teagan Tao (Miku Martineau), a single sculler whose entire life is derailed after her father, David (Byron Lawson), a wealthy hotelier, is caught stealing money from his clients. When David flees before the FBI can arrest him, Teagan and her mother, Ella (Jessica Paré), are blindsided, and are forced to leave their affluent Los Angeles community for Ella’s hometown, Eagle’s Cove, a fictional town in Massachusetts. A series about fresh starts, burgeoning romances and becoming a part of a team, “Crew Girl” is pretty to look at, but its lack of realism, choppy dialogue and monotonous themes sink the show.

“Crew Girl” begins with a celebratory moment. With her parents in the audience, Teagan begins her race in the single sculler. Unfortunately, just before she wins, David steps away, leaving a short apology text in his wake just as the FBI swarms the stands. Six months later, having no resources aside from Teagan’s education fund, the mother/daughter pack up their lives and drive East to settle into Ella’s worn childhood home. Though Teagan isn’t thrilled about the transition, she puts her best foot forward at Easton Prep, quickly befriending border Juliet Morny (Olga Petsa) and getting in the crosshairs of Britney Garner (Sage Linder), the school’s resident Regina George.

But Teagan’s hopes for a fresh start are dashed when she hears from Coach Matt Hayden (Thomas Cadrot) that Easton Prep has a crew team only for boys. Determined, Teagan bulldozes her way through the boathouse, eventually becoming the team’s coxswain, the only non-rowing member who is tasked with steering, managing the race plan and motivating the rest of the team. To say Teagan has her work cut out for her is an understatement. The eight-man crew consists of rival cousins Josh (Sam Braun) and Ryder Regis (Connor Paton), scholarship student Cam Dillinger (Kyle Clark) and Britney’s twin brother, Bronson “Baloo” Garner (Jude Wilson), among others. The guys initially act like redpill-coded frat bros, and Teagan has to win the boys over so they can start winning races and get the school administration to consider a girls’ team.

Across eight episodes, “Crew Girl” does have some redeeming qualities. Casting Martineau (who also stars in Netflix’s “Bet”), a Japanese Canadian, as the lead is an important marker of representation in a genre that rarely puts Black people and people of color in the driver’s seat. Moreover, though most of the adults showcased here are terrible parents who parentify their kids and focus on their own interests, Ella and Teagan’s mother-daughter bond is lovely. It’s built on safety and an appropriate amount of transparency. Moreover, the camaraderie and chemistry between Teagan and her crewmates, especially her respective sparks with both Cam and Josh, give the series some much-needed intrigue. Still, these highlights don’t save “Crew Girl” from falling into the same corny, cookie-cutter narratives we’ve seen countless times.

The issues plaguing “Crew Girl” are the same problems that affect other recent YA dramas like Netflix’s “My Life With the Walter Boys” or Prime Video’s “The Runarounds”; the story has no real heart, soul or texture. While the show has all the themes expected in series focused on teenagers and young adults, worn-down tropes hinder “Crew Girl,” leaving its cast to sleepwalk through unrealistic, contrived plot points.

As Gen Z and Gen Alpha come of age, they face many of the same things the generations before them had to navigate. Yet, they are the first to be coming into their own at this specific point in history. By highlighting a posh prep school and an all-boys rowing team divided between the haves and have-nots, “Crew Girl” isn’t speaking to a generation dealing with a hyper-digital world, post-pandemic anxiety and so much more.

Until creators and writers capture the specificity of this time, audiences will be doomed to watch regurgitated stories that don’t highlight the uniqueness of Gen Z and how they are engaging with the world. Millennials and Gen X can look back in the zeitgeist of television and see their adolescence immortalized; young people today deserve the same reverence.

“Crew Girl” is now streaming on Netflix.