Will There Be a Season 2 of Netflix’s ‘Cheer’ Docuseries?
The sky’s the limit on documentary subjects, and the best ones being made today often take on neglected people, subjects, or cases every citizen has a right to know. On Netflix, documentaries are becoming a major cottage industry with most being worth one’s time.
While some health documentaries have received criticism lately, ones about sports are always a win.
One called Cheer takes on the world of cheerleaders, a career often taken for granted. This isn’t a one-shot documentary either and rather a docuseries.
This one follows a cheerleading training program at a community college in Corsicana, Texas. Known as Navarro, this school has many inspiring stories chronicled by director Greg Whiteley.
Thanks to rave reviews, many fans are wondering if a Season 2 will eventually be made.
What makes ‘Cheer’ different from the usual docuseries?
As some reviewers say, cheerleading as a career and subject has been run through the wringer for years. Many people get the wrong idea about cheerleading as being an empty practice and merely women competing based on how they look and their cheeriness level.
Other times, cheerleaders have been at the center of more than a few true crime stories.
Cheer dips into the positive side of the sport — yes, it is a sport — to show how it helps young women and in providing the necessary rallies to win college football games. Debuting on January 8, the series is only six episodes long. Nevertheless, what’s there gives a new view of how serious sports competition is at the college level.
Here, the art of cheerleading is treated like a professional sport since the team at Navarro College has to work toward winning a national title. Along the journey, viewers get a chance to meet the individual cheerleaders who work hard to make a name for themselves. Personal sacrifices are more than a little painful, including being as risky as being an Olympic athlete.
Who are some of the most compelling people in the series?
Having a chance to see the trajectories of real people is always worth watching, even if documentaries often leave things hanging on what comes next.
In Cheer, one of the more significant people profiled includes Monica Aldama, the training coach at Navarro College. She’s been renowned for being one of the greatest cheerleader trainers in America, making Navarro one of the standouts in the national competition.
With 24 years in the industry, Aldama is a compelling portrait of a teacher devoted to making her students the best they can be. That would be enough of a great documentary, but the individual profiles of the cheerleaders themselves are what also makes this stand-alone.
The girls here all come to life rather than just becoming caricatured rally criers. They all have different backgrounds, economic circumstances, and goals.
‘Cheer’ focuses on sacrifices
As viewers might guess, injuries are a fact of life in the field of cheerleading. These women go through all of the physical rigors of the process, which includes every injury you can name.
Training time is also exhausting, proving cheerleading involves months of tortuous training for a routine lasting merely a few minutes. In that regard, it’s every bit as demanding as figure skating or gymnastics.
What’s most interesting is the allowance of gay men into the cheerleading school, something that helps give them positive experiences in an accepting environment.
Gabi Butler, however, is more or less the central cheerleader focus who’s gone on to make cheerleading a major part of her superstar career.
Will Netflix debut ‘Cheer’ Season 2?
At the moment, there isn’t any word about the second season of Cheer. Its first season is still underway at the time of this writing, though the popularity of it will likely mean a renewal.
Since the docuseries is much like Greg Whiteley’s Last Chance U, many analysts predict Cheer will be renewed. Netflix usually waits a couple of months after a series debuts to make decisions, so prepare for word by spring.
In the meantime, it’s refreshing to see a Netflix docuseries with an inspiring theme in a time when many documentaries/docuseries exploit the format to give falsified information.
