Nothing will make you realize that it's been a million years since the beginning of the COVID pandemic more than watching Netflix's Cheer Season 2. The entire premise of the series is built around the grand finale of the National Collegiate Cheer and Dance championship in Daytona, Florida in the spring, and Episode 1 opens up with an April 2021 title card. But then it backtracks, making it hard to figure out when this is all taking place.
It's also confusing because for the first couple of episodes, Jerry Harris is front and center, though he was arrested in December 2020 and has been incarcerated ever since. Harris has seven charges against him, including four counts of sexual exploitation of children, one count of receiving and attempting to receive child pornography, among others, per the New York Times, so the fact that the series opens up with him front and center can be a little confusing. This is why is takes four whole episodes to get up to that point.
According to Variety, Cheer Season 2 began filming while the first season was taking off and the whole Navarro team was becoming a national sensation in January 2020. That's why you see a lot of them still doing interviews and Cameos and making the rounds in the press. By Episode 3 and 4, COVID hit Texas and the 2020 Daytona championship was canceled along with everything else and the kids either stayed on campus and talked to their rabbits (hello, Jada Wooten) or went back to their family homes to finish out the school year remotely. Production on the show also largely shut down, only picking up for real again in September, to capture Monica Aldama leaving for Dancing With The Stars, Harris' arrest in December, and then throughout the winter, all the way up to the 2021 Daytona competition in early April.
It's a long time. And it shows throughout the season, with the later episodes feeling like a whole different show entirely than the earlier ones. Not only does that mean Season 2 has more episodes — ten as opposed to the six-episode debut season — but everything is different for the Navarro crew, much like everything is different for everyone in a COVID world. It caused some kids to rethink their cheer career and not return, others to work even harder for a Daytona win since they didn't get to even try in 2020, and it breaks up some very special relationships from season 1 that some fans will be sad to watch breakdown. Still, Cheer Season 2 might be the most compelling of all the COVID programming since the world essentially shut down in March 2020, if only because watching the Navarro and Trinity Valley teams deal with trying to train and compete (and socialize like normal college kids) during a pandemic might make you feel better about your own isolation. It stunk for everyone.
Images: Netflix