It’s the summer that YA television took over our TV screens. And in the race to win over fans, one thing has become clear: not every teen drama is created equal.
Netflix’s new teen drama, Crew Girl, seeks to make a splash as one of the top YA releases of 2026, following hits like Off Campus, Sterling Point, and the final season of Outer Banks.
But Crew Girl seems afraid to rock its metaphorical boat. By sticking to a generic, formulaic plot, it often reads as clichéd — and its East Coast style can’t make up for what it lacks in substance.
Crew Girl follows protagonist Teagan Tao (Miku Martineau), a young star rower with a promising high school career ahead of her.
But after her father’s misdeeds come to light, she must relocate to her mother Ella’s (Jessica Paré) East Coast hometown of Eagle Cove.
Teagan starts at the elite Easton Prep, whose hallowed halls are home to the rich children of business tycoons and politicians — as well as a few students on financial aid — à la Gossip Girl‘s Constance Billiard and Maxton Hall.
Some watered-down class warfare between the haves and the have-nots ensues.
Surprisingly and unfortunately, the show never delves into Teagan’s psychological relationship with her change in financial status, relying on local student Cam (Kyle Clark) to give us insight into the students’ abuse of privilege.
As the pretty, threatening new girl, Teagan quickly makes enemies of the two popular mean girls before the “quirky” friend saves her and points out the school’s cliques. (Yes, you have seen this film before).
Even though rowing is the only sport the Easton faculty cares about, the school lacks a girls’ rowing team.
But after impressing the (smoking hot) coach with her rowing knowledge and prowess, Teagan is recruited as the unexpected new coxswain for the men’s rowing team.
Teagan must quickly learn the ropes of this new role and take on the challenging task of making eight teenage boys swear their undying loyalty to her.
And boy, do they! Of course, two of them also fall in love with her in the process.
All teen dramas are built upon tried-and-true tropes, but the real challenge for any YA show is to take these conventions and find a way to put a new, compelling spin on them.
Such a show can, and should, use some well-worn plot structures. However, these tropes should serve to steer a story that offers a fresh perspective and speaks to an emotionally resonant truth.
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But when you rely on tropes to support the entire structure of your plot, you risk rehashing the same story beats that all the genre’s predecessors have done. And chances are, another show has done it better.
Crew Girl takes almost every teen drama cliché and chucks them at the script, hoping they’ll stick enough to make a story.
You have the love triangle between the rich, spoiled guy with daddy issues, and the nice, poor kid who has a complex about his financial situation.
You have an evil, rich dad who controls the image and interests of his son, who is crushed under the weight of his familial expectations.
Inexplicably, Crew Girl also has a grandparent who bases his business decisions on his two grandsons’ athletic performance.
You have men with eight-packs masquerading as teenagers.
(Um, you mean to tell me this man is seventeen?)
You have a side plot that offers the single parent their own romantic prospect, who is somewhat inappropriately wrapped up in the lead’s life.
You have one-dimensional, run-of-the-mill mean girls outing our protagonist’s shameful secret to the entire student body.
You have an archetype for every supporting character: the comic relief, the nerd, the inspirational coach we all wish we had.
Every male character also needs to be obsessed with our female lead. (Admittedly, with one glance at Miku Martineau’s gorgeous face and big brown eyes, I’d be a goner, too).
You can argue these are essential ingredients for the young adult genre.
But with nothing new to say on any of these themes and a plot fully committed to an incredibly generic formula, the show conforms to a well-worn mold it’s too afraid to break.
Like many teen dramas, Crew Girl builds much of its plot around a central love triangle, but it fails to inspire any investment in its outcome.
Josh (Samuel Braun) is our blonde rich kid who is petty and unforgivably rude to everyone.
But don’t worry, it’s just because his dad sucks and he has a secret heart condition (which just so happens to be the exact same one as One Tree Hill‘s Lucas Scott) that somehow, someway, his parents don’t know about.
The writers clearly hope pity for this character will distract us from the fact that he lacks any personality.
Unfortunately, nothing about this character, and his half-baked enemies-to-lovers dynamic with Teagan, is interesting enough to stand on its own.
Cam is… fine. He’s a little boring, lacks some basic communication skills, and — like Lucas Scott — works at his family’s auto repair shop.
He’s certainly cute, but he lacks the charisma and je ne sais quoi a leading man needs to make you overlook his flaws.
The result is a rushed romantic arc with lackluster twists — one that the romance between the two adult characters, Teagan’s mother Ella and the coach Matt, fails to compensate for.
It’s hard not to give in to the temptation of comparing a work of genre television to its counterparts, and I pity the Crew Girl creators for having to follow so closely behind the release of Prime Video’s Sterling Point.
Sterling Point was a breakthrough release for the contemporary teen drama genre. It crafted a story that was equal parts warm and nostalgic, yet unique and creative.
It carved out its own mold, proving that a teen drama can deliver a script grounded in authentic, realistic dialogue.
It was built on collaboration between the creators, directors, and actors, with its young actors given creative freedom to shape their nuanced, complex characters.
It’s a tough act to follow.
The Crew Girl script pales in comparison; its dialogue is often stilted and derivative, its emotional highs failing to feel resonant or authentic.
When successfully executed, teen dramas can abandon realism and relish the genre’s inherent soapiness. However, you need clever, quick-witted humor to balance saccharine, overwrought moments.
You need your Pacey Witters, Seth Cohens, and Blair Waldorfs pulling their weight.
But without a distinct voice, you’re left with a bland sketch of a story, one that only the most talented of actors would be able to salvage.
There’s only so much a young actor can do with such a flimsy script, and the acting chops of the cast weren’t quite strong enough to smooth out the story’s bumps.
Crew Girl leans heavily into its portrayal of crew as a team sport, a sport yet to be highlighted on television, as its primary differentiator.
You can also see how hard the cast worked to pull off the sheer volume of physically demanding scenes. It’s an impressive feat that deserves to be recognized.
I applaud the creators for pursuing more diversity in a sports drama, and for centering the narrative on a strong female athlete.
The season shines when it focuses on Teagan’s psychological journey as she strives to prove herself to a team of men and wrestles with balancing her team and individual goals. Even so, it just scratches the surface of its potential.
Unfortunately, Crew Girl over-indexes on its exploration of crew to deliver a dose of necessary singularity, which fails to make up for the rest of its rehashed plot.
Netflix has some catching up to do if they want to corner the YA market that Prime Video has captured and nurtured.
If they hope to do so with Crew Girl Season 2, they may have to go back to the drawing board.
Give the cast room to improvise and ground their roles in reality. Shake up the romantic prospects by finding a pair with real chemistry. Find an antagonist — any antagonist — that isn’t boring Britney. (Yawn).
Help us understand why Ella is so positive, and show some yearning between her and Hot Coach. And bring back Aunt Jenna.
And be willing to take a risk — any risk, really, like Teagan does when joining the team — to take a stand and say something new. About women’s sports, about adversity, about leadership; I want to see something that isn’t regurgitated.
Maybe that will rescue the show from sinking to its watery depths.
So teen drama Fanatics, what did you think of Crew Girl? Will you watch it? Let us know all your thoughts in the comments!
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