Crew Girl impresses with rowing drama but stumbles on love triangle
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Fresh review coverage of Netflix's new teen drama "Crew Girl" reinforces earlier critical consensus that the show is visually polished but formulaic, while adding sharper detail on where it succeeds and fails. The series follows elite teenage rower Teagan, who joins her new school's boys' varsity crew as coxswain after family upheaval forces a move, and critics say its central strength lies in treating competitive rowing not as background colour but as the genuine emotional core of the show, in contrast to many similar YA dramas.
The latest review singles out an underwhelming love triangle between Teagan and two male leads, Josh and Cam, calling the chemistry unconvincing and driven more by genre convention than character motivation. It praises smaller, sport-rooted subplots—such as teammates bonding over shared vulnerabilities—as the show's more affecting moments, but criticises the underdeveloped world beyond the rowing team, including thin family and school-politics storylines, as the series' chief weakness.
- New review confirms "Crew Girl" is polished but formulaic YA drama
- Critics praise its focus on rowing but knock its weak love triangle
- Underdeveloped characters and world-building beyond crew are key flaws
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Rowing hasn't traditionally had much of a spotlight in teen television, but Netflix's new drama "Crew Girl" puts the sport centre stage. It follows Teagan, a talented young rower who, after a family upheaval forces her to change schools, ends up as coxswain—the person who steers and directs the boat—for the boys' varsity crew team. The coxswain role is unusual for a female lead in this kind of story, which is part of why critics have taken notice.
The show sits within the well-established genre of glossy American teen dramas, which typically pair a sporting or school setting with romantic subplots. Reviewers have generally agreed that "Crew Girl" looks polished and handles its rowing scenes with more depth than is usual for the genre, while following a fairly predictable structure elsewhere, including a romantic triangle involving Teagan and two other characters, Josh and Cam.
The wider conversation around the series concerns how well it balances its sporting drama against the more conventional teen-romance elements expected of the format, and whether its supporting storylines, such as family life and school politics, are developed enough to match its central strength.
Full account
Netflix has added to its run of young-adult sports dramas with Crew Girl, created by Vivian Lin (with one review also crediting Morwyn Brebner), which centres on 16-year-old Teagan Tao (Miku Martineau), a talented single sculler. Her comfortable life unravels within the opening minutes when her father David (Byron Lawson), a hotelier who has been stealing from clients and friends, flees just as the FBI arrive to arrest him, moments after Teagan wins a race in front of her parents, including mother Ella (Jessica Paré). With the family's wealth gone, Teagan and Ella are forced to leave their affluent life behind and relocate to Ella's hometown of Eagle's Cove, described by one review simply as somewhere on the Atlantic coast and by another more specifically as a fictional town in Massachusetts.
At her new school, Easton Prep, Teagan discovers there is no girls' rowing programme, so her only route back onto the water is to talk her way onto the boys' varsity eight as coxswain, the non-rowing team member responsible for steering, calling race strategy and keeping the crew motivated. The boys are initially unwelcoming, and much of the series follows Teagan winning their respect while pushing the school to eventually support a girls' team. The crew and wider cast include Josh Regis (Sam Braun) and his cousin Ryder (Connor Paton), scholarship rower Cam Dillinger (Kyle Clark), coach Matt Hayden (Thomas Cadrot), new friend Juliet Morny (Olga Petsa), and siblings Britney and Bronson 'Baloo' Garner (Sage Linder and Jude Wilson) — a fuller supporting line-up than some reviews bother to detail.
Across the reviews, the rowing itself is singled out as the show's strongest asset: sweeping drone shots of lakes, synchronised action on the water and stylised training-montage sequences are repeatedly praised, with one critic suggesting the sport is treated not as background colour but as the true centre of the story. There is less enthusiasm for the romantic plotting. The love triangle between Teagan, Josh and Cam is widely described as underwritten, with the chemistry and character motivations feeling unconvincing or formulaic, and Braun's performance as Josh singled out as particularly flat, while Cam is generally seen as the more compelling of the two suitors.
The reviews diverge most in overall tone and emphasis. One take is notably harsher, criticising implausible plotting, stilted dialogue and repetitive themes as enough to 'sink' the series, while still crediting the casting of Martineau as a meaningful piece of representation and praising the warmth of the mother-daughter relationship between Teagan and Ella. Another lands on a more middling verdict, calling the show 'good enough' without being 'elite' — enjoyable in places but held back by thin characterisation. A third review takes a more irreverent, pop-culture angle, likening Crew Girl to recent hockey-themed dramas, dwelling on its knowing appeal to fans drawn to shirtless training scenes and homoerotic subtext, and concluding that the sports drama carries a noticeably cheesier and rougher romantic storyline.
Where outlets differ
Setting detail: one review leaves Eagle's Cove vaguely placed 'somewhere on the Atlantic coast', while another pins it down as a fictional town in Massachusetts.
Overall verdict: one review is the most negative, saying weak realism, dialogue and repetitive themes 'sink' the show; another calls it merely 'good enough'; a third is more affectionately playful, framing its flaws as part of the fun.
Emphasis: one review foregrounds representation (casting a Japanese Canadian lead) and the mother-daughter relationship as highlights; another foregrounds the sport itself as the narrative's true focus and questions how coxing serves Teagan's stated goal of a solo rowing scholarship; the third emphasises the show's knowing, tongue-in-cheek appeal to fans of shirtless athletes and comparisons to hockey dramas like Heated Rivalry and Off Campus.
Supporting cast detail: one review names a much fuller roster (Ryder Regis, Britney and Bronson Garner, Juliet Morny, Coach Hayden) than the others, which focus mainly on Teagan, Josh and Cam.
Creator credit: one review attributes the show solely to Vivian Lin, while another credits both Lin and Morwyn Brebner.
Coverage
- Collider — Netflix’s ‘Crew Girl’ Isn’t the ‘Summer I Turned Pretty’ Replacement You’re Looking For | Review
- Variety — Netflix’s YA Rowing Drama ‘Crew Girl’ Capsizes and Sinks: TV Review
- The Hollywood Reporter — ‘Crew Girl’ Review: Netflix’s Latest YA Sports Drama Checks All the Expected Boxes, but Not Much More