Parents' Guide to Crew Girl

With a beautiful cast, a teen love triangle, and a million drone shots of rowers cutting through the waters of a sparkling lake, this YA drama has appeal that sets it apart from competitors. Miku Martineau makes a charming center point for Crew Girl's love triangle; she's ambitious, talented, tough, and, when the chips are down, crumples believably into a sad puddle. In her chosen sport, she's also relatably driven, expressing a passion for rowing that makes audiences want to root for her. The most important part of rowing, she says in Crew Girl's first episode, is the "catch," where the oar's blade enters the water: "A bad catch will kill your run; a good catch will send you soaring." Hey! That's a metaphor!

As a newbie both to Eagle's Cove and ritzy private Easton Prep, Teagan instantly earns the enmity of both student body president Britney (Sage Linder) and BMOC/rowing legacy/Britney's boyfriend Josh (Samuel Braun); she also makes pals of Easton classmates Juliet (Olga Petsa) and rower Cam (Kyle Clark). But the Easton rowing team is in trouble and needs to turn around a serious losing streak; the rowing coaches hope putting Teagan in as coxswain (basically the boss of the boat) will shake things up. Now our girl has to get eight hostile male teammates on her side, overcome her classmates' frosty reception when they find out about her dad, and choose between two buff, frequently shirtless teammates both vying for her attention. Oh, and help her mom find a way to pay for Easton now that her dad took all the money. Firmly in the heroine's role, Teagan's sure to wind up on top, but this light, fresh drama has enough going for it that viewers will want to stick around to find out how she does it.