Hellcats

Hellcats, the new cheerleader drama on the CW is not for me, but I will grant it this: it is less not-for-me than I would have expected. I expected cheer Glee, which would seem the obvious reason why a show like this is on the schedule. What I got instead is perhaps more One Tree Hill, more of an angsty tone than the cartoony tone that makes Glee tough for me to view.

Not that the drama is serious. The story builds around a  prelaw student who has lost scholarship and has to try out for the cheerleading squad to get a new scholarship, despite her disdain for the acitivity. Does this curvaceous outsider rebel make it on the squad? Well, I’ll let you watch and figure that out.

The show does, of course, have cheerleading sequences, and they make me tire just watching them. I cannot envy the actors who have to go through them, take after take, as part of an otherwise grueling shooting day.

Potential romances, rivalries, and parent issues are all set up. I expect that this will end up a fairly by-the-numbers drama aimed at teen girls and those who aspire to be them. But the dialog, while unrealistic, does have some real bounce at times, the good-looking people re good looking (and for those of you who watched Buffy, these include D.B. Woodside, the last principal of Sunnydale High, back as a man of medicine here.)

But speaking of Buffy: hey, CW, you now have a series about vampires and a series about cheerleaders. Wouldn’t it be better to have one series, where one kills the other? Doesn’t matter which one. Either would work.