Regardless of quality, I am a simple person: I watch every single one.
So when Netflix announced Crew Girl, my interest was immediately piqued. A high-stakes rowing drama? An Asian female protagonist? A stacked cast of absurdly attractive men, high-tension sports politics and an angst-ridden love triangle? Yes, please.
This show was cooked up in a lab specifically for me.
And after binging all eight episodes in one sit-down, I have thoughts. The burning question: Did I have fun? Absolutely. Does the show have its fair share of glaring issues? Also yes.
At its core, Crew Girl feels like a crossbreed: it takes the relentless athletic intensity and team dynamics of Off Campus and collides them headfirst with the melodramatic love-triangle energy of The Summer I Turned Pretty .
The series centres on Teagan Tao, played by Miku Martineau, who finds herself thrown into an elite world of extreme wealth, legacy pressure, and ruthless athletic competition. To reclaim her own shattered rowing dreams, Teagan has to convince a fractured, spandex-clad crew to trust her leadership — and each other — while simultaneously managing her family’s spiralling troubles at home.
Naturally, she finds herself hopelessly caught between two boys in her boat. On one side, you have Josh Regis, played by Sam Braun, the prep school’s golden-boy royalty whose family practically owns the boathouse.
On the other side sits Cam Dillinger, played by Kyle Clark, the quiet, fiercely determined local rower who refuses to be looked down on by the legacy kids.
And as expected of any teen rom-com, Teagan’s romantic trajectory was never going to be smooth sailing.
But let’s address the elephant in the boathouse: the writing.
Crew Girl suffers from a heavy reliance on tired tropes. We get the classic, paper-thin mean girl antagonist, an aggressive dose of insta-love where the show desperately tries to manufacture deep chemical bonds within thirty seconds of characters making eye contact and dialogue pulled directly from the teen-romance playbook.
I embrace cringe — it’s practically a requirement for the genre — but even the most forgiving viewers might find themselves wincing at a few of the more forced clichés.
If you’re coming strictly for a mind-bending, heart-wrenching romance, you might come up a little light. For me, the central love triangle lacked genuine tension because one option was consistently, delightfully insufferable, making the end-game pairing feel like a foregone conclusion. I’ll let you make your mind up about that on yourselves, but there is truly only one correct answer.
Where the show actually wins, however, is on the water. The sports drama is electric. The rowing sequences are shot so well that they had me leaning toward my screen during the final race sequence.
The underlying team dynamics also carry the narrative through its rockier script moments. There is a specific magic to a sports rom-com when it hits its stride, and Crew Girl hits top speed whenever the team is in the water.
Netflix pulled together a stacked ensemble of familiar YA and drama faces to fill out the cast. Alongside Martineau’s Teagan, the Tao family anchor includes Jessica Paré as Ella. Thomas Cadrot plays Coach Matt Hayden, while Connor Paton is Ryder Regis and Niall Matter portrays the family patriarch, Richard Regis.
Rounding out the rowers and ensemble are Jude Wilson as Bronson “Baloo” Garner, Vincent Muller as Damon Quaid, Riley Davis as Noah Bainbridge, Connor Wong as Perry Chou, and Jarrett Carlington as Chris “Crab Catcher” Padmore.
It’s a massive, chaotic squad, but their natural banter keeps the boathouse scenes buzzing.
If you can turn off your critical brain, ignore a few wildly cheesy lines and sit back for the athletic drama, Crew Girl delivers exactly the kind of glossy, guilty-pleasure escapism the genre was made for.
It won’t redefine television, but it’ll certainly keep you entertained for an afternoon. And it might just make a rowing fan out of you.
Crew Girl is now streaming on Netflix.
Source: Compiled from various sources.
