All American Series Review

All American (2018-)

Season 1 - 16 episodes (2018-2019)

Season 2 - 16 episodes (2019-2020)

Watch All American on Netflix
Created by: April Blair
Starring: Daniel Ezra, Samantha Logan, Michael Evans Behling, Taye Diggs, Bre-Z, Greta Onieogou, Cody Christian
Rated: TV-14
Watch the trailer

Plot
When a star high school football player from South Central is recruited to play for Beverly Hills High School, two separate worlds collide.

Verdict
This isn't great television, but it's a fun watch. I enjoyed the football, fish-out-of-water, high school soap opera, but season two became annoying.  It's the same story beats, creating drama out of nothing. Spencer's personality traits of always being the hero, self righteousness, and never listening to anyone else also wear thin in season two. Not that I'm a huge football fan, but being that is the premise of the show season two barely contains any football. I enjoyed season one for what it is, a simple soap opera, but season two is a failed copy. Season two lacks the drive and core mystery of season one.
It depends.

Review
The easy comparison is Friday Night Lights, and this doesn't come close. This is a teen soap opera with a very simple story. It's a standard fish out of water story where a star football player from a rough neighborhood moves to Beverly Hills. He has to navigate both worlds and now neither accpet him.

The series is predictable as soap operas are, but that didn't stifle the fun. There are lots of twists and misdirections. This works in season one as the big mystery is where and who is Spencer's dad. Much of the story branches off of that. Once season two answers that question, the show doesn't have a central story point to fall back on and it suffers. Many sub-plots are introduced and none of them all that great. Season two doesn't know what to do, instead sticking to sub-plots it shouldn't.

Season one drops a lot of clues pointing you in one direction only to fool you. That's the point. It's not a riddle you can figure out. I don't mind that. Season two is back and forth on Spencer and his decisions.

Daniel Ezra plays Spencer.

Season two became annoying as did Spencer's "You wanna go bro!" mentality. He's told he cant fight and he wants to fight everyone. It's boring how easily he's provoked. I wanted to see some kind of development. Spencer considers quitting football in season two and the basis of that never seems logical. His self righteous to a fault attitude doesn't help either.

Taye Diggs plays Billy.

Spencer's coach is Billy (Taye Diggs), who has some moral lapses. Some the show sets up as a fake out, some real. I wanted the show to do more with that. How can Billy talk about integrity and then do some of the things he does? The show doesn't discuss it.

Season two isn't even about football. It's all drama. The football scenes we see are only scrimmages. In season one the football games helped pace the show as the team had to win and that introduces drama. Season two doesn't have that. It loses the pacing of football games and the question of who is Spencer's dad from season one and can't fill it with anything near as substantial.