Hellcats, Another TV 'Cheeries' to Follow
Bring It On meets Glee, goes on a date, gets drunk and gives birth.
Most of you would know Bring It On as practically the most popular cheerleading movie ever released. If you’ve only seen the installments, then you haven’t seen anything yet. The first Bring It On covers most conflicts that cheerleaders experience amidst the combative atmosphere while performing with extreme optimism (nodding with wide-open smiles despite muscle contortion), which Hellcats’ pilot episode teasingly gives you a sample of.
Now, what’s the Glee part of the equation? It’s basically the transition from cinema to TV series, Glee is the ‘televisionification’ of the musicals which slowly regained popularity after being dead for about a decade or so. I guess we owe it to Disney’s High School Musical, acting as a necromancer for characters lunging into songs.
Another Glee characteristic is the pilot episode’s plot semblance. The Hellcats’ budget is threatened by a surge of budget for Lancer University’s, the setting, football program. This means cutting cheerleading scholarships which is why Marti(Alyson Mitchalka, Phil of the Future), a pre-law college student, desperate for a scholarship, tried out in the first place.
A few more factoids
- Hellcats is based on American journalist Kate Torgovnick’s book, Cheer: Inside the Secret World of College Cheerleaders.
- Tom Welling, Clark Kent of Smallville, is one of its producers.
- Ashley Tisdale, Sharpay Evans of the hugely popular High School Musical trilogy, plays Savannah Monroe who’s the captain of the Hellcats. As early as the second episode, I realize that her role here has more depth.
- The series is expected to show more similarity to Election, a Witherspoon-starred 1999 film about how much ambition a student has, and to what extent she’ll go to just to get a student council position. Being a former campus journalist myself, this part I really understand. However, since I haven’t read the book, I am yet to see this comparison in the series.
What to like
- Come on, who doesn’t enjoy watching cheerdance moves? The latest poverty of tickets to the UAAP Cheerdance Competition proves there’s an entire audience hungry for pyramids, tumbles and throws. Not to mention, short skirts, flips and tight-fitting outfits.
- It’s funny. My favorite character so far is Marti’s mother, who somehow reminds me of Kristin Chenoweth’s character in Glee, April Rhodes. Maybe it’s just their stubbornness and idiosyncrasies that make me laugh.
- A promising storyline. Brought by the book’s reviews, it is said to shed light to a myriad of difficulties that cheerleaders face. In a sport built around the concept of ‘cheers’ and ‘optimism’, the crowd wouldn’t, and shouldn't, have an inkling of what goes on before these athletes take the stage.
Unlike basketball drama, that regularly unfolds on the hardcourt, much like the recently concluded FEU vs. DLSU game, cheerleading has no hint of drama. Because if there is, then it defeats its purpose. And this series might just give you that hint.
HELLCATS is on ETC, Wednesdays at 8pm.
Here's the HELLCATS trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5b3rAxj8G8
Most of you would know Bring It On as practically the most popular cheerleading movie ever released. If you’ve only seen the installments, then you haven’t seen anything yet. The first Bring It On covers most conflicts that cheerleaders experience amidst the combative atmosphere while performing with extreme optimism (nodding with wide-open smiles despite muscle contortion), which Hellcats’ pilot episode teasingly gives you a sample of.
Now, what’s the Glee part of the equation? It’s basically the transition from cinema to TV series, Glee is the ‘televisionification’ of the musicals which slowly regained popularity after being dead for about a decade or so. I guess we owe it to Disney’s High School Musical, acting as a necromancer for characters lunging into songs.
Another Glee characteristic is the pilot episode’s plot semblance. The Hellcats’ budget is threatened by a surge of budget for Lancer University’s, the setting, football program. This means cutting cheerleading scholarships which is why Marti(Alyson Mitchalka, Phil of the Future), a pre-law college student, desperate for a scholarship, tried out in the first place.
A few more factoids
- Hellcats is based on American journalist Kate Torgovnick’s book, Cheer: Inside the Secret World of College Cheerleaders.
- Tom Welling, Clark Kent of Smallville, is one of its producers.
- Ashley Tisdale, Sharpay Evans of the hugely popular High School Musical trilogy, plays Savannah Monroe who’s the captain of the Hellcats. As early as the second episode, I realize that her role here has more depth.
- The series is expected to show more similarity to Election, a Witherspoon-starred 1999 film about how much ambition a student has, and to what extent she’ll go to just to get a student council position. Being a former campus journalist myself, this part I really understand. However, since I haven’t read the book, I am yet to see this comparison in the series.
What to like
- Come on, who doesn’t enjoy watching cheerdance moves? The latest poverty of tickets to the UAAP Cheerdance Competition proves there’s an entire audience hungry for pyramids, tumbles and throws. Not to mention, short skirts, flips and tight-fitting outfits.
- It’s funny. My favorite character so far is Marti’s mother, who somehow reminds me of Kristin Chenoweth’s character in Glee, April Rhodes. Maybe it’s just their stubbornness and idiosyncrasies that make me laugh.
- A promising storyline. Brought by the book’s reviews, it is said to shed light to a myriad of difficulties that cheerleaders face. In a sport built around the concept of ‘cheers’ and ‘optimism’, the crowd wouldn’t, and shouldn't, have an inkling of what goes on before these athletes take the stage.
Unlike basketball drama, that regularly unfolds on the hardcourt, much like the recently concluded FEU vs. DLSU game, cheerleading has no hint of drama. Because if there is, then it defeats its purpose. And this series might just give you that hint.
HELLCATS is on ETC, Wednesdays at 8pm.
Here's the HELLCATS trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5b3rAxj8G8
Posts
Post a Comment