Not many cheerleading shows have as much bite right out of the gate like Stumble. Just a couple of episodes in, and viewers appear to be hooked on the show’s perfect mix of team drama, sharp jokes, and cheer routines that basically cause chaos. But the truth remains that this is not the first time a TV show has nailed that vibe. Back in 2010, The CW’s Hellcats captured that same magic.
It was loud, messy, and featured interesting characters viewers couldn’t help but love, even when they were got dicey. Sadly, it got cancelled way too soon, but that’s what makes it perfect for anyone who has fallen in love with the new energy in Stumble. Think of Hellcats not as some old forgotten show, but as the original blueprint for what Stumble currently embodies.
How ‘Hellcats’ Mixed College Smarts With Cheer Stunts
One of the best things about Hellcats is how the creators treated cheerleading as both a physical sport and an actual lifeline. The show’s lead, Marti Perkins (Aly Michalka), is a smart pre-law student who ends up losing her scholarship. Her only way to stay in school? Join the university’s overzealous cheer squad. Her tryout in the pilot episode, “A World Full of Strangers”, is arguably one of the most wholesome character introductions in TV history. She’s a total outsider who pulls off a routine powered by sheer guts and completely shocks the squad’s captain, Savannah Monroe (Ashley Tisdale). That moment right there tells viewers what the show’s all about: a girl being pulled between her brains, her ambition, and, of course, the wild world of competitive cheer.
If there was one thing Hellcats excelled at, it was making the stunts about more than just winning. The routines were packed with the characters’ fears, their secrets, and personal drama, which, in Marti’s case, mostly meant her topsy-turvy relationship with her mother, Wanda Perkins (Gail O’Grady). Essentially, viewers were watching athletes fight their pasts in a bid to prove themselves.
If anything about this sounds familiar, it’s because that’s literally what Stumble is doing at the moment. The main character, Coach Courteney Porter (Jenn Lyon), has her life fall apart, and her only way out is to build a squad from nothing. She’s fighting for her future, just like Marti was. In essence, both shows are using cheerleading as a lifeline for plans that have gone up in flames.
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What ‘Hellcats’ Got Right That ‘Stumble’ Is Repeating
At their core, both shows tell the story of the underdog. In Stumble, that underdog is coach Courteney, who loses her dream job after a wild celebration misfires. She’s having to claw her way back at a small Oklahoma school. There, she recruits a ragtag team of athletes and dancers who don’t seem to know what they’re doing. It’s literally the same premise as Hellcats, where Marti is forced to join a world she knows nothing about and win over a team that’s not sure if it wants her.
This underdog theme extends to how both shows treat talent as a double-edged sword that can either save a squad or completely destroy it. Dimarcus (Jarrett Austin Brown) is that talent in Stumble. He’s the guy who got kicked off the football team, but somehow ended up as one of Coach Courteney’s biggest assets. In Hellcats, it’s Lewis (Robbie Jones). Like Dimarcus, he was also a former football player who ended up on the cheer squad. However, he ended up as one of the most important members of the cheer squad. Even more, both shows throw in scenes that are hard to forget. In Hellcats episode 14, “Remember When”, the squad kidnaps Marti as part of her initiation, and things cascade into a heartwarming journey down memory lane (and some dicey action involving an unsavory DVD). Then there’s the scene where Krystal (Anissa Borrego) falls and fractures her ankle at the end of Stumble’s pilot episode.
The sad part, though, is that Hellcats was setting up some major storylines when it was cancelled. That includes Marti’s relationship (or lack thereof) with her father, Alice finally stepping into her full potential, and Savannah’s complicated relationship with her parents and sister Charlotte (Emma Lahana), which was gradually unfolding into something deeper. Simply put, the show was not cancelled because fans had stopped tuning in. According to one of the show’s executive producers, Tom Welling, Hellcats ended up on the chopping block because The CW changed bosses.
Overall, Stumble is now treading the same path as Hellcats, albeit with more laughs in the mix, and it’s nailing the same formula. We’re talking the messy practices, tussles for power, and the personal problems that become a huge deal right before big competitions.
So if you’re a Stumble fan, and you need a show to pass the time in between episodes, you won’t find any better than Hellcats. You can binge all 22 episodes on Apple TV.
