Stumble Series Premiere Review: Some Light-Hearted Friday Night Fun
Dante Ulanday - News Moderator 
With the success of The Office, it’s not surprising that a lot of comedies are opting for the mockumentary style, and Stumble is the latest one to do it.
The NBC comedy focuses on Courteney Potter, a cheerleading coach who is fired from her junior college job after a video showing her drunk with her team and body-shaming them goes viral.
Not one to just quit, she ends up landing a new job at a small junior college, and she decides it’s time to put a squad together.
Of course, the Stumble series premiere focuses on the main characters, introducing us to the unsuspecting cheerleaders while offering a bit of hope that they could win nationals and setting up a rivalry between two former colleagues.
Couples Goals
While the main focus of Stumble is the cheerleading aspect, there is a gem in Courteney’s relationship with her husband, Boon E. Potter.
In fact, NBC Insider shared that when Jenn Lyon and Taran Killam started working together, the focus at the house changed for the writers, as their chemistry was just too good together to waste.
That’s how we’ve ended up with so many scenes of the two of them together, and I do think it’s what makes this comedy stand out from so many others.
Courteney and Boon are there to support each other in their weird way.
Too many comedies have shown a determined and career-focused woman walk all over her man, but that isn’t the case in the series premiere.
There are a few cliché moments for the sake of comedy, but the relationship as a whole is one of support and love, with Courteney even turning to her husband for some advice when it’s needed the most.
One scene in particular, around the middle of the episode, stands out, as Courteney looks back on when she first became a cheerleading coach and how she didn’t know what she was doing.
She doesn’t even ask for advice, but Boon offers some words of wisdom that he knows his wife will take well.
“Think outside the box.”
That’s certainly what she does, though probably not in the way most people would mean it, as she lies about the documentary’s topic to get her best cheerleader to switch sides.
A Rivalry of Coaches
Of course, there is a rivalry that will play out in Stumble Season 1, but I don’t think we even needed the series’ trailer to know that.
At first, it looked like the former Assistant Coach, Tammy Istiny, would panic when she stepped up as the new main coach, but she quickly settled in and aims to go big.
After years of living in Courteney’s cheerleading shadow, she is ready to become the coach with the latest win, and she isn’t afraid to play dirty.
Well, she probably learned from the best when it came to playing dirty, since Courteney does lie to get the star flipper, Krystal, to switch teams, so it’s not surprising that Tammy is sure to follow suit.
This arc does run the risk of getting too cliché , but it’s a joy to have Kristin Chenoweth on the screen, so I’m not going to complain too much just yet.
And I’m happy for a cliché scene as long as the rest of the show is entertaining.
What I do love is that the premiere didn’t really set up the rivalry in the traditional way, as Courteney hasn’t really thought much about her former team — except how to get Krystal to join her team — so that helps to avoid too many girl fight moments too early on.
I’m sure it will pick up later in the series, but Courteney focusing on her team and her own life rather than her past is refreshing.
Found Family
A lot of TV shows are now focusing on the found family aspect of life, and I still harken this back to Supernatural 20 years ago, coining the phrase, “family don’t end with blood.”
Stumble has already managed it without forcing it.
We see how Courteney manages to assemble her team, identifying groups or individuals with raw skill but no one around them to support them.
The college itself had only one cheerleader, but Courteney is willing to look beyond traditional athletes.
She finds a football player, a thief, and a young girl who has just been kicked out of her foster home because she aged out.
As they mix with the rest of the team, they all start to connect on a human level, and there are even moments when they all support each other.
Dimarcus is sure to end up being a problem, but I bet he’ll end up being the character with the most growth, as he realizes that being the center of attention isn’t always the best thing when you start really letting people down.
The end of the premiere sets up for those lessons, as the team is back to the drawing board in finding a tenth cheerleader to join the team after Krystal’s accident, thanks to Dimarcus’s actions.
This is one of those comedies that I could see twisting some narratives while still connecting with traditional comedy audiences, and I’m looking forward to seeing more.
Stumble airs on Fridays at 8:30/7:30c on NBC.
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