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Make it or break it5/9/2023 ![]() (In an especially ironic twist, Chelsea Hobbs, who played Emily and who was 24 at the time the show premiered, got pregnant during filming-a particular challenge for a show that emphasizes its cast’s bodies, and that caused her, as a result, to leave Make It or Break It after the second season.)īut the show, in an elegant fusion of the structure of the soap opera and the realities of sports competition, is perhaps at its most compelling in its emphasis on the networked aspects of elite athleticism. In its universe, the moral lessons of, say, Twilight-a series at the height of its cultural influence when Make It or Break It arrived-are rendered especially (you could almost say absurdly) poignant: For these athletes, romance in general and sex in particular can compromise one’s career in an instant, via either lost focus or an unplanned pregnancy. Make It or Break It is frank about eating disorders, and about self-esteem, and about the financial costs of elite training, and about the social sacrifices that training demands of girls who are otherwise typical teenagers. This is a show that takes the cares of its young protagonists seriously. That’s because of the smaller-scale tensions that it explores-the ones that result from the human pressures that face a collection of young women who carry the hopes of so many people on their muscular shoulders. ![]() More than anything, it’s probably what one would call a guilty pleasure, if one was predisposed towards feeling guilt over their entertainment choices.”) It is also, in the year of Simone Biles and Gabby Douglas and Laurie Hernandez, disappointing in its lack of diversity. Make It or Break It is not, to be clear, a great TV show, in the manner of the prestige stuff viewers are accustomed to today. Early on in the show’s first season, the typical dynamics of tween-focused soap operatics kick in: Will Emily’s arrival cause tensions? Will Lauren, the schemer, do whatever she can to stay on top? Will pathos both human and athletic coincide in the form of dramatic gymnastics meets? Yes. Until, that is, their longstanding plans are disrupted by a newcomer, Emily Kmetko (Chelsea Hobbs), a bundle of talent in need of training who has come to The Rock by way of a series of scholarships. Olympic team of all time-and they are all doing their part to fulfill that expectation. Together, the teenagers are expected to head to the Olympics-three members of what their coach expects will be the greatest U.S. ![]() There’s Payson Keeler (Ayla Kell), a powerhouse who’s the favorite to win gold Kaylie Cruz (Josie Loren), wealthy and charismatic, who is particularly talented as a tumbler and Lauren Tanner (Cassie Scerbo), the quintessential mean girl who is, within The Rock and perhaps the world, “queen of the beam.” It’s Pretty Little Liars, with leotards. It focuses on a small group of elite gymnasts who train at the Rocky Mountain Gymnastics Training Center (“The Rock”), a Colorado-based gym known as a feeder for the Olympics. Make It or Break It, which is now available on both Freeform and Hulu, among other platforms, is a typical teen-focused soap opera: Think Pretty Little Liars, but with leotards. The show is, essentially, the heavily fictionalized version of what played out this weekend. And while NBC will surely supply those stories in August, in the form of the treacly mini-documentaries that accompany the competition, in the intervening weeks there is a very good stand-in: Make It or Break It, the gymnastics-themed drama that aired on ABC Family (now renamed Freeform) from 2009 to 2012. “You’ll ruin your makeup.”) They’re collisions-all that human stuff, balancing and vaulting and glittering-that make you want to know the backstories of each athlete. (“Don’t cry,” one of the athletes admonished another on Sunday night after a particularly spectacular performance. For viewers, women’s gymnastics is steadfastly popular because of the juxtapositions the sport offers: It is a tangle not just of sport and artistry, but also of youth and adulthood, of preparation and spontaneity, of physical strength and more more ephemeral femininity.
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