“Stumble,” a new sitcom premiering Friday on NBC, takes Greg Whiteley’s great docuseries “Cheer,” about competitive cheerleading, runs it through “The Bad News Bears” and frosts it in the mockumentary style of “The Office,” et al. You know the drill — characters doubly conscious of the scene they’re in and the camera that’s watching them, cutaway interviews commenting ironically on the story, a camera that catches odd events around the main action and a broken fourth wall that puts the viewer in the room. It can seem an overused device, but it often produces good results, and, based on the two episodes out for review, the results here, rich in slapstick and silliness, are very good. I laughed a lot, anyway.
Jenn Lyon plays cheerleading coach Courteney Potter, and the actor has clearly taken a long look at “Cheer” main character Monica Aldama, adopting her style and three-fifths of her personality, along with a shelf-load of trophies, collected coaching at Sammy Davis Sr. Junior College (a joke about a Dean named Martin is ladled on top) in Wichita Flats, Texas, a made-up place resembling real-world Corsicana, where “Cheer” is set. As our story opens, Courteney is let go over a not particularly scandalous video (in which, at a team celebration, she is seen drinking champagne from a bottle and giving an award for “best booty”) and must tell her squad, “I have been asked to be fired.”
Her husband, Boone (Taran Killam), coaches football at SDSJC; they call each other “coach.” He was headed for the big leagues as a college player, when he suffered a brain injury on the field. (A piece of his helmet is still embedded there.) This allows for some memory jokes (“Sometimes when Courteney gets mad, I play the head injury card; if that doesn’t work, I play the head injury card”) that may count as insensitive. The brain injury community may have thoughts about that, but I don’t know.
Courteney, one national victory away from becoming the winningest coach in history, is not ready to quit. She gets herself hired to lead the team (and teach typing) at the community college in almost-neighboring Headltston, known for its Candy Button factory (and gift shop and museum), which has given the team a name, the Buttons, and a button-headed mascot. The team when she arrives consists solely of Madonna (Arianna Davis from “Lizzo’s Watch Out for the Big Grrrls”) whose extreme enthusiasm is tempered by attacks of narcolepsy. (Davis passes out funny.) Courteney picks up Dimarcus (Jarrett Austin Brown), who refers to himself in the third person, after he walks away from Boone’s football team, where he set a record “in rushing yards as well as unsportsmanlike conduct penalties.”
Peaches (Taylor Dunbar), who got her nickname when she bashed a girl in the head with a can of cling peaches (“and it stuck, the peaches and the name”) is discovered robbing Courteney’s car, from which she impressively parkours away. Sally (Georgie Murphy) is a sweet space case. Krystal (Anissa Borrego), a “cheerlebrity” with a big social media following, comes over from Sammy Davis Sr. Junior College, under the impression, created by Courteney, that the documentary — the one we’re watching — will be about her.
Remembering Stevie (Ryan Pinkston), she finds him working at a car rental place, 16 years older, and wider; he enrolls at Headltston as a 17-year sophomore and thinks of himself, incorrectly, as an assistant coach. Meanwhile, Courteney’s old assistant coach, Tammy Istiny (Kristin Chenoweth, second runner-up for Miss Oklahoma in 1991, giving her usual 200%), will become her rival, icing ambition with sugar.
As in “Cheer,” the aim is to win at the cheerleading nationals in Daytona Beach. It’s hard to see how even in a comedy that might be possible for this crew, a good deal of athleticism notwithstanding, but it’s good that the series has somewhere to go — it gives the documentary within the mockumentary focus, an independent reality, a reason to exist. (Rather than just a crew hanging out forever, with no goal in sight.) Even two episodes in, the show, created by brother and sister Jeff and Liz Astrof, is developing a solid emotional core. (And Busy Philipps will be joining the cast at some point in an unspecified role.) Whatever you make of the Buttons’ chances of survival, “Stumble” is something to root for.
