Crew Girl Season 1, Episode 5: A Cardiologist, A Fall Formal, And A Kiss Nobody Planned For

Okay. Sit down. I need to talk to you about this episode because I have been thinking about it for a full day and I finally figured out why it wrecked me, and once you see it you cannot unsee it.

Everybody at that dance is performing. Every single one of them.

Britney stages a prom proposal like it’s a campaign launch, photographs and a schedule and all. Josh sits inside it with a cardiologist’s number in his phone that he hasn’t told one living person about. Ryder is out here performing a work ethic while simultaneously begging for an exemption from practice, which, sir. Cam borrows a suit and a car and spends the whole night convinced someone’s going to clock that both are borrowed. Ella shows up as a chaperone and is genuinely there to charm a state senator into approving a shower permit, which I love for her. Even Hayden’s teenage daughter walks up with a line she clearly workshopped in the car.

And then there’s Teagan Tao. Red dress. Mom did her hair. And she is the only person in that entire room with absolutely nothing left to protect.

THE EPISODE

That’s the episode. And it’s not because she’s nobler than everyone else, which is what makes it so good — it’s because her humiliation already happened. In public. Over a loudspeaker. In front of every kid at that party. There’s no image left to maintain, so honesty is free for her, and she’s the only one in the building who can afford it.

Which is exactly why both of these boys cannot look away from her. Josh can’t afford the truth at any price and here’s a girl handing it out for nothing. Cam cannot survive being seen and here’s the one person in Eagle’s Cove who keeps trying to look.

So by the end of the night one of them kisses her in a boathouse and the other one gets up from a table and leaves, and here’s the thing that actually broke me: it’s the same reason. Both of them. Identical wound, opposite directions. That’s two boys who were raised to believe that being known is dangerous, and one girl standing alone in a boathouse trying to work out what she did wrong.

I have so much to say. Let’s go.

The scan

You know a show is good when your feelings about a character flip this fast, and Josh, dammit. I want to hate you. And instead I’m sitting here watching you get a cardiac test and feeling bad for you.

Especially when the radiologist says you need to make an appointment with your cardiologist. Never a good sign.

And I keep wondering — is there going to be anybody he can trust with this? Somebody he can tell? Because carrying this alone doesn’t seem right.

Josh does what he wants when he wants, normally. I think this is the one thing that scares him.

Which is worth sitting with structurally, because the show has now given us a boy whose entire personality is control, holding a piece of information that responds to none of it. Everything else in his life is negotiable by phone call. This isn’t.

The shower and the permit

At the house, Teagan’s shower is broken, and because it’s an old house they need permits to fix it — and Ella’s filings keep getting rejected. She thinks she knows who could unstick it: State Senator Garner. Which is Britney and Baloo’s mother.

And we both know Britney would do anything to make sure Teagan never gets what she wants, so that doesn’t look promising.

Except apparently Ella and Didi Garner used to do the pageant circuit together.

Which is such a good detail. Two women who competed against each other as girls in a system that graded them on presentation, and one of them is now a senator and the other is a caterer whose husband committed fraud. The show doesn’t say any of that out loud. It just drops the pageant circuit in and lets you do the math.

Ryder being a Regis

Practice is going well and Josh isn’t there. No one has any clue why he’s not there and if we’re being honest, it’s not ones business. Though everybody’s got an opinion, because this is high school.

Ryder is being extremely Regis about it — nobody’s going to follow a financial aid student over a Regis, he says, talking to Cam. And Cam looks completely disappointed, until Teagan yanks him out of it with I have been promised tacos, and he’s immediately like, definitely.

I really want them together, but that’s a different story.

And I want to flag what Ryder just did, because it’s the tell for his whole arc. He’s using the Regis name as a weapon in the same sentence where he’s resentful of Josh using it. He’ll leverage that surname whenever it serves him and call it merit, then rage when Josh gets an inch of the same benefit. He hasn’t figured out that he’s fighting for the exact thing he claims to hate.

Amber asks Ryder to the fall formal, which is interesting because it’s Amber and Ryder and both of them suck. Genuinely well matched.

Everyone’s leaving when Josh shows up for his workout. Ryder gives him grief and Josh says he cleared it with Coach, don’t worry about it.

Note that Josh is working out alone, off-schedule, after being told nothing about his heart yet except go see a cardiologist. That’s a kid training in secret to prove to himself that the scan is wrong.

The talk

Everyone clears out but Teagan stays.

We need to talk, she says

And Josh goes, let’s talk.

Every part of me was scared, because I knew that they were about to relitigate the I don’t want to be just friends comment, I was not ready.

They do have the talk, and Teagan is not especially kind about it. He says he thought it was self-explanatory. She says he’s supposed to be with Britney and he says no. She asks what’s going on, and you can see in his eyes that he wants to say something.

But what was he supposed to say? Telling the secret could end his crew career.

She tells him that whatever’s going on in his life, she’s not going to be his excuse, and he needs to pull his shit together.

And I think Teagan is being genuinely insensitive here, and it frustrates me. Part of the reason my feelings shifted on Josh is that he has a chronic illness, and someone with a chronic illness cannot help certain things. He needs a little grace, and it’s the last thing anyone is giving him — and the last thing he’s allowing anyone to give, because his last name is Regis.

That’s the trap the episode builds and never lets him out of. The name that gets him everything is the same name that makes it impossible for anyone to imagine he needs anything. He’s the least helpable person at that school, and it’s because he’s the most privileged one.

Ryder keeps piling on about the missed practice without any idea what’s happening. It’s gross that he continues about it.

Ella, Madison, and the latte

Ella goes to drop off Teagan’s homework and decides to bring Coach Hayden a latte. At the boathouse she meets Hayden’s daughter, Madison, who is extremely defensive and protective of her dad, which is cute, and who basically tells her it’s not happening.

Ella feels shut down and goes to leave — and then Hayden walks in and the two of them start talking, with Madison staring like, that’s my dad, back off.

We’ll see what happens there, because Matt and Ella are just too cute together.

While they’re talking, Matt talks her into chaperoning the dance. Which is fun, and is also her way in to Didi Garner and that permit.

Which I love, because Ella’s entire arc this season is learning to work a system she used to be able to buy her way through. She isn’t going to the dance for romance. She’s going for plumbing.

Ryder and Dartmouth

Ryder comes in and Ella has to go. He tells Hayden that the Dartmouth coach asked if he could come to a practice on Tuesday, and is it okay to miss practice.

Hayden says no.

And Ryder goes — well, you let Josh.

Ryder. You have no idea what’s going on with Josh. And Hayden tells him it’s a different reason.

Ryder is being selfish here because he’s convinced everyone is favoring his cousin, when the reality is that Josh needed something more than anyone. Ryder reads accommodation as preferential treatment, and it isn’t, and the entitlement of these kids frustrates the hell out of me.

The most uncomfortable scene of the season

Josh goes to meet Britney and she has recreated their first date, which would be sweet, except she’s doing it as a proposal.

You’ve been busy, so I thought I’d design it for us.

Ma’am, you are pushy. Aren’t you going to give the guy a chance to do his own thing? I’m just asking.

Then they’re sitting there taking pictures, doing the whole thing, and it looks so fake and so weird. She’s talking about political power, and girl, your mom is a state senator, calm down.

They just don’t seem right together. It’s fake and it’s gross and, no.

What makes it unbearable rather than just cringey is what Josh is holding. He’s been told to call a cardiologist and he’s sitting in a staged photograph of a proposal, being asked to commit to a future, by someone who has not noticed anything is wrong. She designed a whole evening around him and never once looked at him.

The taco date

Cam and Teagan’s date might be my favorite thing in the episode. Tacos by the water in the back of the truck. Them being comforting with each other is a beautiful thing to see. They are easy to

She gives them a B+, which is generous for anywhere on the East Coast, because if you’ve spent time in Southern California, there is nothing like the tacos there.

They’re talking and she’s got a blister on her hand, and he says he can take care of that. Now — I am not popping blisters or pimples or anything else on a first date. Not something I would personally do. But hey, you do you. It just goes to show their comfort with each other.

They get in the truck and he cleans it and puts a bandaid on it, and they start talking about rowing, about how it’s theirs, and he says it’s the place where he feels the most like himself.

He talks about his dream of the Olympics. He just needs somebody to believe in him.

She says maybe they just need to get to know him, that he has to let them in. Which is fair, and he does need to. But he also needs to feel safe, and he doesn’t, so it’s fair that he’s guarded.

And that’s the tension the whole Cam storyline runs on and the show is honest about it. Teagan’s advice is correct and incomplete. Letting people in is only survivable if the room is safe, and this room includes a boy who mocked him for not owning backup sunglasses. She’s asking him to take a risk in a building that has never once been safe for him.

Perry and the suit

She asks him to the fall formal. He says he doesn’t know, he’d have to find a suit. She says she knows a guy.

Perry has so many suit racks, and all of them fashionable. He is so excited to help.

He asks Cam what his style is, and Cam says — is it clean, does it fit. And Perry says okay, comfortable, and then picks out the perfect suit, and it makes Cam smile.

Letting people in is new for him. I also think it’s a little exciting for him.

And this is the most emotionally intelligent scene in the episode, because of what Perry doesn’t do. He never once treats the favor as a favor. He doesn’t reassure Cam, doesn’t reference money, doesn’t soften anything — he just gets excited about clothes. The help is invisible because it’s disguised as enthusiasm, and that’s the only form of help Cam can physically accept.

Britney runs a campaign

Josh is with Britney and she’s telling him what to wear, how tight the schedule is, all of it. She runs everything like a campaign and she is genuinely exhausting. She isn’t building a relationship with Josh, she’s trying to build a brand for people to see.

Josh is trying, which I’ll give him credit for, because I’d have been out of there.

He asks if they can spend some time together and talk, and she turns it down, because that would make her miss her appointment. Priorities, Britney. I don’t know, you might try to prioritize people in your life.

Then her mom shows up and suggests dinner, maybe mani-pedis, and Britney says no, Mom, we’re on a tight schedule, I’ll see you tomorrow.

Britney needs to realize she’s a teenager. Ambition is fine. But if you miss out on life, you’re missing something you can’t get back.

And that scene is the key to her, honestly. She turns down her mother the exact same way she turns down Josh — with a calendar. She has learned to treat intimacy as a scheduling conflict, and she learned it from a woman who is never home. She’s not cold. She’s copying.

Cam’s dad

Cam walks into the shop with the suit in his hand and puts his overalls on. He hears his dad talking and his dad seems worried, and Cam asks if everything’s okay, and his dad says yeah, great, fine.

His dad asks him to cover evening shifts and Cam says he can do it except Friday, because he’s taking a girl to the dance.

And his dad’s face. He’s genuinely excited for his son, and the look on him is so adorable I wanted to squeeze his cheeks and tell him he’s the best dad.

Cam asks to take the truck and his dad says absolutely not, you can’t take a girl to a dance in a truck. I mean, you can. But whatever.

I think Cam wants to impress Teagan, and I think Teagan is already impressed by him.

Also note that yeah, great, fine, from his father. Cam learned the deflection from somewhere. His dad is hiding the shop’s finances from him while he hides them from Teagan. It’s a whole household of people protecting each other from information.

Arrivals

Cam picks Teagan up in an amazing car, and damn, that boy fills out a suit. Her mom did her hair and got her ready, and she looks beautiful in a red dress.

When Ella gets to the dance to help with setup, Didi Garner tells her flat out she’s not helping with the permit. She clearly hates Ella and I’m not sure why, but here we are.

Hayden shows up with Madison, who obviously hates Ella — but Madison sees an opportunity and goes right up to her: I googled you, and basically all I can find is that you were married to a felon. What do you bring to the table?

Girl. You are in high school.

And though I understand wanting to protect your parent, there comes a point where you have no idea what’s actually between your dad and this woman, and you need to take a step back and go, okay, I can do better than this.

Though I’ll say — Madison’s line is the whole town’s opinion of Ella spoken by someone too young to know she isn’t supposed to say it out loud. Everyone at that dance thinks it. A fifteen-year-old is just the only one without a filter.

PERRY IS MY FAVORITE

I also think Perry might be my favorite person here. He’s fashionable and amazing and when the whole crew shows up for photos, honestly, our whole crew looks great.

Then Teagan and Cam walk in and Josh’s whole world stops. He’s sitting there looking at how beautiful she is and he can’t say anything. Britney comes over, still dazzled by his pedigree — and Teagan sees him, and he knows Britney would love nothing more than to see Teagan gone.

The team walks in and it is way over the top for high school. Let me tell you.

The whole thing is set up like a wedding — the king and queen and their court seated above everyone else, a fancy dinner served, a formal entrance. And the way these kids are so worried about how the others see them is completely foreign to me.

You can tell Josh is annoyed by how badly Britney needs all the attention, and he also needs it, so it’s a catch-22.

The dance itself

Josh gets a moment with Teagan and brings up Cam, jealous, and she points out he can’t say anything, and he agrees. And then when she tells him if he can’t say anything he shouldn’t say anything at all, he tells her she looks beautiful. She thanks him, but we both know it’s more than that.

She tells Cam the best move is for them to dance with everybody else. Britney, meanwhile, wants a dance for the photographs, because she needs all the attention in the world.

I think part of Josh’s attraction to Teagan is that she isn’t a narcissist. She’s real and she genuinely doesn’t care about money. She cares about succeeding and about crew. She isn’t worried about anything, because she’s already lost everything.

That last part is the actual mechanism, and it’s the smartest thing about this triangle. Teagan is the only person in that ballroom with nothing left to protect. Everybody else — Josh, Britney, Ryder, Cam, even Ella — is managing an image. She already had hers destroyed over a loudspeaker. So she’s the only person there who can be honest for free, and Josh, who cannot afford honesty at any price, cannot look away from her.

Cam dances

They’re dancing and having a good time, and Teagan tells Cam to go out there and do his thing. He doesn’t want to. He’s a little embarrassed. She shows him, and when he hesitates she goes out and helps him.

It’s cute. They just make sense together.

And then he breakdances, which I did not see coming, and I kind of love that he surprised us.

Which is such a nice piece of characterization, because it means Cam has a whole skill nobody at Easton has ever seen. He’s been in that school for years and the version of himself he lets people see is so narrow that this was hidden inside it. The tragedy of his season is that there’s more of him than he’ll show.

Ella and Didi, locked in a room

The air conditioning goes out and Didi has an absolute fit. She doesn’t know what to do, so Ella follows her and tries to talk to her and she is not having it at all. She flips the breaker — and the two of them get stuck in the room.

Ella asks what her issue is, and Didi lets fly: you never know how to do anything for yourself, you’re never put together, you’re never —

Calm yourself, Didi.

Either way, Ella gets them out with a mint tin.

Which is such a good visual joke and also the entire point. The woman Didi just described as incapable of doing anything for herself picks a lock with a breath mint container. Ella’s competence has been in front of this town the whole time and nobody looks at it, because she used to be rich and now she isn’t, and that’s the only fact anybody can hold about her.

The cruise

Amber asks if everyone wants to go to the after party, which is a cruise — for the financial aid program.

And Cam is immediately put off, because the cruise everyone is going on is for him. He’s the financial aid person. He’s the one they pay for.

I felt awful for him, and so does Teagan. That’s a lot.

Teagan says she doesn’t want to go, and Perry says they should go and buys both their tickets.

Which is sweet of him, and it’s also still enormous for Cam to sit with. He doesn’t like being the charity guy. He just wants to row. Being put in a position where other people have to take care of him is hard.

And the cruel arithmetic of that scene is that Perry’s kindness reproduces the exact problem. The event exists to fund Cam, and now his ticket to it has also been funded. Every single act of generosity in this episode confirms his worst belief about his own position, and not one person doing it means any harm.

The senator, and the permit

Didi apologizes for how she’s been, and Ella forgives her, and then it comes out: I’ve had to be everything to my daughter. I’ve had to move mountains for her these past few months, and when I need something done, I do it.

So Ella asks about the permit, and the senator says yes, she’ll help.

Then Didi admits she isn’t home much, and when she is, her daughter doesn’t want to talk to her, and she doesn’t understand why. And Ella tells her that’s teenage girls — they’ll come to you when they want to.

Which reframes Britney completely, and I don’t think the episode gets enough credit for the placement. We just watched Britney refuse dinner with her mother in favor of a schedule. And now we’re hearing that her mother has moved mountains for her and can’t get a conversation. Both of those are true. Neither of them can see the other one trying.

Cam leaves

Teagan goes to Cam and tries to talk to him, and he lets it out — you told me to make them see me. What am I supposed to show them? That I can’t afford a new school uniform? That I work at the shop? That this after party pays for my schooling?

And she says, I want to see that.

And he says, yeah, but I don’t want you to.

He’s so full of pride, and that’s okay, that’s genuinely okay. But she doesn’t care how much money he has or what he thinks he’s supposed to be able to give her, because he’s already giving her enough with his attention and his heart. He needs to be open to someone loving him and seeing him for who he is. Teagan appreciates him for who she is.

Cam is so destroyed by who he is that he can’t see why anyone would be proud of him. But Teagan is. The problem is that no matter what he does, he always feels one step short of where he needs to be.

He looks at her and says, I don’t think I can do this right now. I’m sorry, Teagan.

And he gets up and leaves.

My heart broke for him, because the boy deserves so much more.

And what makes it devastating rather than just sad is that he isn’t rejecting her. He’s rejecting the version of himself he’s convinced she’ll get tired of. He would rather end it now, while it’s still his decision, than be left later. Which is the same instinct Teagan is carrying about her father, from the opposite direction, and neither of them can see it in the other.

The breakup

Josh is with Britney and she’s being her usual controlling self, not listening to a word he says. She asks what’s wrong with him and he tries — last time we just talked, we had a good time.

And she says, I’m having fun now.

And he says, I’m not.

He tells her they’ve been acting for a while, that they’re not on the same page. And she says, you’re breaking up with me.

Girl, he should have broken up with you a long time ago. Britney is making it all about her, as she always does. Everything in life is a photo opportunity to her. He does break up with her — and he still does the king and queen dance so she can put on a brave face. Then it’s over and he leaves the floor.

She sees her mom and runs up and hugs her. It may be the most genuine thing that she’s ever done.

And yet it is the first unperformed thing Britney does all season, and it lands harder because of what we just learned. Her mother has been trying to get near her for months, and the moment her daughter finally comes to her is the moment her image collapses. Britney can only be reachable when there’s nothing left to manage.

Juliet, correctly

Teagan is with Juliet asking what she did, what she’s supposed to do — and Juliet tells her that if Cam can’t see or believe he’s enough for her, there’s nothing she can do. That’s on him.

She’s not wrong. And I also understand Teagan feeling inadequate and feeling like she did something. That’s hard. Juliet is the best friend who is going to make sure

Then Perry asks Juliet to dance, which is amazing. I think they’d be adorable together. Perry is one of my favorites, so I’m looking forward to that.

Ryder loses the seat

Hayden goes to Ryder and says the principal has asked him to excuse Ryder for Dartmouth.

And I wanted him to lay into him, because Ryder is being an idiot — exercising his last name instead of his mind. He got the accommodation he wanted, through the same channel he’s been condemning, and he doesn’t even hear the irony.

Hayden tells him he isn’t prioritizing the team, which means he isn’t as serious about that seat as he claims, and that at the next regatta he’s losing it. They’re starting Josh.

Ryder needs that seat to impress his grandfather. But here we are.

And the show is very deliberate about this: Ryder loses the seat for not putting the team first, and it’s handed back to a boy who is about to be told he can’t row at all. Which means Hayden’s one genuinely principled decision of the season is going to blow up in the most spectacular possible way, and he has no idea.

The boathouse

Teagan’s at the boathouse just staring, needing a minute, when Josh walks in and asks what she’s doing there. She says her night was a bust.

He asks if everything’s okay, and you can see he’s genuinely concerned. He’s changed. He sees her. And I feel like she sees him too.

She tells him Cam can’t do this right now, and he says he’s sorry, and I don’t think he is, but you know. She says it’s fine, and asks what he’s doing there.

He tells her he broke up with Britney. And she says, oh, so I must be off the hook, she hates somebody more than me now.

Josh thinks that they both hate him. That he sits at the top of both your lists. She has to reitereate to him that she doesn’t hate him and I am not sure they both believe that.

And he looks at her and kisses her.

OH MY

For a second I thought she was going to yell at him. She just looks at him — and the two of them start making out.

This is not how I thought this episode was going to end. I was very much team something else.

But the sequencing is doing all the work, and it’s why the kiss lands instead of feeling cheap. Cam just told her she isn’t allowed to see who he really is. Britney just told Josh she doesn’t want to hear who he really is. Two kids walk into a boathouse having each been refused access to somebody, and the person standing there is the one who has never once asked them to perform.

It’s a rebound and it’s also the truest thing either of them has done all night, and both of those will be a problem by morning.

Crew Girl is streaming now on Netflix.