All American is a pivotal, impactful character-driven, ensemble series that cogitates on the transiting of life’s stubble, serenities, growth opportunities and elations. Munificent with the balm of sincerity and a refreshingly open candidness, the show pores over the perplexities and emprises that permeate the adventure called being human.
Season 3 of All American launches with Spencer (the show’s main character, sensational football player, even more heroic human) aboard the bus, journeying from Crenshaw to Beverly Hills. The decision to go with this opening sequence is an immaculate routeway taken by the writers, as it opportunely reaffirms the conceptual through line of “navigating two worlds” (as initially stated by series creator April Blair, and augmented upon through the script writing and leadership of current series showrunner Nkechi Okoro Carroll) as a frontline proponent of the show’s mission statement. It steers our attention to not only the physical distance between the show's two worlds, Crenshaw and Beverly, but chiefly to the innumerable, jarring contrasts and inequalities between them.
Spencer’s character is widely sympathizable and accessible to identify with, especially due to the unbudging weight he lugs of being relied upon as an always-expected-to-be-open human bridge adjoining these two worlds. For Spencer, I imagine that being a buffer between worlds rotates between feeling like a mammoth burden, a virtuous honour to be entrusted as a linkperson, a challenging social responsibility, an opportunity to serve as a catalyst for change, and a chance to instigate communal hope.
When Spencer looks out the window, descrying the community of Crenshaw's surroundings, I see his contemplations as coming not from a low-key, passive plain, but rather from an active ecosystem characterized by a heart-centric championing of his community. Spencer is not merely in observation mode here. He is immersed in a place of deep engagement, and his steadfast loyalty and dedication to his community is palpable. This scene brings to mind how elevating beyond reflection mode into a primed framework of immersive participation is a pivotal step when seeking to enact change.
Spencer has made the decision to leave the comfortable lifestyle in Beverly Hills that he experienced while living with Coach Billy Baker’s family and spend his senior year enrolled at South Crenshaw High. At the end of Season 2, he asked Coach Baker (his coach at Beverly who has now resigned from coaching there) to make the move with him over to Crenshaw High, and an intrigued, gung ho Billy agreed. By selecting this course of action, Spencer is doing his part to help ensure that South Crenshaw High doesn’t become a magnet school, which would leave admission to the school up to the arbitrary fate of a lottery system.
That Spencer made this choice is a testament to his public-spirited inclination to put his community first, above his own comfort, above his smoothest path back to the football championship (which would be staying at Beverly High). Spencer is a humanitarian with a hospitable, condoling heart. He comports with a team-first fibre of being, both on the field and in life.
It is impactful that Olivia Baker (activist, soul hub and bedrock of the Baker family, conscientious, attentive support system to her loved ones, and daughter of Laura Fine-Baker and Billy Baker) has been elected President of the Black Lives Matter Student Caucus. I deduce that Olivia is beginning to comprehend that her attuned empathy, philanthropic sensitivity and unabridged braving of rewiring and alchemizing the status quo are scintillating strengths that she can utilize to lead instrumental shifts and collective reform in society.
Olivia is the leader that you feel prompted and compelled to deposit your trust in. Her willingness to listen wholeheartedly, and her loyalty to her intrinsic values have upraised her patience and tenaciousness, qualities that others attentively and vivaciously respond to in a leader. Her resolute commitment to breeding authentic openness and her noble dedication to calling out and standing up against racism and prejudice have been building connately, from her associateship in women’s peer/personal development group SoLa Muse, to the activism awareness-raising of her “Liv the Truth” podcast hosting, to her new and perhaps most influential role yet as president of the Caucus.
I hope to see Olivia continue to advocate for social justice, civility, and rectitude, putting her zeal, abundant voice and generously vouchsafed hours behind lobbying for what she knows is right. Being such a giving character, and having a history of overextending herself to show up devoutly for others, I am praying that she remains mindful of carving out space for meeting her own needs, while continuing to look out for her causes and comrades.
In Season 1, I felt that Spencer and Asher’s relationship was initially characterized by mistrust and uneasiness. Their relationship has gradually evolved from there, at first growing to cordial teammates with a mutual, albeit terse respect for each other, and later to supportive teammates who receptively share a friend circle. Now, at the outset of Season 3, I was reveling at seeing Asher’s face grin with such genuine enthusiasm when Spencer drops by the Baker residence. That Asher is displaying conviviality and warmth when greeting Spencer, without residual tentativeness or misgivings, speaks volumes about the kindly progression of their relationship.
With Spencer and Olivia gradually fathoming how entwined and compatible they truly are, amid Asher and Olivia’s current romantic relationship, and with Spencer getting set to play football for the opposing team this season, I do sense that the dynamic between Spencer and Asher will likely tread towards complex, unsettled territory.
The show’s writers have constantly excelled at approaching its characters with the utmost of care, without invoking larger-than-life soap opera-esque drama for drama’s sake. I greatly admire that way that this series tenderly reigns-in the emotionally heightened moments with an earnest, layered milieu. I think that All American thrives at articulating consequential scenes with a true-to-life tact, rather than resorting to cinematic and over-the-top inflection. The character arcs unfold unstilted and incrementally, which pulls viewers in closer to the boatloads of realism inherent in this show. In my perspective, character evolution in All American continually feels earned and realistic, and I’m confident that the Asher-Olivia-Spencer entangled quagmire will be broached with a thoughtful and measured delicacy.
It is heartwarming to be privy to the success of Coop (songwriter aficionado and Spencer’s longtime best pal) and Layla (bold and enterprising music producer-manager, whom has dated Spencer) as a musical team, to rejoice in their own buoyant reactions to their recent crescendo of progress. Both Coop and Layla navigated trying times in Season 2, so it is assuaging to see them finding entrustment, congeniality and fun-loving levity in each other through their shared artistic pursuit and friendship. Hearing Coop mirthfully read the flat-out endorsement of a review that they received from their summer tour, and experiencing Layla triumphantly relish in their teamwork and career fulfillment is so satisfying on a sentient level.
After taking several personal strides forward as a father, and as an individual intent on making a difference in the synergetic social fabrics, we are reminded of Billy Baker’s abstruseness when he comes face-to-face with his past indiscretions once again. This time it arrives in the form of some untoward history with Superintendent D’Angelo Carter, from their high school days. Carter’s choice to raise the required GPA average for football eligibility at Crenshaw High comes alongside his reveal that Billy subjected him to teenage bullying. D’Angelo remarked that this lead to his teenaged self being dispatched off to boarding school, a severely unwelcomed outcome for him.
D’Angelo is promoting equality and accountability by ensuring that football players are not given special treatment academically. However, it is clear that he is also relishing the fact that this time, he holds the cards and is in a position of power over Billy. D’Angelo is aware that his decision will put Billy in a tough spot as a football coach. In D’Angelo’s mind, watching Billy squirm a bit seems to be an added perk of his policy ruling. D’Angelo’s resentment about his past encounters with Billy appears to be a consideration firmly in play, wheedling his decision. Contrastingly, Superintendent D’Angelo Carter is spot-on with his ethically valid point about maintaining bias-free objectivity in the school. The personal and the socio-political are chaffering ruggedly, and this is gearing up to be a particularly fascinating storyline.
It is disconcerting watching Patience (budding songwriter and Coop’s girlfriend) repress the factual reality from Coop about why she left the tour early. Having recently gotten back together, I’d really like to see them start their reunion off on the right foot, with trust and transparency behind the relationship wheel, in their car of partnership.
Laura Fine-Baker is a passionate, dedicated attorney, a reliable, invested mother to Olivia and Jordan (and second-mother figure to Spencer), an approachable, generous and warm person, and Billy’s wife whom he is presently separated with, but on increasingly good terms with, as co-parents, friends, and as a potential future more-than-friends pairing.
It is no fluke that All American ascends to its peak levels when Laura’s scenes are well integrated into the show’s story arcs that carry implications extending beyond her immediate family unit.
Mo’s impromptu, unsolicited visit to the Baker residence to speak to Laura about Tyrone is marked by a heightened tenseness. Laura wears her collected District Attorney metaphorical hat of professionalism in the intensity of the moment when interacting with Mo, but you can tell that she is perturbed by Mo’s surprise drop-in and verbal pushiness. Laura is such a genuine, straight-up character, and one who can foster a comfortable, amicable relationship with just about any character she interacts with in a matter of seconds. Turning to Laura as a barometer for a moment, I’ll say this: That Laura of all people is less than trusting towards Mo’s claimed wholesome intentions suggests a lot about Mo’s potential for fishy dubiousness.
Laura is navigating confusing territory, as her obligations as a DA conflicts at times with her role as Crenshaw community ally and Coop’s entrusted source of morality. Her support for Crenshaw is driven by her ethics, values and commitment to equality. Yet, Laura viewing Spencer as a second son spiritually also gives her a familial-oriented investment in the wellbeing and flourishing of Spencer’s extended, spiritual community, which Coop is a central part of.
I am glad that Laura chooses to confide in Billy about Mo’s visit. If anyone understands the sticky complications of umpiring the personal and the professional, it is Billy Baker. I’d like to see Billy and Laura discover an influx of common ground in their shared experiences of the difficulties of balancing their involved personal ties with the impartiality and stoicism required in their professional positions. Maybe this shared commonality will help both of them recognize more insights about additional past deterrents that contributed to their marriage diming, prompting more open conversations and hopefully setting the table for an eventual second chance.
I nervously paused with reservations at Billy’s comment to Gracie (Spencer’s mom) insinuating that Mika wasn’t thriving in the passion department in his relationship with Gracie. To date, All American has done an admirable job at contextualizing Billy and Grace’s close friendship as being principally in service of Spencer and his proclivities. I have given accolades to the writing staff for not crossing into unnatural romance territory with Billy and Grace, a move that I feel would be more about creating dramatic ripples and improvidently reconfiguring character relationship dynamics than about flowing with and honouring the show’s characters and their incurred essences.
With Billy having moved back to his old Crenshaw stomping grounds and with him spending a considerable amount of time at the James residence offering advocacy to Spencer, it might feel tempting for the writers to re-open the Billy and Gracie flirtation floodgates. I hope that the show allows Grace and Billy’s relationship to remain durably platonic. I think resisting the stirring-things-up urge here would be in the show’s best interest, as the adjustments and changes this would ask of Spencer would likely take his focus away from his community and from football. I think Grace and Billy should be doing all they can to help Spencer have an optimal, undisruptive senior year. Gracie and Billy being together would be aviating their impulsive predilections higher on the importance scale than Spencer’s consistent needs, which wouldn’t be consistent with who Gracie and Billy are as characters. It would also generate dialysis in the Baker household as well as in the Baker-James friendships.
There’s also the matter of the tropical rapport that is daintily restocking between Laura and Billy to consider. While separated, Laura and Billy are promulgating a leagued coordination. They have a compatibility and chemistry that goes beyond a doctrinal co-parenting relationship. I hanker for a chance to watch Laura and Billy go on a season-long unfurling journey that leads them to realize that with their current self-imposed, respectful boundaries intact, they are actually gelling in the most healthiest, cohesive way they ever have right now, and that a love deeper than they have ever known is feasible to be found in each other.
The scene where Laura Fine-Baker, Billy Baker and Gracie James find themselves in the same room at the school is a series defining moment for me, encapsulating evolution, maturation and mindfulness. The sequence opens with Laura noticing Billy and Grace enjoying a playful moment with each other. At first, as she approaches the room, Laura ephemerally flinches at seeing Gracie and Billy sharing a friendly, innocent laugh, as if the past’s memory bank is momentarily reconvening leeriness and misgivings for a split second.
Laura then moves past the residual sting, tentatively enters the room, and invites Spencer to join the upcoming Baker family weekly dinner. Gracie is on her way out, and just as she is about to leave, Laura astutely diagnoses that the burry history between herself, Gracie and Billy doesn’t get to have dibs on their present tense any longer. With her earlier tentativeness now in the rear-view, Laura rises above the blemishes of this trio’s history and widens the scope of her dinner invitation, asking Gracie and Dillon (Gracie's youngest son and Spencer's brother) to attend too. Gracie accepts Laura’s invite with happy tears in her eyes, and there is caveat-free relief, forgiveness, acceptance and a clean-slate imbuing the airspace.
I appreciate that Billy takes a moment after Gracie departs the room to express gratitude to Laura for her benevolence. Laura’s gesture indicates that she is truly letting bygones be bygones. Billy would have likely hoped for cordiality from Laura when it comes to Gracie, but yet again Laura ends up going above and beyond and brings a welcoming, friendly graciousness to her interaction with Gracie and her subsequent invitation.
Laura is my choice for “character of the episode” award, even resting on the strength of her conversation with Gracie alone. By the time she reveals to Billy that she dropped by to honour her long-standing tradition with cooking and hand-delivering one of Billy’s favourite meals to him, as an offering of good luck for his forthcoming first game of the football season, even as they are currently separated, Laura’s thorough goodness is filling my cup with the genuine juice called marvelling.
Throughout Jordan (Pragmatic and diplomatic, football quarterback for Beverly, Billy and Laura's son, and Spencer’s brother-adjacent friend) and his girlfriend Simone’s relationship, I’ve felt that we’ve seen Jordan spend a considerable amount of time deliberating on Simone’s affectivities. Jordan’s love for Simone traverses beyond rumination. At every turn, Jordan has proactively taken tangible, concrete steps to put Simone first. He has been veritably loyal and profoundly supportive. While Simone has been appreciative of Jordan (making Jordan a football highlight reel in the season 2 finale comes to mind), I had been waiting to see Simone prioritize Jordan consistently with similar assiduity.
In this episode, after giving up her baby for adoption, Simone opens up to her father, revealing that she is momentarily avoiding Jordan because she knows how much he loves her baby. In a moment where I would have expected Simone to be chiefly grappling with her own teetering feelings about the adoption, it is tremendously affecting to witness her resonant sensitivity towards Jordan. I admire and appreciate the level of prevalence and consideration in which she gave to Jordan’s feelings here, while honouring and working through her own emotionally strenuous time. I am having an emotional response to the tendrils of movement made here in their relationship, which is incredible considering Jordan and Simone barely interacted in this episode. However, with Simone’s character set to feature in the All American spinoff series in the works, I’m apprehensive that this doesn’t bode well for this couple’s future together.
Upon receiving some particularly perceptive and timely advice from his brother Dillon, Spencer comes to recognize how his decision to leave Beverly Hills carries reverberations that extend beyond school politics and team jersey logos. While living with the Bakers and playing football at Beverly, Spencer gradually developed a brotherly bond with Jordan. Through spending time with Spencer, Jordan has matured into a more self-aware and decisive individual.
Jordan also has grown closer with his sister Olivia following a period of sibling disconnect, and their reconnection was partially prompted by Spencer’s deep kindred spirit-ship with Olivia. Spencer’s presence in his life continues to positively impact Jordan’s world colossally. With Spencer’s thoughts largely occupied on being unfairly misrepresented by the journalist, Spencer momentarily misplaces his grasp on how his leaving Beverly will affect Jordan.
Spencer’s voicemail message to Jordan near the episode’s end is heartily moving. It outclasses the traditional brand of apology, which often comes from a reactive place. Spencer’s apology bucks the mediocre apology trend by being proactive. It is reassuring and receptive when Spencer lets Jordan know that he values their friendship substantially. Spencer is teeming with glorious initiative when he expresses definitively that he won’t let his changing zip code infringe upon their brotherhood.
Senior year’s brand of stresses, college looming, anticipated fluctuation in romantic relationships for both Jordan and Spencer, and no longer having the built-in buffer and springboard of being teammates that organically leads to conversations shared may make Spencer’s pledge to prioritize their friendship a bit harder to sustain than he realizes. Their friendship feels paramount to both characters’ life learning curves. I think it will be an interesting odyssey watching Spencer and Jordan, who often activate each other’s ontogeny runway, seek to preserve their bond, as the pressures proliferate and the situational infrastructure in which their friendship was built goes through modification after modification.
I am quizzically circumspect about Layla and Spencer’s seemingly extempore decision to get back together. In the second half of Season 2, post-breakup, Spencer and Layla grew much more real with each other. They stomached the tough conversations head-on, and they came through for each other with stalwart support during trying times. I recognize that in this season 3 premiere, the details surrounding what occurred in the summer aren’t yet revealed, so that does tinker with what we can reasonably expect with Layla and Spencer in this particular episode. However, my concern about their romantic reconciliation stems from how in this episode, I thought their dialect of sharing felt glaringly pitted in their screen time together. I think these two characters have a lot to talk about, and that there is some serious parrying transpiring between them.
I also feel that in this episode, Spencer has not been forthright with Layla about the extent of his closeness with Olivia, about how his connection with Olivia has been gradually fructifying as a subtle, surging backdrop, gathering momentum and revealing itself as the budding real deal. During this episode, due to Spencer curtaining the truth about his summer (likely originating out of a sense of compassion and sensitivity for Layla and her feelings), the breadth of the one-of-a-kind vinculum shared between Spencer and Olivia is left understated in Layla’s mind. Also, we haven’t seen Layla have a heart-to-heart with Spencer lately about the sundry of ways that she is evolving, including through starting a record label and managing Coop’s music career, and also through her gallant openness to pullulating her trust with her father, after a lifetime of feeling acutely disappointed by him.
I intuit that this relationship regrouping between Layla and Spencer is starting off with misimpressions, under-sharing, withholding, and truncations of the truth in play. Their reunion is laden with crevices and cavities, to the point where the footing that their relationship is hinging on feels fickle and feeble. I anticipate that their recoupling will be fleeting, and I hope that they’ll be able to salvage their friendship when their college try of reinvigorating their romance runs out of wiggle room and contingencies.
It is so nice to hear laughter at the Baker dinner table, with Gracie and Dillon in attendance and enjoying themselves. I love seeing Gracie and Laura both qualm-free and in a good place with each other. How meaningful it must be for Spencer to see his mom, Billy and Laura all share a dinner table and enjoy each other’s company.
I am happy to see Olivia and Spencer strive for balance and offer mutual support in their connection, even as they experience some challenging hurdles. There are heaps of synergy and alignment between these two, boundless cosmos of love. I am glad to see her praise and embrace Spencer following his honest vulnerability with Billy. I am relieved to see Spencer’s forthright candour with Billy about the numbness flare up in his arm. Spencer’s trust in Billy Baker continues to accentuate. Spencer and Billy’s new situation at Crenshaw finds them integrating their dreams and ambitions, banking on the concerted, craning nature of their special connection. I think they are seeing firsthand how having unwavering faith in each other and deep-seated alignment is imperative for the fulfilment and custom definitions of success they are each after.
All American is a series that chronicles and ponders the understated swerves, predicaments and delights in our lives. Equipped with an ensemble of multi-dimensional, ever-germinating characters, conscientious and thought out writing that examines the gnarled intricacies we encounter, a patient maturity, a shrewd, organic sense of perspicuity about where its arcs are headed, and an unflinching commitment to raw frankness, All American’s season 3 premiere is a vital, rewarding documentation of the stammering quandaries of humanness.
