Review: Dare Me - Bullying, manipulation, and obsessiveness

Dare Me seems like one more teenage show, full of intricate plots and bullying. Yet, you’ll quickly realize that it is not exactly that. 

It is more a story about a woman who doesn’t care about the means, as long as she reaches her goals. Oh, you think I’m talking about Beth (Marlo Kelly)? Think again…

The Coach

From the beginning, the coach (Willa Fitzgerald) is… let’s go with shady. She is full of secrets and half-told stories. Yet, what sets the alarm off for me is the fact that she immediately gets close to one of the girls. This friendship seems to be part of some sort of plan that we are never fully aware of. 

Colette gives you a little feeling of discomfort. Since the beginning, you feel that there is something off there. What exactly does she want? To become a teenager again? Are the adult life pressures crashing her? Is she looking for some naive girl to cover for her? If so, to cover for what exactly?

We end the season with no clear answers. There is a lot to find out, but they give us nothing. Who is Colette? What’s her plan? How and why does she do whatever she is doing? What does she want with Addy? And again, why? Is this woman a sociopath?

Addy

Addy (Herizen F. Guardiola) is Coach’s favorite girl from the beginning. Why? No reason. Oh, and how about Tacy(Alison Thornton), Beth’s sister? She looks irrelevant, and yet, Colette gives her a quite important role. Why? All to attack Beth? To prove that she is in command? Time to ask who is the adult here, right?

You’re never sure about what Colette wants from Addy, but it seems that she is only using her. Addy is a teenager. She trusts the adult who treats her as an equal. Colette makes her believe that she is special. This way, she gains the power to keep her quiet and helpful when it’s time to clean her messes.

 

Values and Respect

This show goes a little further than showing teenage girls trying to be the better one at any cost. That behavior is mostly encouraged by the coach. And that’s when you stop and say, “What the hell?”

She mixes the hunger for victory and success with the lack of respect for others. They can go over whoever they need to reach what they want. Obviously, that can’t be good.

The fights and jealousies produce increasingly serious accidents. Riri’s (Taveeta Szymanowicz) accident is an example of it, and the fact that it had no consequences for Tacy bothers me. 

Beth

Beth is one of the best characters in the show - she is complex, deep, full of anger, and yet… something is missing. We are never given real motives for most of her actions. She hates the coach, and we get it. But why? 

If the squad is her life, why reject or attack the person leading them to the next level from the first second? What’s her pleasure in destroying Colette? Why so much anger, even before she “stole” her best friend? It looks like that even before she arrived, Beth already hated her.

Is it vengeance because of her father’s attitude? It seems that he was the one who chose this coach, right? It doesn’t look enough for me. 

Will’s Death

Sargent Will’s death is supposed to be the greatest shock of the season, or so it seems. Well, it was… but not in the right way. It didn’t bring much more to the story. It just leaves you asking, “What exactly is happening here?” because you don’t know anymore. It meant to bring some depth to the story, but it didn’t.

We end the season without knowing who killed Will (Zach Roerig), but Colette looks pretty guilty to me. Or did Beth get into our minds? 

Colette’s husband isn’t that innocent either, is he? Are they, after all, together in all the plots?

Where are the Adults?

The show tries to present us with a complicated mystery story. Yet, it has a lot of nonsense that upsets the viewer (or maybe it was just me).

I’m tired of these stories about teenagers who do whatever they want with no consequences. The adults are many times some sort of extras. They are the target of the kids’ frustrations, unable to say, “Enough!” Now join an adult behaving as a teenager, and you have Dare Me.

What is new about Dare Me compared to other teenage shows? The friendship between Addy and the Coach, but it is not enough to make the story original.

And the end… What’s about those shoes? They look clean enough for me. They are trashed because Addy put them under a pile of other crap. Why would a mother of a teenage girl look so suspicious to find shoes in the wrong place? Does she know more than we do?

Despite all the questions, the mystery is not enough to keep me watching a second season.