So I know there's gotta be Secret Life fans out there....for those of you that are, have you seen the promos for the show coming on after it? It's called Make It or Break It, about a team of would-be Olympic gymnasts. I like the premise and it looks like a good follow-up show to Secret Life...I'm liking my Monday night summer tv so far!

Wow, I remember hearing about this earlier in the year . I was a gymnast for while, trained every day after school for 2 years, was never near Olympic or even Championship standard though.

Should be interesting. There's going to be a hell of a lot of stunts, I wonder how they'll handle those. Because I doubt many of the actors can do much and that insurance would let them if they could (and they'd be majorly screwed for filming if an accident happened.) But in that little clip they seemed to be the same people. Some good change overs and SFX.

Nice to see Peri Gilpin get some more work as well. But some of the actors look a little old, especially as there will probably be a few seasons build up to an Olympics.

I'm looking forward to seeing Anthony Starke on a regular basis!

That's so cool that you were a gymnast! I don't know if I could ever have that kind of discipline, especially to be Olympic caliber. I think the show will definitely be interesting to see all the work that goes into training to be an elite level gymnast. I know I was obsessed w/ the whole competition during last year's Olympics - and yeah, it should be cool to see all the stunt work involved!

Well I didn't really have the discipline (or skill) to carry on doing it to the exclusion of every other part of my social life when I started high school. My family and decided it wasn't worth it just like Peri Gilpin's character seems to be wondering.

I think this could be a hit for ABC Family, watching gymnastics is a lot of people's favourite part of the Olympics and it fits quite well with Secret Life I think.

Fun fact: this show used to be called Perfect 10. I suspect the name changed when someone at ABC Family figured out what's at Perfect10.com (which is not at all safe for work, unless you happen to work in porn).

The other possible reason for the name change, although the web site would be a great reason why, is ABC Family has another new series starting this summer called "10 Things I Hate about You" and I guess they want to avoid confusion.

Interesting about the title. I think Make It or Break It works, though...kind of a good metaphor for the Olympic AND teenage life experience, right?

Yeah, I also think it's a good follow-up to Secret Life. It's appealing for the same kind of reason, but it's still different enough with the kinds of characters, relationships and of course, the whole gymnastics thing :P

Happy Birthday, Anthony (Steve Tanner) Starke! Looking forward to seeing you on this show!

Third reason for eliminating the "perfect 10" is that in the elite (meaning Olympic/World Champion level) you can't get a perfect 10 anymore. They changed the scoring system so that it's open ended and now gymnasts get scores in the 13-15 range. Some of the Olympians in Beijing were getting up to 17.

Anyway as a long time gymnastics fan I can almost garantee this show will be a festival of innacuracies. From just the few promo I counted at least 3-4 major things that didn't seem very realistic.

Well, in TV they sacrifice accuracy for ease of story telling. I usually just snark on what I know is wrong and enjoy the humor that results.

Starting with the fact that all of the girls shown look way too tall? Also, the scene where "The one they found on a PLAYGROUND!" runs towards the vault springboard and then her feet are shown taking off at the weirdest angle I've ever seen, followed by a huge gasp. :::GASP!:::: I've seen vault crashes, but never one that looked quite like that. Yeah, um... no.

As a former gymnast I'm sure I'll check this out. However, if this is aimed at the Secret Life fans, I'm pretty sure I'll hate it. (I'm still shaking my head in wonder at what the hell Molly Ringwald was thinking.)

But here's to hoping that the snark is plentiful!

Yeah, I can see how those little inaccuracies might annoy hardcore fans (when I see movies about soccer like She's The Man, I'm like...really? REALLY?!) But I think for the casual gymnastics fan, those won't matter as much...and I agree w/ Susan that when it comes to TV shows, the storytelling trumps realism. I mean, as long as it's real enough and it's enjoyable, you know? I think it'll be enjoyable

Actually I saw a picture of Nastia Liukin the 2008 Olympic AA champ with some of the actresses and she was taller than them, but of course Nastia is unusually tall for an elite gymnast 5'4 or so.) they could all stand to buff a bit, none of them have the musclature of a real athlete.

And the vault had me laughing, if she had done that in real life she'd not be able to get over the vault. She'd probably bump into it.

And while Nadia Commenci got scouted from a playground it's not likely that would happen today.

None of the girls look like top level gymnasts and yes she should have done a nose dive into the vault but I am going to try and look passed those things because a) they aren't chosing girls based on gymnastic bodies and skills, but acting and b) I'm sure its very difficult to get the stunts exactly right when they have to switch between actors and stunt gynasts and make it look like the same person. Even if they had offered a role to an actual ex professional gymnast chances are she wouldn't have been able to do her own stunts anyway because of insurance and what happens to the series if she badly injures herself.

The fact that they are even attempting a gymnast based series with apparently lots of action and stunts is very ambitious in itself, so whilst it will be snark worthy I give them snaps for that. I enjoy "Secret Life" purely for the unbelivable comedy value Brenda Hampton's idea of "real "teen" (or even human) life" brings to it so it can't get any "worse" than that.

Exactly. If someone actually left the springboard at that angle, she'd crash into the horse with her stomach. In fact that shot actually looks to me like someone ran, jumped onto the board and then just jumped straight ahead - no rotation whatsoever.



Right, and it's been awhile since I read the Mary Lou / Bela book, but wasn't Nadia 6 or so at the time? That's hardly the same as finding a teen / pre teen and turning her into an elite gymnast.



I don't disagree, but it's harder to suspend disbelief if the inaccuracies are so blatant. But this is a determination I'm making based on a promo. Who knows what the storyline will actually be, let alone the quality of the writing or acting. It may be great... or not. Who knows? We'll all just have to wait and see.

I wonder if they could have just gone ahead and cast gymnasts into these roles? I mean let's face it, this kind of show isn't attracting Academy/Emmy award calibur acting and it might be easier to train athletes to act rather than vice versa.

I would think that gymnasts might be more interested in pursuing their gymnastic career rather than risk getting hurt doing a TV show.

Even if they did get ex gymnasts who therefore looked the part and would be able to complete the stunts accurately, they still wouldn't be allowed to do a lot of the routines personally because of the risks of getting injured and then the headache that would cause the production. Imagine if the lead broke a limb badly and would be in plaster/bed for months, and it wouldn't always be easy to write into the script. Not to mention that a lot of accuracy is sacrified for the sake of story, not just actors, like most medical and cop shows could be more accurate they just chose not to be because they want A to happen so C does down the line.

Having said that I wouldn't be surprised if real life gymnasts did pop up, especially Shawn Johnson because she already has a connection with ABC due to her DWTS win.

I would love see some real life gymnasts guest on the show! I think Shawn Johnson would also be a pretty good bet. I think she actually also did a cameo on Secret Life last fall. Since that's MIOBI's lead-in show, I wouldn't be surprised if she popped up on this too, would make sense right? I'd like to see Nastia Lukin on there as well.

Good call on the injury risk factor too. I mean, obviously they're going to use stunt doubles for long shots of the gymnastics but yeah, you can't get the actual actors injured on set! I saw a 10 minute clip of the show on Facebook (the link is here) that shows a TON of the gymnastics and stunts, and I think they do a pretty seamless job of transitioning between the gymnastics and the actors themselves. That, plus it sets up the show to have some pretty intense rivalries. It kinda reminds me of that line in Stick It - "It's not called Gym-Nice-tics!" :P

I love that line. In fact, maybe that should be added to the thread title.

haha...I'm not sure how to change the thread title? That is a pretty classic line, I have to say. I think that girl Lauren is going to be one of those characters I'm going to love to hate. The actress who plays her (Cassie Scerbo) played Brooke in Bring It On 2 and she was REALLY good at playing the mean girl. Yeah, she's probably not going to make gymnastics nice, haha.

Series premiere tonight!!! Finally. I've been seeing a ton of promos on ABC Family. Are ya'll excited to check it out tonight???

I am! Nice to see ABCFAM promoting this show. Hope it does well.

I think maybe you PM a mod. I think that quote should definitely go in the title it would seem to sum this show up completely.

The 10 min promo was interesting. I think they are doing a good job of transitioning between the stunt gymnasts and the actors so it seems real even if a lot of the footwork/positions/take offs are wrong. And that scene between Peri Gilpin and her husband rang very true to me. I was never good enough to be able to compete internationally but I and my family have up a lot of other stuff for a few years to have me train every day and travel to competitions all around the UK.

I don't expect it to be at all accurate and I will snark on that but also looking forward to it as it is ambitious and somewhat different to the average teen show.

I watched the premiere, and the nasty girl is officially nonredeemable for me. Screwing with another girls vault setting so she has a potentially fatal fall, that's just beyond wrong. I actually found it rather unbelievable that the main character could supposedly fall on her head/neck like that and be up and able to vault just a short time later. I would think any gym with any sense of liability and litigious possibilities would force her into an ambulance, no matter how she says she feels. I'm not a doctor, but everything I've ever read says accidents with potential head/neck/spinal injuries are to be taken extremely seriously. Even if she thinks she's fine, she could still have injuries that would mess with her balance and awareness, and possibly cause even more damage in trying another vault. I'll probably watch the show again next week, but if they make me try to feel for the mean girl or have further serious accidents with no repercussions, I'm out.

I thought so too, but it seems like they aren't going to try. I think the new gym sets her up as openly being the main villain (as opposed to just being secretly bitchy) that the other three are competing against.

I work in gymnastics and we've been getting pretty heavy promos within the industry. I'd like to recommend this show because -- lets face it -- shows about a particular sport always promote and create interest. I was suprised however by the language, and therefore I won't be recommending it to our young families. I'm sure the pre-teens/young teens will watch it anyway, but I'll have to warn the parents of our younger students that it may not be appropriate, and that's a shame because I know the girls would like to watch a show about their chosen sport.

While I've been known to make my husband blush with my cursing, and I'm the farthest thing from a prude, I certainly don't use those words at work (even relatively minor ones), and I wouldn't expect a show on ABC Family, aimed primarily at pre-teen girls, to throw in an "ass" here and there. In the end, it's probably a blessing because I'm sure the themes will eventually be inappropriate for very young viewers so maybe the language will run those families off before we get to the bulemia/anorexia, unexpected pregnancy, fooling around with a coach storylines.

That mean girl is just nasty. Not even a lovable Regina from Mean Girls mean. I tried to sympathize with her. I did. Then the show just went on...I mean it would be different if she worked extremely hard and stayed late, but it's just another spolied teen.

Interesting show though! Not entirely accurate, but I liked it. I'm tuning it next week!

I agree the mean girl is just too evil. She almost ruins the show for me. Villains are great and all, but they need some complexity to work. I just want this one to disappear.

I thought the show was pretty bad (mostly due to the extreme lack of realism), but I can't stay away from anything gymnastics-related so I'm sure I'll keep watching it. There was a lot of actual gymnastics- I would think this is really limiting the people who will want to watch the show because I can't imagine enjoying it unless you enjoy watching gymnastics.

Being a huge gymnastics fan, I had to watch it. I thought it would suck. It was better than I expected! The coach was driving me crazy - I couldn't place him! Finally, Google became my friend and I realized he used to be on ER. I remembered him as hotter. Maybe it was the lack of hair this time.

I'll keep watching. But I'll also realize maybe I only thought it was pretty good because I had just watched Secret Life of an American Teenager....

They're really going to have to work on making Lauren likable on some level. Right now, she's a top-of-the-line Grade A bitch and I could care less that she has an eating disorder and daddy's little girl issues. Even though her argument that the new girl just gets to waltz in from the street and become part of their team overnight was somewhat fair, nothing she did made me want to see things from her POV. Whereas the other characters have some room to grow or show different sides of their personality, Lauren has no light or shade whatsoever.

However, the show itself is decent enough. It's not Masterpiece Theater, but it realizes that and works within its parameters accordingly. It's a decent partner for The Secret Life.

I'm actually kind of interested in seeing how Payson is going to develop. She's a good kid, but she's wound so tight and has invested so much into her sport, you know she's heading for a major breakdown. That could be good TV.

ETA: Is it just me or did the head coach look like a Latino version of Jeremy Sisto, particularly around the eyes?

I enjoyed it for what it was - a cute little summer show. I wasn't expecting much (especially since Stick It was so bad). I'll definitely be watching again.

Can anyone explain to me the importance of being the top 3? I never really caught that. I mean, the rich girl will still be going to nationals, but as 4th on the team. What does that mean? I guess I missed all of that. Plus, wouldn't it already be decided who was going to Nationals and who wasn't? You would probably have to qualify through other tournaments and such. I assume the whole competition had to do with getting into the top 3...but I still missed what was going on there.

I think that the whole team would compete for the team prize, but only the top three would qualify for the all around and event finals competitions.

At least, that's what I thought to help it make sense to me.

From what I got from the show, only the top 3 go to nationals and compete. I thought that the rest, 4th to 7th, go to show their support/back up.

Overall, they did too much and went too far, for me. The premise is certainly rich for lots of tasty drama, and eye candy, though.

The wacky mother is just bizarre. I liked what little exposure we had to the wheelchair brother.

The best storyline going forward, for me, will be watching how the departed club director will handle his conscience and his need to crush the newbie. He is now and forever under the thumb of the devil (Brian, Loren's dad). Cool stuff.

Well, it was better than I expected and my favorite actor got a lot more screen time than I was expecting. Anthony Starke did a fantastic job as Steve Tanner; very manipulative and sneaky. I'm no expert in gymnastics but the routines did seem pretty easy compared to what I've seen on TV but I wouldn't expect the top level gymnasts to risk injury for a TV show. I'm looking forward to next week and more schemes!

I dunno. Sometimes a "villain" has to be shallow. This isn't high drama, it's sports drama, and those somewhat cartoony bad guys are pretty standard. You accept it, because its part of the formula.


Actually I got kind of eye rolly at both of them. The brother comes off as fairly normal for the most part, but the wheelchair thing comes off as such a "plug in cliche" that its kind of offputting. It's so... "Planned Diveristy, Yay!" (only NOT "Yay", 'cause planning it ruins it)

As for the mother? Did we really need Jinx Shannon? That's who this is another version of. And the kid taking care of the mother. Whoopie! Again, it's kind of a paint-by-numbers character choice.

Really the two of them bothered me FAR more than the cackling one-dimensional whiny rich-bitch girl, who's stereotyping is at least useful to move the default plot along.

Traditionally on a team, a coach puts his best gymnast last and the weakest on any given event goes first. Judges know this and give the higher scores to the later competitors. Even if the first gymnast is awesome, the judges will assume the others will be even better, so they don't want to give the first person such a high score that they can't score the likely better gymnasts even higher. So, while theoretically any of the gymnasts on the national team could score high enough to medal, the top three (the last three on the team to perform) have the best chance.

That's from my gymnastics experience, which was approximately a bazillion years ago, so it's entirely possible there's new rules that exist now that make the top three thing even more concretely important. But the basic point is that it's not really a fair fight - only certain competitors ever really have a shot at placing.

I thought it was okay, but the girls on the show need serious acting lessons. Especially Payson. At first I thought that she was just over it, but then the show is like, no she's super focused. Wah?

I think the thing I appreciate the most about the show, is that the girls, with the exception of Emily, are appropriately muscular to be credible gymnasts.



I could care less about making Lauren being likable. But she's the only one of the actress that exuded any real emotion to me. Even if that emotion was raving bitch. At least she was expressing something, unlike dead eyes Payson, and blah eyes Kaylee.

I'm intrigued, but this show is setting up to be horribly cliche.

Is anybody else wondering what Lauren's dad had on the coach that got him to go to Denver? At first the guy didn't want to go to Denver but he changed his mind after Lauren's dad showed him the photo that he got from the PI. I guess in his line of work the most obvious choice would be an inappropriate relationship with a gymnast, but of course it could be anything.

That is true of the team competition, you put your weakest gymnast up first and then so on and so forth.

However in the elite world, gymnasts compete at Nationals as individuals. The represent their club but they don't compete as a team. This mostly becuase some clubs only have one or two elites who qualify for nationals. There are only a few gyms in the country who can field 4-5 senior elites at once.

Gymnasts have to get a certain qualifying score at a prior meet from the season (or if you competed at Worlds/Olympics the previus year you can automatically qualify) so it really doesn't matter where you rank in your club as long as you get the qualifying score.

And yes the gymnastics displayed was much much easier than elite gymnastics, they were doing level 9/level ten stuff. And the actress who plays Emily needs to work out and get more musclar, she looks like she could barely do a pushup much less be a gymnast.

And the whole situation with the vault was so innacurate it was hilarious.

I think what has made Lauren unsympathetic is the lack of remorse she showed at tall girl's (I forget her name) possible injury. I could understand her being careless and just changing the form not thinking through the consequences. If they had flashed to Lauren gasping in horror at seeing the girl land on her neck (which made me gasp and cringe) I could have had some pity cause teenagers do stupid things. However Lauren showed no remorse or sympathy (kind of sociopathic, in a way.) and therefor I cannot like her or feel for her.

Also even though the smarter thing would have been to get in the ambulance, she has the right the to refuse medical attention. Well if she's a minor her mother has that right then. Of course, the mom could be charged with negligence, but I am over thinking this I am sure.

Yes, everyone did their first vault, and then everyone did their second. I cannot forgive that nonsense.

But overall, compared with the innaccuracies in SKATING movies...

Yeah, that was a little hard to swallow. Plus the Payson's revoluationary "...never before landed in competition... might be the next Olympic Gold Vault..." looked damn like a standard Yurchenko to me. Not to mention the short vault runway and the fact that apparently at "The Rock" beam mounts during competition are optional. Hell, I say, why risk a fall during the mount? If you can start your routine by just standing on the beam, why not? Except... no.

But that's just me. Probably the casual viewer doesn't nitpick this much.

But then again, does this show have casual viewers who aren't big enough fans of gymnastics to notice the discrepancies? Which makes me wonder, why did they (writers, producers, etc.) choose to set the story in the world of elite gymnastics, of which most fans would be familiar? Wouldn't it have been better to frame the story with something like... the Rock is holding an internal meet to determine who gets to go to the American Invitational Meet for Level 10's or some such made up thing? Then the viewers wouldn't have to wonder why these Elite gymnasts are not performing skills as difficult as Nastia or Shawn performed last year. Perhaps framing the story around the quest for the Olympics does add drama, but I would think that there is still drama to be mined in Level 10 gymnastics.

But again, maybe that's just me.

Lauren also basically blamed it all on Emily herself, for the unpardonable sin of being better than her. You know in that last scene, she was totally thinking, "if you'd had the good grace to stay down after I tried to kill you, my dad wouldn't have had to blackmail the coach into leaving the club!"

I finally finished watching the pilot, and even though it's got a lot problems, I found it enjoyable as a "summer-lite" show. I'm not very knowledgeable in regards to gymnastics (my own gymnastics experience being very limited and definitely not anywhere near elite) but I did watch a lot of the Olympics this summer. So even though I can't pick up every flaw, I definitely catch some of them. But that didn't really detract from my viewing.

I definitely agree that Lauren pretty much has no redeeming qualities (aside from not caring that she could have permanently damaged or even killed Emily, she was also pretty quick to throw her "friend" under the bus for a contract violation in order to have her way and just a general rich-bitch) but you know, sometimes you kind of need a good, evil villain. But they need to stick with keeping her evil, because I'm going to find it very difficult to accept her if they do try to redeem her, as she's dug herself a pretty deep hole to climb out of.

One thing that I did like is that not all of the girls are rich and well-off. Lauren and Kaylie definitely are, and Payson's family seems pretty middle of the road, and Emily's family obviously struggles but it's nice to see a range because I know there are a lot of families with would-be Olympians who struggle to pay for training/coaches/equipment, etc. Not everyone is rich, so it's nice to see that reflected in the show from the get-go, instead of just having the poor little new girl trying to make it against the rich bitches.



I'm definitely curious about this. My thoughts were running along the same lines, but if it was an inappropriate relationship with a gymnast (who is probably a lot younger than the coach) then he'd definitely risk losing his job, because what parent would want him around their child? I don't think Disney will go that far (ie, risk making him a pedo), so my guess is the photos aren't that bad, but we'll see.

Overall, I enjoyed it. I'll be back for more. It's summer, and it helps fill up my quota of cheesy shows.

Yeah, I don't see them going that route at all. My guess is one of the (married) mothers.

Count me as another viewer who was surprised by the language - and also, Lauren's purging. And did anyone else get the idea from the preview for next week's episode that Kaylie and her boyfriend are going to have sex? It doesn't bother me personally, I was just surprised because the target audience for this show seems like it would be a young one. But who knows, maybe the target audience isn't the preteen age group.



It would be really interesting if it were Payson's mom, especially because Payson's all, "I gave you my life!" to the coach and because Payson's parents have supposedly been together for so long.



Yeah - I'm one of them. I am certainly a gymnastics fan, but not a hardcore one. I have danced for 14 years (and cheered for about 4 years) so while I have some knowledge of gymnastics, it isn't enough to notice the discrepancies. Anyways, I enjoyed the premiere. The acting and writing is much better than Secret Life (just my opinion!), and it's also got an interesting premise. I'll definitely keep watching.

I did notice some of the discrepancies, even though I'm 8 years removed from full time gymnastics on a different continent and not really The Elite at all. There were many, but I did find it enjoyable overall. Lauren is 200% bitch right now but I have to wonder if she will have more depth as Candace Cameron Bure as her possible step mother is introduced.



That is true, but since this the the media, there might well be an innapropriate (alleged) relationship between someone and the coach. Were I came from it practically made all the gossip even if it wasn't at all true and just 11 year olds thinking they were funny. Yet I can't imagine TV drama leaving it alone, HBO recently had a sucessful arc depticing this during In Treatment.