Previewing All American Season 6
New episodes of All American come out on Mondays at 8. (www.imdb.com).
April 11, 2024
Zach Myers, Journalism Club Member
In a little under a month, one of the most popular shows on the CW network will be premiering its sixth season. All American depicts the true story of Spencer Paysinger, a young football player growing up in a crime riddled suburb of Los Angeles, California called Crenshaw.
In the show, Spencer James (played by Daniel Ezra) is recruited by the head coach of Beverly Hills high school football team, Billy Baker (played by Taye Diggs), to play for the best high school team in California. He moves Spencer into his luxury home in Beverly Hills, which includes Billy's wife and attorney Laura Baker (played by Monet Mazur), Billy’s son and starting quarterback for Beverly Hills Jordan Baker (played by Michael Evans Behling), and Jordan’s sister Olivia (played by Samantha Logan). Throughout his journey, Spencer experiences extreme hardships as he tries to balance his life in Beverly Hills as a star football player with personal dramas related to death, relationships, and maintaining a healthy family life.
Season 5, which is the most recent season of All American, may have been the most tumultuous yet, and while there are many moments in the show that could be considered important, these are the critical plot ones (in chronological order). Starting with Episode 1 is the breakup of the main couple of the show, Spencer and Olivia. They had many conflicts leading up to their breakup in the previous season, namely related to an article she was going to publish related to bountygate-esque allegations against Spencer’s football team at Golden Angels University. This caused a lack of trust between the two of them and eventually led to their breakup in the premier episode. This has caused a chain of events to unfold in the season that is too long to list here but to keep a long story short, it was a tumultuous breakup.
Another important moment this season, and arguably the most impactful, is the death of Billy Baker in episode 11. Billy was on a bus with the Crenshaw High School football team coming back from a practice when it crashed near a hill. When it seemed that everyone on the bus made it out okay, Billy realized that one of his players named Jabari (played by Simeon Daise) is still stuck in the bus that is about to fall off a cliff. While it is not made known in the episode where it is announced Billy is dead, it is later shown in the next episode that after Jabari got out of the bus, Billy did not follow suit and uttered his final words, “Tell my family that I love them”.
This has caused long term grief for everyone connected to Coach Baker, especially Olivia and Spencer. Olivia almost lost her 1 year sobriety streak, and Spencer got into a downfall rarely depicted after the death of a character on TV. While Olivia and Spencer seemingly getting back together in the finale could have been the final critical point, it was overshadowed by a dramatic cliffhanger as the episode actually ended. Patience (played by Chelsea Tavares) has been on a rise as a singer, with her “Fire and Ice” tour taking up most of her day to day life. For about two seasons, she has been obsessed over by a crazy stalker named Miko (played by Courtney Bandeko) and she has done anything and everything possible to be involved in Patience’s life. This all culminates in the final scene of the season where Miko stabs Patience in the stomach and runs away. As the episode cuts off, Patience removes the knife from her stomach and is gasping for air.
What do all these moments mean for the upcoming season? The death of Billy Baker will have some gradual impacts as the series continues on that are not specific to each character because all of the main aftershocks of his death have waned. As seen at the end of the season, it seems that Spencer and Olivia may be getting back together when she gets back from her trip to London, but in the trailer for Season 6, it seems that Olivia may have second thoughts about Spencer, which will be interesting to see how that plays out. The biggest and most obvious mystery will come from what will happen with Patience. The finale cuts to her bleeding out on the floor of her house after she is stabbed by Miko and gasping for air. A critical piece of the scene involves Patience pulling the knife out of her stomach, something you are not supposed to do since blood will release quicker if pressure is not kept on a wound. This raises many doubts as to if Patience will survive because while she is a critical character, the death of Billy shows that the show is willing to kill the most important characters.
