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I felt like the whole thing was contrived re Emily. She didn't have the opportunity be be single minded about her sport. She had to teach herself, and take care of herself. She was divided between survival and following her dream.

Payson had no other responsibilities and was selfish. Even when Payson's family had money trouble, Payson had the opportunity for a sponsorship, and the rest of the rock girls held a fundraiser and made sure her family won.

What did Emily ever get except trouble? Emily was working a job to pay the electric bill for heavens sake, and almost got kicked out of the gym when she was caught at it. It's like a huge double standard. Maybe realistic, but I prefer that if a show is going to demonstrate the injustices of the world it at least acknowledge them and not just display them as status quo.

lovesophia

They wanted the girls to have difficulties, that's why they "invented" the whole "no boyfriend, no job" rule, of couse it only applied when it was convenient (like you said Lauren had her boytoy living with her but no one found out about it except Kylie.

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Right. Payson's difficulty, other than her father getting laid off and working as a beer deliveryman, was her insecurities from childhood of being unfeminine. But she was flirting with Nicki, and they were kinda involved before he and Kaylie made the champs and got interested in each other. And Kaylie was originally involved with that other guy at the gym who later slept with Lauren. and then Kaylie got involved with Austin. So although they weren't supposed to have boyfriends, it was OK to hangout with guys from the gym, but not ones from outside? And the not having a job rule applied only to scholarship gymnasts apparently, because having a sponsor and doing commercials and photoshoots and promotions wasn't against the rules.

lovesophia

I understand why they did it though, to create drama, the whole "it's forbidden to date" made the thing more exiting to Watch for D/E...at least in s1, their goodbye scene in 1x22 broke my heart.

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Oh, I know it was all for the drama, I just hate that Holly said Emily failed because she didn't have the strength and commitment to succeed. Emily showed way more perseverance than any of the other girls, she had a lot more obstacles. I really thought she would win in the end. That's the moral I would like to see taught.

lovesophia

I never thought she would have won the gold medal, i thought Payson would be the one to win or maybe Payson losing and realizing it wasn't such a big deal. Idk, we'll never know.

Holly is maybe not so sad, at leats she didn't have to choose the big winner.

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I don't know, I stopped watching when Emily left.

Payson broke her back, and then although she changed from a power gymnast she didn't have that much time to perfect her new graceful approach. Kaylie weakened herself with the eating disorder, and Lauren was never very focused. Emily could have at least medalled I thought.

lovesophia

You didn't miss anything big. Season 3 is when it got really bad:

Payson lost her Virginity to a guy she knew for what....a month? It was ridiculous. The guy was annoying.

Austin ditched Kaylie at one point for the most random reason in the world and they patched things up 2 minutes before the crédits rolled on the series finale.

Holly crapped on everyone

Lauren was great in s3 though, she had a heart problem.

The new girl was boring.

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Did they go to the olympics? did anyone win anything?

I still love season one, it might as well have ended there for me. Even the Damon EMily stuff from season 2 was so confused. Some was great, some was sad, some was too frustrating.

lovesophia

They were on a team and the new coach got to choose the girls going to the Olympics and the three of them did....but we never saw who won the Olympics, we should have had a s4 for that.

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There was never going to be an S4, I think they were going to have a full S3 and end there, but it got so bad they stopped. They only made the eight final episodes to take advantage of the actual Olympics, which was why they started the show in the first place. I'm not surprised they didn't show the Olympics and a fictitional person winning when the real Olympic winners were all over the news. Still, I liked the original concept of the show. The writing just got really bad.

lovesophia

Yeah I meant season 3 B (i still have a hard time with the way ABC family works lol).

But still, when a channel only orders 8 épisodes and moreover at the very last minute, it doesn't smell so good. They should have made the Olympics during those 8 épisodes and not some boring Payson love drama and "training" for the Olympics. S3 was weak. The only interesting thing was Lauren.

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Well, I think they ruined the show when they had Emily leave, and then her teammates totally forgot about her. It broke the whole story they had been developing for so long about the girls coming to trust and support each other, and stand together. All of a sudden it was back to each one for themselves. And I know a lot of the audience had their favorite gymnast, and a lot of people liked Kelly Parker, but I couldn't see how they would recover a good story from the mess of season 2.

lovesophia

Emily was mentionned in the series finale as one of the coach's "regret". Even in the series finale she was crapped on.

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