Apple TV+ sports drama Swagger finds Jace preparing for a big birthday this week. He’s dealing with obstacles he sees — and bracing to be blindsided by some he can’t.
An estranged dad, an old adversary, a new teammate and coach Ike (who’s looking to Jace to secure his future) all conspire to keep the young basketball star from his A game. But for Jace, there’s always a way through. And this week’s excellent episode, entitled “18,” is a potent reminder of that.
Swagger recap: ’18’
Season 2, episode 2: Jace (played by Isaiah R. Hill) is about to turn 18, and he’s having a crisis about it. At 18, you cease to be an up-and-coming high school star and start to be one of a thousand adults competing for the same coveted spots. He’s also missing Crystal (Quvenzhané Wallis). Although we still don’t know why they broke up and/or drifted apart between seasons of Swagger, we can be almost absolutely sure it was his fault (call it a hunch). Jace’s mom, Jenna (Shinelle Azoroh), isn’t ready for her little boy to be a man yet either.
Meanwhile, Ike (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) and Tonya (Christina Jackson) are also experiencing some growing pains. They’re sending their little girl (Arlise Rae Minter) to preschool, and they’re way more stressed about it than she is (very cute). Ike’s return to school has also begun. In order to coach at Jace’s new high school, the prestigious Cedar Cove prep school, Ike’s got to get his degree. Dr. Emery Price (Orlando Jones, who seems to be beautifully channeling Giancarlo Esposito in this performance) starts Ike off with some W.E.B. Dubois, and reminds him that if he doesn’t win his first game with Cedar Cove, the job of coach might not be secure.
Price isn’t just being hard on Ike, but Jace, too. He doesn’t want Jace’s celebrity to get to his head. As it is, he’s falling behind in Price’s history course. Not a great start to the academic year.
Building a basketball team at Cedar Grove
At Jace’s urging, Phil (Solomon Irama) is also trying out for Cedar Cove. Phil’s mom Kiesha (Monique Grant) goes with him for a visit and notices there aren’t a lot of Black teachers or students at the school. A white girl (Caroline Elizabeth Gregory) even touches Phil’s hair without his permission. Kiesha asks Ike what she thinks Phil’s chances are at a place like Cedar. He doesn’t lie about the odds that this isn’t the place for Phil.
Jace and his teammates Nick (Jason Rivera), Musa (Caleel Harris), Royale (Ozie Nzeribe) and Drew (James Bingham) give Phil the hard sell. But what really does it for him is the sight of Rae (Catherine Owens). He thinks he might be in love with her, not least because he finds out she’s the head of a Black student group dedicated to challenging Cedar Cove’s curriculum.
At the dedication to Cedar Cove’s new science center, nearly the whole cast shows up to do a little grinding. When Ike notices Emery introducing him to donors as the “interim coach” — a move designed to make him seem like a diminished figure — Ike steps up to charm everyone in retaliation. Naim (Sean Baker) and Meg (Tessa Ferrer), who are joining Ike at Cedar Cove, note that Alonzo (Tristan Mack Wilds), who used to give team Swagger its clothing hook-up through his company Gladiator, is now outfitting Cedar. They’re not done with him yet, he says with a glint in his eye.
Dark memories from the past
On a more serious note, Coach Warrick (Al Mitchell) calls a journalist (Jennifer Patino). He gives her the scoop that Crystal sent Jace and his team after him to beat him up in retaliation for him sexually abusing Crystal. When the reporter approaches Crystal at Jace’s next game, Crystal flees from her questions, which makes everyone look quite guilty. Jace doesn’t know it but this could seriously hurt his recruitment prospects.
What he does know is that his estranged dad Grant (Demetrius Grosse) is in town and wants to meet him, much to Jenna and his sister Jackie’s (Jordan Rice) chagrin. Jace goes to meet him to look him in the eyes and tell him how he feels; how he fought his own inadequacy for years because of the abandonment issues his dad gave him.
A pivotal game for team Swagger and coach Ike
Photo: Apple TV+
When Grant shows up at Jace’s game, it puts him in the young player’s head. However, Ike helps him get out of it and Cedar Cove wins, securing Ike’s place as a real coach, not an interim.
There’s a montage this week during the climactic game where Jace relives the highlights of Swagger’s last season (and a little of last week’s episode). It is a true testament to this cast, this writing staff, this entire creative team, that every beat they hit is so powerful. Viewers of this show have spent less than a full day with the characters in Swagger, and yet when that montage hit, it was like I’d been watching the show for years.
Like Jace on the court, Swagger is a show with bragging rights because it gets everything right.
★★★★☆
Watch Swagger on Apple TV+
New episodes of Swagger season two arrive Fridays on Apple TV+.
Rated: TV-MA
Watch on: Apple TV+
Scout Tafoya is a film and TV critic, director and creator of the long-running video essay series The Unloved for RogerEbert.com. He has written for The Village Voice, Film Comment, The Los Angeles Review of Books and Nylon Magazine. He is the author of Cinemaphagy: On the Psychedelic Classical Form of Tobe Hooper and But God Made Him A Poet: Watching John Ford in the 21st Century, the director of 25 feature films, and the director and editor of more than 300 video essays, which can be found at Patreon.com/honorszombie.
