Netflix's new teen drama Crew Girl is being called Gossip Girl meets Friday Night Lights, and critics can't agree on it

Crew Girl landed on Netflix with a perfect 100 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. It did not stay perfect for long.

The eight part series follows Teagan, an elite teenage rower who transfers to a New England prep school and ends up as coxswain for the boys' varsity crew team. Cue a love triangle, a lot of early morning training montages, and exactly the kind of glossy, romantic teen drama Netflix has built an entire pipeline around.

Reviews opened with that flawless debut score before three negative notices dragged it down to somewhere around 71 to 73 percent, depending on which count you trust.

Critics broadly agree it knows exactly what kind of show it wants to be, praising the cast, the tension and the surprisingly watchable rowing scenes. The pushback is mostly about formula rather than execution, the sense that this has all been done before, just with oars instead of skates or football pads.

Fans have already started comparing it to Finding Her Edge, Netflix's figure skating teen drama from earlier this year, which followed a strikingly similar shape: sports focused romance, a love triangle, and a cast clearly picked for chemistry over Olympic level athleticism. Netflix has quietly built a whole subgenre out of this formula, and it keeps working, to the point where Finding Her Edge has already been renewed for a second season.

None of this means Crew Girl is a bad watch. Warm, easy, low stakes escapism has a real audience, and reviewers seem to agree it delivers exactly that, awards conversation aside. The rowing setting also gives it a genuinely different visual identity from its skating and football predecessors, which counts for something even inside a familiar formula.

If you liked Finding Her Edge, or just want something to have on while you fold washing, Crew Girl is worth the eight episodes. If teen sports romance formula fatigue has already set in for you, this one probably will not change your mind.