Apple TV+ sports activities drama Swagger returns for a second season in wonderful kind this week. Reggie Rock Bythewood’s account of a highschool basketball star and his supportive coach continues with contemporary challenges for Jace and his crew to face.
With Jace gearing up for faculty, he wants Ike again in his nook after a short separation. However will Ike make an excellent match at Jace’s new faculty? This week’s episode, entitled “The World Ain’t Prepared,” is thrillingly alive in its depiction of life in Baltimore and the pressures of being excellent at what you do.
Swagger recap: ‘The World Ain’t Prepared’
Season 2, episode 1: Jace Carson (performed by Isaiah R. Hill) is unstoppable. Once we meet up with him, he and his teammates — Nick (Jason Rivera-Torres), Drew (James Bingham), Royale (Ozie Nzeribe) and Musa (Caleel Harris) — are crushing the opposition, which occurs to incorporate their outdated teammate Phil (Solomon Irama).
Phil determined to go play for one more crew when Jace and the remaining moved to a prep-school squad as a result of he was sick of, as he places it, enjoying a supporting half within the Jace Carson present. Now, Jace’s being courted aggressively by faculty groups as he enters his senior 12 months at Cedar Cove Prep faculty. And meaning he has a number of powerful decisions to make. Plus, individuals are beginning to acknowledge him on the road.
He’s not the one one, both. Jace’s finest good friend and ex-girlfriend Crystal (Quvenzhané Wallis) simply landed a full journey to varsity. She’d textual content him about it, besides she nonetheless hasn’t forgiven him for a way issues shook out between them (a between-seasons, off-air improvement).
Coach Ike faces some selections
The boys aged out of crew Swagger, the native crew they performed on coached by Ike Edwards (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) and his assistants, Naim (Sean Baker) and Meg (Tessa Ferrer). Ike’s busy elevating his daughter and training the brand new Swagger gamers when he will get a job provide — the school his dad used to educate for. This can be a loaded determination for him, as he was enjoying below his dad’s teaching when he was accused of throwing an necessary finals sport.
This could be heavy sufficient with out one other bombshell: Jace’s coach at Cedar Cove is leaving, too, which implies that crew want a substitute. Jace and his mother, Jenna (Shinelle Azoroh), give Ike the laborious promote to step up as a substitute.
Ike meets with the college’s athletic director, Dr. Emery Lawson (Orlando Jones). Though Lawson’s hardcore capitalist ethos doesn’t sit effectively with Ike, they bond once they go to the physician’s workplace and uncover his vinyl assortment. Over a Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers tune, they notice their variations aren’t as nice as their similarities.
A brand new coach for Cedar Grove
Lawson doesn’t love Ike (particularly the truth that he by no means received his faculty diploma). Nonetheless, when Swagger’s outdated athletic put on hookup, Alonzo (Tristan Mack Wilds), provides to outfit the entire Cedar Cove athletic division in the event that they take Jace and Jenna severely, Lawson has little alternative however to supply Ike the job (offered he will get his diploma).
Ike accepts. After all, simply because Jace has his outdated coach in his nook doesn’t imply it’ll be easy crusing till he will get drafted into the NBA. He doesn’t even learn about Coach Warrick (Al Mitchell), the man he, Drew, Musa and Phil beat up final season once they discovered he was sexually abusing Crystal and different gamers on his groups.
Seems Warrick’s been watching footage of the Cedar Cove video games — and he thinks he acknowledges a few of their voices.
By no means be afraid to be afraid

Photograph: Apple TV+
It’s nice to have Swagger again for a second season on Apple TV+. I just like the stuff with Jace getting courted by massive schools and likewise realizing it is probably not sufficient to ensure him the life he desires. Spike Lee lined this floor in a way more closely stylized style in his superlative 1998 film He Received Sport. However Swagger creator Reggie Rock Bythewood (who directs and writes this week) shoots for one thing quieter and, in its method, scarier.
Simply because Jace has a assist community (and a much bigger home, due to his sponsorships and his mother’s beauty model) doesn’t imply he’s received what it takes to hoop within the massive leagues. He and Phil’s discuss concerning the future, and the way simple it will be to screw up, is an effective reminder of what’s nonetheless up in opposition to them, proficient although they might be. (Jace and Phil’s lovingly contentious relationship since Phil moved to a special faculty is completely drawn, BTW.)
Bythewood movies a lot of this episode, from the video games to the necessary conversations, in single takes to focus on the excessive stakes of each alternative. Very wonderful work throughout.
★★★★☆
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 movie and TV critic, director and creator of the long-running video essay collection The Unloved for RogerEbert.com. He has written for The Village Voice, Movie Remark, The Los Angeles Overview of Books and Nylon Journal. He’s the writer of Cinemaphagy: On the Psychedelic Classical Type of Tobe Hooper and However God Made Him A Poet: Watching John Ford within the twenty first Century, the director of 25 characteristic movies, and the director and editor of greater than 300 video essays, which will be discovered at Patreon.com/honorszombie.