On July 13, All American will begin its final season, airing a two hour premiere of season 8 on the CW Network. This will bring an end to a television series that has been much more than entertainment for many of us who have watched it from the beginning. Like most television shows, the series will eventually fade from weekly conversations and social media timelines. New stories will replace it; new seasons will begin and new characters will arrive. But, some stories leave something special behind, and All American is one of those stories.
For years, this show entered our homes and lives, inviting us into the lives of young people navigating identity, friendship, family, grief, ambition, love, loss and the complicated process of becoming who they were meant to be. While the series was inspired by the life of former NFL player Spencer Paysinger, it evolved into something much larger than a sports drama. It became about possibility.
I’ve always loved television, but probably not for the reasons people assume. It’s never been just about entertainment for me. I love it because it has the power to heal, to make people hope, to help people see things through a different lens and to transform lives. That might sound like an overstatement until you understand something psychologists have understood for decades and that is…human beings are wired for stories. Before we understand facts, we understand stories. Before we remember lessons, we remember stories. Stories help us make sense of ourselves, relationships, fears, dreams and the world around us. They become part of the way we organize our experiences and understand what’s possible.
Television can feel so personal because the line between your imagination and reality is much more blurry than we realize. Of course, we know the characters aren’t real, the sets are stages and the storyline is written by a team of talented writers sitting in a room somewhere. And yet, after enough seasons, something interesting happens. We stop feeling like observers, and the characters start to feel like family. That’s what happened for me with All American.
Over the years, I haven’t simply watched these characters, I’ve grown alongside them. I’ve celebrated with them; worried about them, rooted for them; occasionally been frustrated by them in the same way I’m sometimes frustrated by people I love in real life; and I even grieved with them. I’m still not over the character Coach Billy Baker dying. When I rewatch the series, I always have to skip that set of episodes about his death. This is the magic of great storytelling! It creates emotional attachment. It feels familiar, like coming home to people you know.
As a Black mother of two sons, I saw parts of myself in Grace James. I understand her fierce love and protectiveness of her sons. As a wife and mother, I also saw parts of myself is Laura Baker who carried responsibility, relationships, and expectations while still trying to remain connected to herself. There is something deeply recognizable about that balancing act for many mothers. And when I watched Olivia and Layla, I didn’t see teenagers, I saw the young woman I once was. It took me back to a time when I navigated so much uncertainty, the search for identity, the desire to belong and the challenge of figuring out who I was when everyone around me seemed to have an opinion about who I should be.
In many ways, storytellers like Nkechi Okoro Carroll, writer, producer and show runner for All American, help us create the emotional architecture of society. In so many of her shows, she helps use process our own experiences, gives language to emotions we might struggle to articulate, and helps create narratives around what possibilities audiences are invited to imagine. Nkechi continually chooses complexity over stereotypes and because of this, many of us will feel the impact of her characters long after the show is over.
As All American prepares for its final season, I am grateful for the reminder that storytelling remains one of the most powerful tools of connection, healing, and hope that we have. The final episode will eventually air, and the characters will take their final bow, but the impact of this series will remain. For many of us who welcomed these characters into our homes year after year, that impact is something worth celebrating.
