Why One Of The Best TV Shows Of The Year Is Struggling To Find An Audience

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NBC’s new show, Stumble, is considered one of the best of 2025, but it’s having trouble attracting viewers. This mockumentary-style sitcom, created by Jeff and Liz Astrof, centers around Courteney Potter (played by Jenn Lyon), a winning college cheerleading coach whose life gets complicated when she loses her job at Sammy Davis Sr. Junior College after a video surfaces of her drinking with the team. Despite its slow start, Stumble has the potential to become a beloved comedy.

Courteney is a highly successful cheerleading coach, having frequently led teams to victory, and she’s aiming to become the very best. To continue her career, she takes on a dual role at Headltston State Junior College, coaching the cheerleading squad and teaching typing. She’s tasked with building a winning team from a group of inexperienced cheerleaders. Supported by her husband, Boon (Taran Killam), who coaches the football team at a rival junior college, Courteney is determined to turn her squad into champions.

Stumble Is Struggling With Ratings Despite A Strong Reception

Image via NBC

Despite positive reviews, the show Stumble is struggling to attract a consistent viewership. Critics on Rotten Tomatoes gave it a high score of 80%, and audiences loved it even more with a 96% rating. However, these strong scores haven’t translated into reliable ratings. Stumble premiered with 2.016 million viewers, but that number dropped to 1.7 million for its second episode. While viewership increased slightly in its third week, it only reached 1.764 million.

Recent numbers from The TV Ratings Guide show that 1.57 million people watched the December 12th episode of Stumble. Despite this dip, the guide still believes the show is likely to be renewed. It outperformed CBS’s Fire Country during its third week, and NBC generally gives comedies a chance, which could lead to a second season. Stumble has already been ordered for a full first season of 13 episodes.

Stumble’s Timeslot Is Hurting Its Success, But NBC Is Working To Fix It

Credit: Matt Miller/NBC

The show Stumble airs on Fridays at 8:30 p.m., and unfortunately, this is likely harming its chances of success. While it follows the popular show Happy’s Place starring Reba McEntire, Stumble struggles to keep viewers engaged in that timeslot. Fridays are often seen as a difficult night for TV shows, and NBC launched Stumble on that night anyway. It’s possible that the show’s target audience just isn’t tuning in to television on Fridays.

According to Variety, NBC will start airing reruns of Stumble on Monday nights at 8:30 p.m. starting in January 2026. These repeats will follow an episode of the popular show St. Denis Medical. While new episodes of Stumble will still air on Fridays as usual, NBC hopes the Monday reruns—beginning with the pilot on January 5th—will help the show reach a wider audience.

You can catch reruns of Stumble on Mondays through February 2nd, with one exception: there won’t be an episode on January 19th because of an NBA game. After that, the Monday timeslot will be taken over by the new comedy series The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins, starring Tracy Morgan and Daniel Radcliffe.

Giving Stumble more airtime is a good start for NBC, but the network should think about making Mondays a regular night for both Stumble and St. Denis Medical. Since both shows use the mockumentary format, they have a similar style and could appeal to the same viewers.

Stumble could have attracted more viewers if it had been scheduled on a different night and received more promotion. The show’s title doesn’t give any indication it’s a comedy about cheerleading, which may be why many people haven’t discovered it. Despite its potential, Stumble’s low ratings might simply be due to a lack of awareness.

What The Future Holds For Stumble

Credit: Matt Miller/NBC

The future of Stumble is uncertain, but it should get another season. The show is still developing its style, but it’s successfully combining silly, physical humor with genuinely moving emotional scenes. This helps the characters feel more like complex people, and less like simple caricatures.

The characters in Stumble are consistently funny, with quirks and situations that often lead to big laughs. The show expertly uses humor, whether it’s through dark moments like Boon’s memory loss from a football injury or the unexpected naps Madonna (Arianna Davis) takes during cheer routines. Standout characters include Dimarcus (Jarrett Austin Brown), a boastful ex-football player; Stevie (Ryan Pinkston), a man revisiting cheerleading after leaving college; Krystal (Anissa Borrego), a cheerleading star recovering from an injury; and Tammy Istiny (Kristin Chenoweth), Courteney’s former, short-statured assistant who’s back in her old role – each one a comedic gem.

The show Stumble is proving to be more than just a comedy, with recent episodes adding layers to the characters. In episode 4, “Button Day,” Courteney tried to enlist Peaches, a cheerleader with personal struggles, as her main flyer when Krystal was both injured and filming a reality show. Initially, Peaches refused, fearing how fame would change her life. However, Courteney eventually motivated her to accept the role. This connection highlighted that Courteney is a caring coach who prioritizes her students’ well-being, not just winning.

We also see this kindness in episodes 3 and 6. In “In Sync,” Courteney offers Sally a place to stay after learning she’s been living in her car. Later, in “The Tell-Tale Slurp,” Boon starts acting like a father figure to Sally. This heartwarming connection adds a new layer of emotion to Boon’s character, who had previously been mostly used for comedic effect.

The show Stumble should keep focusing on stories like the ones it’s been telling, and make it clearer that the heart of the show is the college experience. The relationships between students and teachers are particularly strong and deserve more attention. Plus, the cheerleading performances are exciting and well-done, but haven’t gotten the recognition they deserve.

The new sitcom, Stumble, is still developing, like many comedies when they begin, but it’s quickly becoming one of the year’s best shows. It skillfully blends humor and heartfelt moments, and viewers will easily find themselves supporting the underdog cheerleading team, thanks to Courteney’s inspiring performance. The cast is fantastic, led by the funny and endearing Lyon. Hopefully, the show will attract a larger audience and boost its ratings – as Courteney herself might say, it has the potential to succeed. Despite a slightly shaky start, Stumble is definitely a show worth watching.

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2025-12-24 17:12