A WEEK AWAY: Episode 1.1

Here's the short version: this is a musical about faith that actually earns the word "faith," and it's fun besides. The young cast can really sing and dance, David Koechner and Leigh-Allyn Baker bring solid comedic timing, and the plot sets up a season's worth of drama — a camp in danger of losing its funding, a counselor with a complicated past, a boy who wants to believe but isn't sure he can.

The Christian content isn't decoration here; it's the point. Characters share Scripture and testimony, a camp pastor recites Matthew 7:7–8 around the bonfire, and the episode takes real time with a boy's doubt rather than resolving it too quickly. The only cautions are small: one character is sometimes unkind to her fellow campers, and a flashback briefly shows smoking and a half-drunk bottle of alcohol.

If you want a musical series with genuine faith content and almost nothing to worry about, watch this one.

Max and his brother Charlie are off to Camp Aweegaway for the summer — Charlie thrilled, Max anything but. Max has spent years in the foster system, and he's not sure faith, or this camp, has anything real to offer him. Meanwhile the camp's own future is shakier than anyone expected: the funding that keeps Aweegaway running may be in jeopardy, and the woman deciding its fate is watching closely. Counselors Jake, Lenny, and Savannah welcome a new batch of campers into camp "tribes" — and the opening bonfire is where the real questions of the summer begin.

Four stars means this episode does what it sets out to do, cleanly and well. The young singers and dancers carry real talent, the musical numbers are catchy, and the choreography is enjoyable rather than filler. David Koechner and Leigh-Allyn Baker add strong comic relief around the edges.

More than that, the episode is well constructed as a pilot: it plants the camp's funding crisis, Savannah and Lenny's tension, and Max's spiritual doubt all in twenty-eight minutes without feeling rushed. It's a confident, promising start to a season.

This episode wears its Christian worldview plainly, and that's its strength. A camp pastor opens the season by quoting Matthew 7:7–8 — "ask, and it will be given you" — and a counselor leads the whole camp in "Amazing Grace." Testimonies are shared openly; faith isn't a subplot but the air the story breathes.

What makes it land, rather than feel preachy, is Max. A boy shaped by absent parents and years in foster care, he doesn't arrive convinced and doesn't leave convinced either — but by episode's end he's willing to admit, through song, that he wants there to be someone bigger than himself watching over him. That's an honest picture of doubt meeting grace, and it's more compelling than easy answers would be.

The only shadows here are minor and honestly handled: one counselor's occasional unkindness, and a flashback with smoking and a half-drunk bottle of alcohol — details that read as consequence, not endorsement.

Max's ache to be seen and cared for by someone bigger than himself is an old ache, and Scripture answers it directly: "For my father and my mother have forsaken me, but the LORD will take me up" (Psalm 27:10).

This is a warm, well-made start to a season, with talented young performers, real laughs from its adult cast, and a faith story that takes doubt seriously instead of rushing past it. There's almost nothing here to give a parent pause. Our answer: worth watching.