[5.4/10] Why do I still watch this show? That’s not a rhetorical question. I’m a firm believer in letting lauded shows find their voice before you give up on them. I absolutely believe that living through a series’s rougher stretches makes you appreciate and enjoy their better stretches more. And I think that over time, you can grow to really like shows that you may have been resistance to at first.
But after 50+ episodes, a show pretty much is what it is. Sure, show’s can get much better or much worse after that point, and some can even blow up the status quo and shift into something different (hello Friday Night Lights!). But once you’re half a c-note into a series, after it’s had four years to hone its voice and decide what it wants to be, the tone, the style, the presentation of a show isn’t going to change much from there.
And I really haven’t liked The League at this point. It’s generally crass without being clever. Its 90% of its characters are unlikable 90% of the time. And its connections to the world of football, both real and fantasy, continue to become more tenuous and contrived. I have given this show chance after chance and only rarely rated it as even a hair above “good” through most of that run.
This episode is a great example of its flaws. This a big wet lump of a finale, with juvenile jokes that give you nothing but broad humor and a fourth grade sensibility without anything resembling layers. There’s the little bit of set up and payoff with Rafi’s women’s self defense course culminating in Baby Jeffrey’s dick punch to Ruxin, but otherwise this is a whole heap of “See! They’re hitting each other in the nuts! It’s hilarious! Andre’s girlfriend is allergic to semen! How wacky! Oh look! Taco made everyone poop! And Rafi’s ejaculating at the same time!”
This is the lowest common denominator of comedy. I am far from above enjoying the particular charms of scatalogical humor, as my appreciation for the likes of South Park and The League’s stablemate, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia can attest. But this isn’t smart comedy draped in the sophomoric. This is just a bunch of shit and jizz jokes with nothing supporting them beyond the fact that we’re supposed to laugh because shit and jizz are involved. That is the well that this show keeps going back to.
And the group continues to be abjectly awful to one another. Nevermind the “scroat squad” bit, which at least has the spirit of knucklehead camaraderie to it. Rather than having the slightest bit of sympathy for Andre for not being able to conceive a child with a fiancée, or heaven forbid concern for the woman having a severe allergic reaction, everyone not only insults and makes fun of Andre over it, but then they hang onto the pictures of the event happening in the photo booth. That’s on top of the fact that it’s such a contrived setup for Andre and Trixie to do that in the phone booth in the first place.
Hell, even Rafi, who is usually the breath of madman fresh air that livens up this show, was too much for me here. His over the top “ballsyguard” routine went to ridiculous extremes with him going for the nut check while Kevin is roof-surfing on top of the Shiva-mobile. I’m all for T.V. being exaggerated or heightened in comedy, but this is a show that nominally has a tether to reality, and we’re just going for hidden car attacks that lead to people getting into car accidents and coming out unscathed.
Throw in the fact that Taco has somehow unlocked the key to the brown note. (Something, I’ll note, that South Park did better.) Throw in the fact that the show continues to do weird incest/semen donor humor with Sofia. Throw in the fact that the culmination of Pete’s arc with Gina is that he undercuts his own fantasy team over her dating Adrian Peterson, replete with another fawning depiction of an NFL star and another unrealistic excuse to include them in the proceedings. You just have a finale that lands with a thud.
Maybe Shiva really did lay a curse on The League as much as she did The League. There’s promise of something of a fresh start for next season, with name changes and different draft locales and the prospect that we’ll meet another one of the mysterious out of towners. But the fact that Shiva (who really shouldn’t want anything to do with these assholes) has removed her hex doesn't fill me with much hope for whatever the series has to offer in season 5.
So why am I still watching? I don’t really know. It is, at best, a bit of a slog to get through every time. A good number of my good friends like the show, so I suppose there’s a part of me that wants to see what they see in it. Part of what prompted me to watch the show in the first place was catching a random episode at a friend’s house and thinking it was hilarious, so I’m tempted to watch at least until I get to that episode. And there’s also the simple fact that there’s not really another scripted comedy so devoted to the NFL and the ridiculousness of fandom and fantasy football. As a fan of the gridiron, I keep wanting the show to make good on its stellar premise and become a funny reflection of the great but also terrible game that I love.
So now, as we approach Superbowl 53, I am going to take a break. I started this show in September when the NFL season was starting, and so ending it with the close of the season seems right. Maybe seven months away will make me apprecicate coming back to the show in the excitement of a new season. Maybe The League turns a corner in season 5. Maybe my problems with the show will fade in the background and the improvements it showed in season 3 will come to the fore again.
If I was smart, I would probably just dump the series, but like the fan of a bad football team, I still imagine I’ll be back next season, naively thinking that “this might just be our year.”
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParent2019-02-02T04:10:22Z
[5.4/10] Why do I still watch this show? That’s not a rhetorical question. I’m a firm believer in letting lauded shows find their voice before you give up on them. I absolutely believe that living through a series’s rougher stretches makes you appreciate and enjoy their better stretches more. And I think that over time, you can grow to really like shows that you may have been resistance to at first.
But after 50+ episodes, a show pretty much is what it is. Sure, show’s can get much better or much worse after that point, and some can even blow up the status quo and shift into something different (hello Friday Night Lights!). But once you’re half a c-note into a series, after it’s had four years to hone its voice and decide what it wants to be, the tone, the style, the presentation of a show isn’t going to change much from there.
And I really haven’t liked The League at this point. It’s generally crass without being clever. Its 90% of its characters are unlikable 90% of the time. And its connections to the world of football, both real and fantasy, continue to become more tenuous and contrived. I have given this show chance after chance and only rarely rated it as even a hair above “good” through most of that run.
This episode is a great example of its flaws. This a big wet lump of a finale, with juvenile jokes that give you nothing but broad humor and a fourth grade sensibility without anything resembling layers. There’s the little bit of set up and payoff with Rafi’s women’s self defense course culminating in Baby Jeffrey’s dick punch to Ruxin, but otherwise this is a whole heap of “See! They’re hitting each other in the nuts! It’s hilarious! Andre’s girlfriend is allergic to semen! How wacky! Oh look! Taco made everyone poop! And Rafi’s ejaculating at the same time!”
This is the lowest common denominator of comedy. I am far from above enjoying the particular charms of scatalogical humor, as my appreciation for the likes of South Park and The League’s stablemate, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia can attest. But this isn’t smart comedy draped in the sophomoric. This is just a bunch of shit and jizz jokes with nothing supporting them beyond the fact that we’re supposed to laugh because shit and jizz are involved. That is the well that this show keeps going back to.
And the group continues to be abjectly awful to one another. Nevermind the “scroat squad” bit, which at least has the spirit of knucklehead camaraderie to it. Rather than having the slightest bit of sympathy for Andre for not being able to conceive a child with a fiancée, or heaven forbid concern for the woman having a severe allergic reaction, everyone not only insults and makes fun of Andre over it, but then they hang onto the pictures of the event happening in the photo booth. That’s on top of the fact that it’s such a contrived setup for Andre and Trixie to do that in the phone booth in the first place.
Hell, even Rafi, who is usually the breath of madman fresh air that livens up this show, was too much for me here. His over the top “ballsyguard” routine went to ridiculous extremes with him going for the nut check while Kevin is roof-surfing on top of the Shiva-mobile. I’m all for T.V. being exaggerated or heightened in comedy, but this is a show that nominally has a tether to reality, and we’re just going for hidden car attacks that lead to people getting into car accidents and coming out unscathed.
Throw in the fact that Taco has somehow unlocked the key to the brown note. (Something, I’ll note, that South Park did better.) Throw in the fact that the show continues to do weird incest/semen donor humor with Sofia. Throw in the fact that the culmination of Pete’s arc with Gina is that he undercuts his own fantasy team over her dating Adrian Peterson, replete with another fawning depiction of an NFL star and another unrealistic excuse to include them in the proceedings. You just have a finale that lands with a thud.
Maybe Shiva really did lay a curse on The League as much as she did The League. There’s promise of something of a fresh start for next season, with name changes and different draft locales and the prospect that we’ll meet another one of the mysterious out of towners. But the fact that Shiva (who really shouldn’t want anything to do with these assholes) has removed her hex doesn't fill me with much hope for whatever the series has to offer in season 5.
So why am I still watching? I don’t really know. It is, at best, a bit of a slog to get through every time. A good number of my good friends like the show, so I suppose there’s a part of me that wants to see what they see in it. Part of what prompted me to watch the show in the first place was catching a random episode at a friend’s house and thinking it was hilarious, so I’m tempted to watch at least until I get to that episode. And there’s also the simple fact that there’s not really another scripted comedy so devoted to the NFL and the ridiculousness of fandom and fantasy football. As a fan of the gridiron, I keep wanting the show to make good on its stellar premise and become a funny reflection of the great but also terrible game that I love.
So now, as we approach Superbowl 53, I am going to take a break. I started this show in September when the NFL season was starting, and so ending it with the close of the season seems right. Maybe seven months away will make me apprecicate coming back to the show in the excitement of a new season. Maybe The League turns a corner in season 5. Maybe my problems with the show will fade in the background and the improvements it showed in season 3 will come to the fore again.
If I was smart, I would probably just dump the series, but like the fan of a bad football team, I still imagine I’ll be back next season, naively thinking that “this might just be our year.”