I am so proudly going to tell my kids that I lived in the time when Community aired on Television.
This has been the funniest episode of the season by far. I laughed out loud so many different times. Krieger's outfit, the insults, every time Ray wanted to double the bet... good stuff.
I was sequestered on an Bronx robbery trial for five days during one Baseball World Series and saw all of these social / class dramas played out on my jury in miniature. It's true. All of it. Great episode.
I'm not going to lie - I had a few tears in my eyes. Two grandmas who fall in love with each other just before they die - It was impossible for me to not get a bit emotional (´；ω；`)
This episode is better then pilot (01x01), but still it lacks something.
Great first episode! Really establishes the mood and setting for this installment of the Marvel shows on Netflix. Also, I love the idea of people selling copies of camera footage of "The Incident" on the streets. One of my favorite things about these Marvel shows is how they expand the Marvel universe on a more street level and we can see how civilians are living in a world of superheroes.
Can't wait to see how the rest of the season goes!
"I'm not for hire. But you have my word, ma'am... I've got you."
Apart from the first act, what a stupid episode, almost like the second one. Let's hope they improve.
[8.6/10] The opening of “Slip” is a little more direct than episodes of Better Call Saul tend to be, as it fills in some gaps Jimmy’s backstory and perspective. When pressed by Marco about Jimmy’s parents’ shop, about how they worked hard and everyone liked them, Jimmy admits it’s true, but questions the value of it. He declares that it got them nowhere, and characterizes his own dad as a sucker.
Jimmy’s philosophy becomes a little clearer, snapping into place with the flashback to his youth. His dad was someone who refused to bend the rules, who wouldn’t take even so much as a valuable coin for himself, who wouldn’t sell cigarettes to the kids from the local religious school to make ends meet, and in Jimmy’s eyes, that got him nothing. It’s a little too tidy and pat, but Jimmy sums it up nicely -- Papa McGill wasn’t willing to “do what he had to do,” and Jimmy definitely is.
That’s the thrust of “Slip,” which is as much an ensemble piece as any episode of Better Call Saul so far. Jimmy, Mike, Chuck, Kim, and Nacho are willing to go the extra mile, to do the difficult thing, not because they want to, but because they believe it needs to be done. It’s what unites those disparate individuals and their different challenges here. Each of them strains a little more, goes a little farther, in the name of biting the bullet and doing what needs doing.
For Jimmy, that means going back to his old ways. What’s interesting is that Jimmy tries to be good here. He tries to build on the success of his first ad with the owners of the music shop, and all they do is try to squeeze him. Granted, it’s Jimmy, so he’s probably inflating costs a bit, but still, the episode sets them up as jerks, and Jimmy as at the end of the rope. So hey lays out a drumstick, asks them one more time if they’re committed to not paying him what they originally agreed to, and then he intentionally takes a painful looking spill in their store to get leverage. Look out, Slippin’ Jimmy is back.
He also returns to his huckstering to get back at this community service supervisor and make a little scratch in the process. His big show of a potential lawsuit and deal with a fellow worker grow a little farfetched in terms of persuading the grumpy supervisor who eventually gives in, but the purpose of these scenes is clear. Jimmy tried doing things his parents’ way, the good way, and the only thing it got him was an empty bank account. Now, he’s back to taking the (literally) painful, less-than-savory steps that ensure he has enough money to hold up his end of the bargain with Kim.
But Kim’s willing to go the extra mile too. When Jimmy offers her the money, she obliquely hints at the idea that he might need time to regroup, that she’s willing to carry the load for the two of them for a little while. It’s not entirely clear whether she’s worried he’ll return to conning people full time and wants to alleviate the financial incentives to do so, or she’s simply concerned that whatever his assurances, unreliable Jimmy may not be able to come up with his end on a monthly basis without his legal practice. Either way, she takes on a new client, one where she already seems pretty slammed, to make sure that they’ll be able to make ends meet, with or without Jimmy’s contributions.
The Mesa Verde head honcho refers that client to her at a lunch meeting, where she just so happens to run into Howard. Howard, ever the politician, is plastically cordial, but Kim, unlike her beau, still has pangs of guilt and offers him a refund on the law school tuition he put up for her. Howard, letting the scales fall for the first time in a while, reveals that he too is working overtime, having to reassure scores of clients after the incident with Chuck gets out. Kim’s willing to take the (figuratively) painful step of handing over $14,000 dollars to assuage her conscience, and Howard is out there hustling to preserve his firm’s good name after his partner’s public breakdown.
But some good seems to have come out of it. Chuck is back with his doctor and (self-)reportedly making great progress. He may be overestimating himself a little bit, but he’s pushing through his exposure therapy and accepting that his illness is a mental not physical one. When Dr. Cruz warns him about taking it easy and not setting his expectations too high, he remains optimistic, anxious to get better.
In a tremendous sequence, without a word of exposition, “Slip” suggests that Chuck might overexert himself in this effort. He’s using the coping techniques the doctor suggested for him when standing in front of the blaring fluorescent lights of the grocery story. He lists the colors and objects he sees, taking his focus away from the pain. Director Adam Bernstein uses the tools in his toolbox to underscore the severity of what walking through the freezer case does to Chuck, the zooms, the noise, the vertigo of it all. It seems like Chuck has pushed himself too far, that he’s about to suffer another attack
But when we see Chuck later, he has the groceries and is no worse for wear. These things are difficult for him, painful for him, but he is ready and willing to push, to take that damn step, in the same of what he wants to achieve.
The same is true of Mike, who is clearly still haunted by Anita’s story from the prior episode of her husband dying in the woods without anyone ever finding the body. He digs and digs in the New Mexico desert, metal-detector in hand, until he finds where the unfortunate Good Samaritan was buried by the cartel. He calls it in anonymously, presumably in the hopes of ensuring that another family won’t have to go through the uncertainty that Anita did.
But he’s worried about leaving his own family in a state of uncertainty too. He still has his cash from his various extra-curricular activities, but he’s worried about how he could get it to his family should something happen to him. So he goes to Gus Fring, in the hopes Gus can help him launder it. It’s a scene that shows the two men’s growing mutual respect. The meaningful handshake that closes the episode (along with Gus turning down Mike’s offer of 20% to launder it) signifies the ways that their values are the same. They are both smart, decent men who get mixed up in indecent things, and they’re willing to do what it takes to make that work.
That just leaves Nacho, who has what is possibly the most difficult task of all. What I love about this series of scenes is the way they show how meticulous, how careful, how deliberate Nacho is about all of his. There is nobility in Nacho wanting to protect his father from Hector, but he is not in any way reckless about it.
Instead, he does the legwork, he takes the extra steps that will make his operation successful. He is delicate and careful as he grinds the poison into dust and fills the lookalike pills under a magnifying glass. He practices, over and over again, the act of palming the pill bottle and depositing it into a coat pocket, so that when the moment comes, it will be second nature. And he even goes so far as to climb onto the top of the restaurant that serves as Hector’s headquarters the night before, messing up the air conditioner so that Hector will have a reason to take off his jacket.
The subsequent scene where he actually makes the switch is masterful. “Slip” holds the tension of each step in the process: from the would-be fake bill, to the probing of the wrong pocket, to the pill switcheroo, to that grand moment of truth where Nacho has to make the move he rehearsed so many times and land the pill bottle into Hector’s jacket without him realizing. It’s a great outing for Michael Mando, who conveys the way that Nacho is trying to exhibit a practiced, casual calm, but inside is anxious beyond words. His deep exhale and clenched fingers in the back after it’s all done says everything.
Each of the tasks taken up by the main characters in this episode -- planting poison pills, finding a dead body, braving the height of your illness, taking on extra work, and even breaking your own back -- require something extra, more sacrifice, more pain, more difficulty. But when something important is at stake -- your livelihood, your well-being, or your family -- the major figures of Better Call Saul are the type of people who face that head on and take whatever measures the situation requires, even if that means drastically different things for each of them. Those steps are painful, tense, and even dangerous, but for better or ill, Jimmy McGill and the people in his orbit, are the people who do what they need to do.
Was that a happy ending??! I can't believe it! THAT WAS A HAPPY ENDING!!! Very nostalgic and entertaining...
They'll just build a new one... and make the White Walkers pay for it.
This fucking episode, man might be the best ever. I'm literally speechless.
So layered, so many call backs to real life politics. Rick/Morty analogues for racerelations. Equal Pay, Globalisation of companies. That whole wafer storyline. Fuck. I need to watch this again. No wonder they gave us two weeks to wait for this. So fucking worth it.
Your own enjoyment of this new show might depend on your own love for 1990s Star Trek, and whether or not you find Seth MacFarlane funny. Fortunately for me, I'm a big fan of both and the first episode of The Orville was delightful fun. It's an homage to The Next Generation's style and storytelling, with an added comedy element (which isn't as overpowering as the trailers made it seem). The jokes were all pretty funny, too, but I'd probably have laughed more if the trailer hadn't spoiled all of them beforehand.
I like pretty much all of the characters, and it seems well cast - at this point we don't really know much about anyone beyond the captain, his ex-wife and his helmsman friend (I'm still learning names!), but I can see a lot of potential.
It looks great - if oddly empty - with some lovely special effects and an attention to visual details (views through windows, engine damage) that was never seen in Star Trek, most likely because the technical capabilities and budget wouldn't really have allowed for it back then.
It's even got the fade-to-black advert breaks at dramatic moments! It feels like years since I've seen that. I'm looking forward to seeing where this is going, and I think it's got a lot of heart. Unfortunately, this is a Fox sci-fi show and I'm completely expecting it to be cancelled.
Orville continues the surprising path of character development. Again I have to admit I did not expect this to be a focal point of the show. Judging from the trailer this is a slapstick show. Seems Seth McFarlane has something more ambitious in mind. For that alone I will stay on this ride.
That was unexpected. And holy shit, I think I'm actually starting to like this show.
It helps that they've dropped the lowbrow humor of the pilot and made a hard course correction toward serious character work. Now if we can go at least one episode without mentioning Mercer's divorce even once, we'll really be in business!
Meh. Not sure yet. I will probably give it another episode or two. The future world is very interesting, but the first episode was kind of slow other than the scene where they were looking for Takeshi and his GF.
Why does everyone talk to each other as if it's the first time they meet, commenting on life choices and habits? Feels like forced exposition because the producers think viewers are too dumb to pick up on subtle queues.
Why is there even more nudity than in Game Of Thrones and Blade Runner? If you can't do it right, just adding more and more won't make it look good. I don't mind it as such, but to me it feels like trying to copy GoT and BR but not... quite... getting it. I realize this is probably a very subjective matter, but then again I'm not a reviewer.
Why can't they agree on how to pronounce Kovacs' name? This isn't realistic - it's annoying.
Visually, it's might impressive. I like the art direction and design choices. The various languages are well done with minimal accents from what I can tell and Takeshi's skill of anticipating people's actions reminds me of the Social Enhancer augmentation from Deus Ex.
10 minutes in and the creepiness of something not quite right made me put off finishing it at midnight to this morning. Glad I did that because the agonizingly long waiting period for something, anything, to break off the tension of ever building dread is pure nightmare-fueled. Incredible.
[7.8/10] It’s occasionally hard to know how to unpack an episode of Rick and Morty. The show has so many layers to it, of irony, of parody, of character, of story, of theme, that’s hard to separate each into discrete groups and consider what exactly the episode is trying to say. I consider it a feature, not a bug, but it does sometimes make the show hard to write about.
That said, there’s a few things (I think) we can take away from the episode. The first is that, as evidenced by this episode and the series finale of Community, Dan Harmon does not particularly care for The Avengers and its related films, now the baby of his old friends The Russo Brothers. “Vindicators 3” does a nice job of parodying these films with the Vindicators themselves, poking fun at oddly specific or impractical problems with convenient or unnecessary solutions, and through Rick more directly commenting on them.
The show has fun playing around with colorful superheroes and mixing them into R&M’s sad sack world where people more readily die and friends and families are more apt to turn on one another than be united by the latest adventure. Bringing in Gillian Jacobs certainly helps the proceedings, and the escalation as the heroes keep getting picked off in Drunk Rick’s amusing Saw-like series of death rooms fits the weird creativity of the show.
Now I’m a fan of the MCU movies, so I’ll admit to bristling a bit at the criticisms of the episode, but I also think that’s kind of the point. The mouthpiece of the show (and to some degree, it’s creators) is Rick, and while Rick rails away at the formulaicness and lack of complication to the Vindicators (and by extension, The Avengers), the show also acknowledges that everybody loves them and hates him, and that it’s not unfounded.
One thing I appreciate about this season of Rick and Morty is how the show’s been committed to exploring its protagonist as a bad guy, and filter it through the lens of the people around him coming to realize that. Morty is his companion through all this excitement (and his sandwich shop punch card to pick an adventure is a nice touch) and seeing Rick not only rain on his parade and excitement about working with The Vindicators, but realize that his grandfather is the one keeping him from more of these sorts of adventures, that he’s being treated as guilty by association, is a very interesting tack.
Hell, I love the fake out of this one, where the group supposes that Morty is the only thing Rick thinks is worthwhile about The Vindicators, and the episode plays up a tearful drunken confession, only to reveal that it’s Noob Noob, the Mr. Poopybutthole-esque underling at The Vindicators’ base, whom Rick was blubbering about. More and more, we’re getting indications that Morty’s questioning how much his grandfather cares about him, how much he wants this insane man to be in his life anymore, and I’m more more and intrigued by it.
Of course, the whole thing naturally (and amusingly) ends with a big party and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles style rap about the heroes, but the scars are still there. As much as Rick derides The Vindicators (and by extension the du jour superhero movies) as insignificant relative to him and what he can do, they’re something that other people appreciate, something that makes him seem less uniquely brilliant and superlative, and maybe that’s what really bothers him. Rick is the type who always has to kick over someone else’s sandcastle, and Morty’s starting to realize he’s tired of it.
LEEEEROY JENKINS!!!! Never thought I ever would see a guy scream this in a show and run into a room full of baddies.
"How would you like to die today motherf*cker" ... Once again, Jared YOU ARE MY MVP.
Ah, The Americans. What a ride we've had. Simultaneously an exquisitely rich series with superb acting while also being a directionless slog for large periods. When it was good it was top-drawer TV, but it always felt like a show that was lacking in behind-the-scenes navigation. The amount of dead ends, unimportant characters and entire plots which went nowhere far outweighed the intense drama of the core story: Philip and Elizabeth, and their family.
I recognise the hyperbole in saying this, but you could almost watch nothing but the first episode of season 1 followed by this finale and not really miss out on all that much. The status quo set up in the pilot episode had very few changes along the series run, with the only truly big event being Paige discovering what her parent's were doing. I thought we were going to be in for a thrill ride after that happened, but it was quite the opposite. The fact that I was more interested in the fate of Philip's travel agency than in any of the spy work says it all.
There is a lot more to it of course, not least the emotional journey the show took us on. This series finale delivered the emotional moments needed and gave us some truly heartbreaking moments as the story of the Jennings came to an end, and they lost their children while regaining their home. The garage scene with Stan was one of the most intense things the show ever did, and the final phone call with Henry had me in floods of tears. But for me, the finale failed to deliver all that much from a narrative perspective. There is no conclusion here, almost all plot threads are left dangling (Henry? Paige? Stan? Martha? Oleg? Renee? Claudia? Oleg's family? Philip's Russian son? The mail robot??? What about the travel agency?! We'll never know.)
I find myself torn between satisfaction and disappointment. I felt that the show has been largely going in the wrong direction since season 4 (that is to say, no direction at all). Circular plots went round and round again, Philip and Elizabeth grew more and more apart as the work drained them. Characters and plots kept being introduced with no bearing on what was truly important to the show's core.
I feel very let down that the show decided to leave everything until the last episode. The amount of great story opportunities concerning Paige and Stan that could have happened over the past few seasons but never did is overwhelming. As it stands, this last season of The Americans managed to go out on a higher note than I had expected but it feels to me like a show that will not be remembered as one of the TV greats (it never helped that the UK broadcast was put on an obscure channel in the early hours of the morning), but provided characters that will stick with me for a long time.
"Your uncle Basil died!" lol
I came here to write a review on how great the season ended. I was, however, sadly made aware that this was the series finale as well. I started watching the show since it release three years ago. Over the three seasons you've seen the two main characters (Mickey and Gus) change. Sometimes for the best, others for the worst.
With the way this season felt, the creators had no indication that this would be their last; this is shown through the few character plots that were left open-ended. However, despite this - i feel we were able to see something of a ending. What we learned over our time with Mickey and Gus is that LOVE isn't easy. There is no cupid that shoots an arrow, that results in everything becoming great from there on out. Ney! The opposite. LOVE brings ups and downs. But! Most importantly, LOVE for Mickey and Gus brought out a better versions of themselves. Especially Mickey - and this season, we got a glimpse into Gus changing.
This series has brought me to tears a handful of times. Not many shows can do that. There has to be a connection, something that the viewer can relate to that allows for them open up emotionally. I'm saddened that the series is done, but i'm glad to have known it for as it was, when it was. Thanks!
[7.6/10] I hadn’t seen Dead Poet Society in full the first couple of times I saw this episode, which added a new layer of appreciation to this one (especially when Jeff yells “this is no way to teach accounting!”) John Michael Higgins doing his best Robin Williams riff, while Jeff struggles at the ultimate blow-off class was largely a hoot, even if the ending veers into some corny will they/won’t they territory that often makes me roll my eyes in the show’s first season.
The only issue is that it doesn’t cross-pollinate well with the episode’s other major story, where Britta pays for Abed’s film class against Abed’s dad’s wishes. The tack of making Jeff and Britta Abed’s surrogate parents runs out of gas a little too soon, but I really like where the story goes. Abed subtly tormenting his friends who are trying to help him because of a single-minded focus on his creative project has seeds of things to come. His film conveying his insecurity about maybe having broken up his parents’ marriage is actually pretty sad and touching in its way. And the way Mr. Nadir turns around after realizing that film helps Abed, who has trouble communicating, to express himself, is really well done.
The C-story sees Pierce coaching Troy up on how to sneeze like a man, and it’s pretty forgettable and light on laughs, but also so brief as to be inoffensive.
Overall, a funny episode that give us a lot of good Abed character development.
[8.4/10] My first (semi) live IASIP premiere! Huzzah!
Like everyone, I wondered how the show was going to deal with Dennis’ absence, but I probably should have expected what we got, a delightfully meta riff on what the absence of an essential character means, replete with boatloads of raunch and comedic takes on co-dependence and remaining static.
Maybe that’s a little high-falutin for a show as juvenile as IASIP, but I don’t think so. Especially as this show has gotten older, it’s gotten more ambitious, and dare I say deeper, even as it slings episodes where people play a sex doll like a tuba.
I think my favorite thing in the episode is how it explores the ways in which The Gang is fixated and dependent on Dennis as an ingredient in their group, while being blind to the ways in which he holds them all back. It’s striking how better situated and successful everyone seems to be with Dennis gone and with Cindy (Mindy Kalig, ably taking part in the show’s particular banter) calling the shots. The plans are better formulated, there’s more positivity, and everyone seems do be doing well overall.
Everyone except Mac, that is. I appreciated the tack where Mac, most of all, is still fixated on Dennis, and without his sexuality to repress, he’s now just repressing his crush on Dennis, replete with a lifelike and disturbing sex doll. The meta humor of Charlie and Dee assuring Cindy that no one knows why Mac does what he does (probably just a cry for help or attention) and to ignore it and move on was well done in that vein.
But Mac gets The Gang stuck on the “Dennis-shaped hole” in their lives in the same way that Mac does. The bell tolling as the camera zooms in on the unnerving face of the Dennis-esque sex doll is a great running gag, and I like how the episode uses it. Dee is feeling self-confident, Mac is proud of his body, and Frank and Charlie are competently executing (and appreciating) the plan for once, only for them to hear Dennis’s negging and have it still bring them down.
It’s a frickin’ neurosis, and the show uses it both for humor and for its dark character explorations. The way everyone instantly regresses, and falls back into old habits is well done. I even like how they tie things in with The Waitress, using the whole “absence” thing to tie into Charlie never wanting to talk to her and then tying that into her hearing the Dennis doll too, showing that he’s burrowed into everyone’s brains. Community’s pulled the same trick (and with a similar, albeit more network-friendly version of the same archetype), but it still works in IASIP’s more sophomoric setting.
And I like how the show turns that into a miniature referendum on whether the show itself will evolve (which it has, despite maintaining much of the same style and humor) or whether it will remain the same, reuse the same ryhthms, and so on. It’s not the first time the show’s tackled this sort of thing, but it does it well here, with Cindy representing change and something new, and a surprise return from Dennis himself representing the comforting but sclerotic business as usual.
Of course, this is The Gang, so they go with the easy and familiar. Dennis returns, the status quo is maintained, and with it, the rest of the group are doomed to confidence-shattering insults and failure once more. There’s something implicit in that -- the show kind of admitting that it’s not inclined to evolve or get better in a self-aware but kind of cynical way -- but then again, maybe they know that those familiar rhythms are part of what we love about the show, even if tired bird jokes start to grow thin for both writer and audience. Either way, it’s good to have IASIP back.
9.5/10. I have never seen Glee, so a lot of the direct parody was over my head, but this is such an enjoyable episode. Having the show's X-mas episode turn into a cross between Glee and Invasion of the Body Snatchers was an inspired choice that both makes the holiday-themed story both distinct and gives it a direction as the episode progresses.
The songs themselves were unique and each had their own shade of humor. The two stand outs in my opinion were Annie's (in a perfect parody of the weirdness of songs like "Santa Baby"), and Shirley's (which perfectly seized on her character's achilles' heel). But the episode had lots of great Community wordplay ("well-documented historical vanity" is just a hilarious phrase in and of itself), and ridiculous moments like Britta "singing her heart's song." Everyone in the cast was on point. If I have one small nit, it's that Taran Killam occasionally went a little too broad in his performance for my tastes, but he did capture the "bright-eyed psychopath" role well.
Of course, Community being the quality show that it is, still manages to ground the outsized premise in something character-based. Abed wanting to spend the holidays with his friends, and worrying about making things darker when trying to make things brighter, culminates in a heartwarming moment of the gang showing up at his apartment. Sure, it's a bit easy, but it absolutely works as a great capper to tremendously creative and amusing holiday episode.
I was concerned halfway through this season that the show had set up too many leads, too many loose ends, that it was pointing too many fingers in too many different directions that would give the show an easy out (as well as the opportunity to leave an open edning which I don't care for) , but it tied itself together in a fairly compelling way.
When the truth comes out though, while it all makes sense, it felt kind of sickening.
The villain is treated almost as an off-shoot, which on the one hand I prefer, it means they get no attention in the faux-documentary happening within the show, but I kind of wanted a little more of them. One scene, one interview, give me something to hate, because all we get are interviews and wrap-ups with victims - not necessarily innocent victims but victims nonetheless - and it leaves a really bitter taste in my mouth. Just a real undercurrent of sadness and loneliness.
Good season of TV. Hope there's at least one more to come. Could watch this show on a loop.
[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.”
