The League…Now that FX’s comedy about fantasy football has moved over to FXX (whatever the hell that is, I just know that, despite its name, it’s not a porno network) I wondered if the show would be radically different to make folks desperately search their channel guide to figure out where in the hell FXX is. Welp, I need not have feared, because Ruxin, Taco, MacArthur, Pete, Andre, and Jenny are all exactly the same…okay, so maybe I should have feared.
It turns out that The League is now in its fifth season, and even though some characters have gotten divorced (Pete, in about the second episode), some have had kids, and now Andre is engaged to marry one of the women from Glee, the show feels stuck in a rut. It turns out that having a bunch of snarky, fratty white-douche Chicago guys shit on each other non-stop while talking about Football (with the always-awkward cameos from real football players mixed into every few episodes) isn’t a timeless formula for comedy. These guys are so emotionally constipated that they won’t even post-pone their fantasy football league draft from Andre’s wedding weekend. I can’t help but imagine the College Republicans excitedly getting together to watch each new episode of The League or at least the Kappa Sig frat house. In other words: the wear and tear is showing and they desperately need to mix it up. Even the Ruxin jokes are getting stale, and do we really even need Pete at this point?
The exception: the character of Rafi, Ruxin’s insane brother-in-law. Watching him terrorize the crew and repeatedly assault everyone with the occasional assistance of his best friend Dirty Randy (Seth Rogen, playing a more feral version of the nice-guy schlub he usually plays, and the amorality looks good on him) is like watching a South Park character dropped right into the middle of a CBS sitcom. Maybe that’s why the show is now using him so much. Grade for season five premiere: C+
Owner’s Manual…AMC’s latest reality show is also one of their few misfires. The entire premise of the show is that two “friends” (although these guys don’t look like they would even know each other in real-life, let alone be friends) get to operate dangerous or exciting machines (jet planes, trains, dirt bikes, etc.). One of them follows——-you guessed it——-the owner’s manual, so naturally he’s the “nerd.” The other one just goes off “gut instinct” and he’s a cocky British asshole that screws up every week. [Think Gordan Ramsey if he thought he was really, really charming.] We’re supposed to debate their styles, but since the British guy almost always has to beg the “nerd” to help him out, it’s really not much of a contest. Gee, who would think you can’t fly a fighter plane solely off “gut instinct?” Grade: C-
The Pitch…Another reality entry from AMC, but vastly better. The premise is ingeniously simple: watch two ad agencies compete to land a big account, and get inside their creative process. I’m usually shocked at how much I enjoy learning the backstory of each agency and the way that fuels (or stifles) their creative culture or business acumen. [Episode three of this season followed a guy who’d grown up on the streets with a drug addict mother vs. an uber-entitled/young-gun douche whose parents told him he was a genius every day…when he was barely talking. Episode two had an agency that was barely functional and seemed to exist solely so the owner would have playmates to hang out with.] You’ll pick sides, and the one you like won’t always win, but the fact that you get so invested proves the show is doing something right. An exciting look at the way a person’s mind works, and the exact intersection of art and business. Grade: A-