Nov 02 2009
“The League” Won’t Last Very Long
After last week’s episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, I decided to give a chance to FX’s newest comedy, The League. The concept of the League is simple enough - a group of guys try to balance their lives with an ultra-competitive fantasy football league - and as a fantasy footballer myself, I thought it had a lot of potential. Hopefully, I thought, The League wouldn’t be a series of Bud Light commercials passing as a series of vignettes passing as a television comedy. As it turns out, The League really wasn’t very funny, but the show failed on a much more fundamental level. Keep reading for the full review.
Unfortunately, The League plays like an extended beer commercial, although toned down a bit. A group of thirty-something men passionately participate in a fantasy football league, and the results are for the most part pretty predictable. The men act as if winning the league is the most important thing in the world, and the league’s draft, season, playoffs, and championship are all major events in their lives. If the show was character-driven, it would have a chance to be something worth watching, but sadly all The League has to offer are a couple twists on old cliches and underwhelming banter. The League comes on pretty late at night on FX, but - unlike Always Sunny - the show doesn’t take advantage of its time slot or network. The trash-talking between the members of the fantasy football league is incredibly tame, which is a shame considering the late night slow allows the writers of the show to be creative. Instead of clever, biting dialogue, we get lines like “You guys are so dead this year, this trophy is gonna be mine.” Oh yeah, the winner of the league in each season gets possession of a giant trophy.
The League’s characters are mostly forgettable. There’s the current league champ, a disheveled dude who - in true beer commercial form - is dating a women who is disproportionately better looking than he is and is, of course, loathe to the idea of anything fantasy football related. There’s the vanilla guy, whose wife actually runs his fantasy football team (totally unrealistic), there’s the stoner who would never be friends with guys like this in the first place, and there’s the incredibly dorky guy who has a lot of money because hey, nerds are smart. There’s also a couple more members of the league, but like I said, they’re all pretty forgettable. These six guys make up the league in The League, and maybe that’s the shows biggest problem.
For a show about fantasy football to work - even a comedy - the writers need to accurately portray fantasy football. The obvious demographic for The League is young men who play fantasy football, so any inaccuracies will be noticed. The writers knew, for example, that Adrian Peterson should be and is the consensus number one fantasy football player. So when one guy gets the number one pick and claims that he’s going to take Peterson, the league in The League becomes one that fantasy football fans should be able to relate to. I say “should be,” because a huge oversight on the part of the writers makes the league in The League unrealistic: there are only six players/teams in the league, and almost all competitive fantasy football leagues have eight or ten players/team.
This isn’t nitpicking, because it’s not minor. It’s a glaring error, and it hurts the show tremendously. Nobody is going to want to watch a show about a bunch of guys in a fantasy football league if the league itself isn’t realistic. After all, I can’t imagine anyone other than a fantasy football fan watching The League. Perhaps having interesting characters and witty dialogue could save a show like this, but that isn’t the case here. Why not write in two or four more characters and keep them minor? They can appear in every third episode or so. I don’t want to sound like I hate this show, because I don’t. It’s just that it’s nothing new. It’s disappointing because I thought the show had potential. Maybe it’ll get better, but I won’t be watching to find out.
Did anyone else catch this show? What’d you think? If you liked it, do you play fantasy football?
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What is fantasy football? Is it about imaginary teams? How do you get results then?
During the draft they did mention that four other members were either out of town and on auto draft of giving picks over the phone. It just seemed like a cop out, and I agree the show didn’t make me laugh once.
Another thing, the idea of getting high off of pubes? Has anyone on that show actually smoked weed before? I say that, and I am a huge Paul Scheer fan because of Human Giant, but i thought it was lame.
@ Deepbackground
How was it, then, that the six main guys were able to determine draft order by each picking a number, which was in turn assigned to a random child in a race? There were six kids for six picks…do the four guys not there pick 7-10? It just didn’t make sense, and if it did, it wasn’t clear at all.
And the getting high on pubes thing was idiotic. It seems to me that this is a show that tries to be shocking and vulgar but is really just unfunny and lame.
Thanks for reading.
[…] “The League” Won’t Last Very Long (Unreality) […]
Agreed, What bothered me most was the fact that this show is on FX (as noted by Madison) and can get away with so much more. It’s almost not fair to have it air after Sunny because Sunny pushes its FCC limits to a perfect degree… and then we are presented with a show that resorts to pubes as a shock factor.
I didn’t see this show, but I have witnessed first hand how freaking crazy guys can get about fantasy football. I was a bigger topic at a recent wedding then the wedding itself (it was pretty lame though…we got candy coated sunflower seeds as a parting gift. seriously). My neighbors were literally taking turns sitting at a table at the bar talking to the “mediator” who was the only one with any common sense. Kudos to those who put the time and energy in to doing fantasy football, but I’d rather just watch my Colts go undefeated.
@ Laura
You’re a Colts fan? Being from Purdue, do you support Brees and the Saints?
I love my colts! And of course I’m a drew brees fan! I sadly wasn’t there for brees in his glory days at purdue. Curtis painter was the qb when I was at purdue who ironically enough is a backup backup qb for the colts now.
I mean, how can you not like drew brees?
It’s like an after school special suck it bitches!
!YOU ALL ARE R-TARDS!
As for the stoner (he’s called Taco) being friends with these guys, I thought the same thing… it would never happen. However, it turns out that he’s the younger brother of one of the other guys (Kevin) in the League. We find this out when he dedicates a song to his sister-in-law Jenny (Kevin’s wife). He’s actually the only guy (other than 3-time champion Pete) to have won the League.
The League is F’in hilarious. It will be around for a long long time!