“Six points from Flacco, means you get the Sacko, from Taco” – Taco
I don’t mean to come off sounding like a Grinch, but boy, do I hate the holidays. I hate the crappy Christmas music. I hate the awful sweaters. I hate the forced consumerism masked as generosity. I hate the pressure everyone puts on themselves and their loved ones to find the perfect gift for that special someone. But most of all, I hate that that this time of year means that most of my favorite fall shows are coming to an end. The past few weeks have seen the finales of Sons of Anarchy, Terriers, The Walking Dead, and Boardwalk Empire all come and go. Last night, The League joined the leaders in the clubhouse, delivering a two-episode double-header to finish its very strong second season.
This is just a theory, but I think the reason that FX decided to cram two episodes into a single evening was two-fold; firstly, The League did not air on Thanksgiving, so they had to play catch-up. Secondly, and probably more importantly, It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia is going to be airing “A Very Sunny Christmas” next week, which (correct me if I’m wrong) is at least an hour long. My feeling is that the network would rather not push one of its show’s finales deep into the evening, to 11:00 PM or later.
Airing “Kegel the Elf” and “The Sacko Bowl” back-to-back had a couple of interesting unintended consequences. It gave people like me who have been following and analyzing the show (probably not a very good use of one’s time – analyzing a sitcom about fantasy football) a pretty solid case study regarding a phenomenon that has been occurring this season. One week an episode will be great, the perfect combination of avantgarde bizarreness, relatable character stuff, and story. When it’s on, like it was in the first episode of the night, “Kegel the Elf”, I would argue that The League is one of the two or three funniest shows currently on TV.
But for whatever reason, the show is often unable to maintain this peak performance, following a gem up with something of a dud. All season long, just when I thought the show was turning a corner and putting together a string of great episodes it would throw out a sloppy, strange one that made me wonder if I was even watching the same show. Don’t get me wrong, even the lesser episodes of The League are still funny. I would rather watch “The Sacko Bowl” fifty times in a row than sit through a single Chuck Lorre show.
The other result of having the double-header – which is partially related to the first unintended consequence – was that the show was able to sort of hedge its bets. If I had just watched “The Saco Bowl” on its own, I might have been disappointed and left the season with something of a bad taste in my mouth. But since it was paired with “Kegel the Elf”, a freakin’ awesome episode, I didn’t really care that the second episode wasn’t as good. The second episode could have been 22 minutes of Taco eating tacos and I would have found an excuse to laugh.
On to the recaps…
“Kegel the Elf” revolves around two main stories – Pete’s new relationship with Ellie’s (Kevin and Jenny’s daughter) teacher and the battle between Ruxin and Kevin for a spot in the league championship.
First, I should toss out a little trivia nugget that I learned last night: Ellie is played by Alina Foley, daughter of Kids in the Hall icon, Dave Foley. Cool, huh? Anyhow, Ellie’s teacher is worried that she might be picking up some bad habits at home because she has been overheard telling her classmates to “take a ride on the suck stick” and various other choice phrases. Kevin and Jenny play dumb, telling the teacher they have no idea where she learned such behavior. Meanwhile, Pete is having trouble getting the teacher into bed because she has recently had a kid and she is worried that her “area” isn’t back to shape yet. (“Baghdad isn’t ready for the Olympics,” Kevin offers.)
Andre offers to hook her up with this new service his practice is doing; vaginal weight therapy. Pete is all in, it’s just a matter of convincing the teacher. He blackmails Jenny by saying unless she convinces the teacher to do the therapy, he will show her video posts of Jenny talking fantasy football smack and using filthy language. As it turns out, the teacher has already been doing the strength training with Andre’s nemesis, Stu Beagle and when it comes time for Pete to get some, she literally “crushes it.” “They couldn’t even identify it, it looked like goddamn Joshua Tree,” Pete tells the gang when he returns from the ER, in reference to his damaged unit. Ouch.
Ruxin receives a mysterious package from a MacArthur (who he assumes is Kevin) and upon further inspection discovers the box to be full of old, smelly eggs. He thinks that Kevin is trying to psych him out for their upcoming playoff match-up, so he fills up a jar with milk and chicken parts and makes a stink bomb of his own. Later he discovers that the eggs were actually from the other MacArthur, Taco, who sent them to Ruxin, his attorney, for safe keeping. You see, Taco is making 1000 Year Eggs as an investment for his future children and the eggs in the box had just turned one year old. Oh Taco, you silly goose. Ruxin rushes over to Kevin’s house to retrieve the stink bomb package before anyone notices it and, of course, it explodes on him as soon as he does.
Ruxin and Kevin’s game comes down to a single David Akers field-goal attempt. If he makes it, Kevin goes to the Shivabowl. If he misses, Ruxin goes. He misses. Kevin goes ballistic and has a Bob Knight-esque meltdown in the front yard. He drops at least a dozen f-bombs, tells Ellie there is no God or Santa, all while Ruxin looks on with a s— eating grin plastered on his already mega-punchable face. “I feel like I just won twice,” Ruxin says as his friend writhes on the ground.
“The Sacko Bowl” was about… well, that’s kind of tough to say. This was one of those episodes that felt like a bunch of halfway developed ideas slapped together, which is a shame considering it was the season finale. You would think that the final episode of the season would be more cohesive, but it wasn’t.
I like that the show has the gumption to allow the lone female member of the league to make it to the championship. Of all of the characters on The League, Jenny grew the most between the first and the second season and I really enjoy the way they are using her now. The chemistry between Jenny and Kevin is nice and they feel like an actual couple. My girlfriend thinks there should be more women on the show, but I don’t really agree. One of the main reasons why this season has worked better than the first is that it has focused less on romantic relationships and more on the friendships between the guys.
Jenny is taking on Ruxin in the Shiva Bowl, but Ruxin is nervous because he can’t decide who to start, Donald Brown or Steve Breaston (no team with either of those guys as starters, even in the flex spot, would ever make it to the championship of any legitimate fantasy league). Jenny has problems of her own – she has contracted Dre’ds (pronounced like AIDS). Since naming the trophy after himself last season, Andre has been cursed and Jenny was in close proximity to him, possibly catching the deadly virus.
While the rest of the crew is focusing on fantasy football, Pete is busy tooling around town in his new Crown Vic, pretending to be a police officer and milking his newfound power for free sandwiches. “Does it come with a mustache and a bad attitude?” Kevin asks. When Taco sees it parked outside of the bar, he warns everyone to “hide your weed.” This was the most glaring example of a storyline that seemed to be shoehorned into the episode with no real connection to anything else going on around it. Worse yet, Always Sunny did a similar plot, only funnier in its season three episode, “Bums: Making a Mess All Over The City”.
Maybe it’s the Dre’ds, or maybe it’s because she’s a girl (and what do girls know about football anyway, right?), but Ruxin beats Jenny in the Shiva Bowl and becomes the new champion of the league. When it comes time to collect his trophy Andre doesn’t want to give it up. He scampers to the roof of his condo where a scuffle ensues. The trophy slips from his hands and falls from the roof, landing smack dab in some poor guy’s windshield. He’s understandably pissed and wants to press charges. Luckily for the gang, the first cop on the scene is Officer Pete, who puts everyone but Ruxin into his Crown Vic. Ruxin can wait for the real cops. But hey, a night in jail is a small price to pay to have your name forever etched onto the Shiva.
I want to stress that while “The Sacko Bowl” had its problems, it was still very funny. That said, I would have been just fine with “Kegel the Elf” serving as the season finale. It would have been very easy to tweak the script to make the match-up between Kevin and Ruxin in the night’s first (and far superior) episode the league championship. Kevin’s lawn meltdown in front of his daughter would have been an excellent way to end the season. But what’s done is done, no sense in complaining about it too much.
I enjoyed Season Two a lot. The show improved a great deal from last year and I certainly look forward to next season. Hopefully Kevin will finally get his chance to take Ruxin down, that smug little bastard. Thanks for watching The League with me these past 13 weeks and wish me luck in my own fantasy football league as my squad, MarioReyesWasAJayWalker (if you don’t get the reference, look it up, you’ll probably think I’m an awful person), makes its playoff push. Adios until next season!
Some stats and info about The League, “Kegel the Elf” and “The Sacko Bowl”
TV SHOW – The League
NETWORK/STREAMING SERVICE – FX /FXX/Hulu
GENRE – Comedy, Drama, Relationship Shows
CREATED BY – Jackie Marcus Schaffer, Jeff Schaffer
CAST – Mark Duplass, Nick Kroll, Jonathan Lajoie, Stephen Rannazzisi, Paul Scheer, Katie Aselton, Jason Mantzoukas
This review originally appeared on TV Geek Army.