Scoop up this sleeper pick while it’s still available on the waiver wire.
Boy, did I have a tough fantasy week. None of my wide-outs, tight-ends, running backs or flex guys got into the end zone, nor did any eclipse the 100-yard mark. And it wasn’t even one of those situations where I just made the wrong call about who to start and who to sit. No, my entire squad crapped the bed, starters and back-ups alike. To make matters worse, the dude I was matched up with had Anquan Boldin, who had a career game with three touchdowns and over 140 receiving yards. (I could live with the Boldin performance because his effort helped my Ravens squeak out a win against the hapless Browns.) When the dust had settled after the Monday night game, I lost the week by close to 60 points.
I realize that no one out there cares in the slightest about my fantasy football team, but the above paragraph is meant to serve as something of a litmus test. If you could follow what I was saying, then you might get a kick out of FX’s show, The League. If the words were complete gibberish, you might want to avoid it.
Now in its second season, The League has grown from hit-or-miss niche show into a pretty damn solid comedy with consistent laughs. It is about a group of friends in their late twenties and early thirties who are members of a fantasy football league that they take entirely too seriously. Every week, the crew gathers at a local watering hole to drink beer, watch the games and haggle over trade offers, but mostly they are there to break each other’s balls. There are a lot of good running gags, particularly one involving the guys accusing Andre (Paul Scheer), a plastic surgeon, of not being a real doctor. In last night’s episode, “The White Knuckler,” Taco (Jonathan Lajoie), the irreverent, possibly mildly retarded stoner of the group asks Dr. Dre for a haircut. “I’m not a barber, I save lives,” Andre whines.
I know a lot of people who checked the show out a couple of times last season thought it was “ehh” and tuned out. I would encourage those people to give it another try. In the first season, there was little actual fantasy football content and way too much focus on the guys’ romantic relationships. At the risk of coming off as a tad sexist, the show became much funnier when it ditched the female characters. Pete (Mark Duplass) dumped his nagging girlfriend, Ruxin’s (Nick Kroll) wife Sophia (Nadine Velazquez) is now used strictly as a plot device and Kevin’s (Stephen Rannazzisi) wife Jenny (Katie Aselton), who has always been the least insufferable female character, has become just one of the guys.
One of the endearing things about this show is that it knows its heroes are morons. It recognizes how silly it is for grown men to dedicate so much time and energy to pretend sports. It goes out of its way to show that despite their fanaticism, the guys in The League are pretty bad fantasy football players. One of the show’s biggest criticisms from actual fantasy players was that “the league” in The League only consisted of eight teams. Nobody plays in eight team leagues anymore and the show addressed the idiocy of this in last week’s episode. That the guys are often misinformed helps the show work around the fact that it is filmed in advance of the season, making it impossible to predict which players will be relevant to fantasy owners on a week-to-week basis.
“The White Knuckler” weaves together three stories that culminate with a scene as chaotic and humiliating as any It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia ending. The main plot revolves around Pete coming to grips with dating one of Kevin’s exes (Lake Bell, who I always confuse with Amanda Peet), whom the fellas have dubbed “The White Knuckler” (a reference to a painful sexual technique). This process is made more difficult because the WK is constantly mentioning how pretty Kevin’s unit (except she uses a word that rhymes with “smock”) was. Worst of all, the stress in his love life is rubbing off on his fantasy performance. “I picked up Ryan Grant.” “You know he’s injured, right?”
Meanwhile, Dr. Dre is looking to expand his practice (“I wanna be the Pinkberry of plastic surgery”) by bringing another doctor into the fold. The doctor he has his sights set on, Dr. Malcolm, just happens to be black, which throws Andre for a loop. By trying so hard not to be racist, he comes off as just that.
Ruxin decides to take a flyer on kick-returner and Wildcat specialist Josh Cribbs for his upcoming fantasy match-up and decides to take it upon himself to make sure he has at least 100 all-purpose yards and a touchdown. In a children’s hospital, he meets Colin, a sick kid whose one wish is to meet an NFL player, specifically Raven’s linebacker Terrell Suggs. Ruxin, at his most evil in this episode, couldn’t care less about who the kid wants to meet – he just wants to use Colin to meet Cribbs.
All paths in “The White Knuckler” lead to a party hosted by Andre to announce the expansion of his practice. I won’t go into detail about exactly what happens at the party but I will say that it involves some misleading signage, T-Sizzle, a classic Taco musical number (which reminded me a lot of Karma Rocket’s performance in the final episode of Party Down) and an accident involving a ninja weapon and a “nicked penis.” If that isn’t enough to get you to check out the show, I don’t know what is.
Other thoughts on The League:
- I nearly did a backflip off my couch when Colin told Ruxin that his favorite player was Suggs. Ruxin’s response was almost too perfect. “You from Baltimore, huh? You watch The Wire? It’s brutal.
Some stats and info about The League, “The White Knuckler”
TV SHOW – The League
SEASON/EPISODE – Season 2, Episode 3
AIRED ON – September 30th, 2010
NETWORK/STREAMING SERVICE – FX /FXX/Hulu
GENRE – Comedy, Relationship Shows, Sports 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.