November 25, 2013

The League: Season 4


TV shows age. After enough years have gone by in any show's lifetime it's always interesting to look back at the evolution of the series, and to try to pinpoint the moment when a show hit its stride or jumped the shark. Some shows can be distinctly divided into certain eras, often based on key casting changes. Anyway, as I write this post, The League recently wrapped up its fifth season, and it was a season I just didn't love for some reason. The show felt like it had grown stale to me, which is weird, because for five seasons now The League has been about the same group of people who value their fantasy football league over their collective friendship and the general tone of the show hasn't changed. If anything, the most notable shift happened after the pilot, when The League suddenly became noticeably sharper and quick-paced with its humor. And yet for some reason, I just stopped loving the show this year. I can't put a finger directly on anything specific, but all of a sudden this same old show felt pretty silly, not always funny, and largely unnecessary.

I bring all of this up just to point out that when I went back and watched the fourth season on DVD after finishing the fifth in real time, I liked it as much as I ever had. In other words, I hadn't simply grown tired of the show between 2012 and 2013, or else I'd have been even more tired of it upon returning to previously seen episodes. Right? There must be something about that fifth season that fell flat for me, beyond that really weird Raffi and Dirty Randy episode. I'm sure I'll explore that further in a year or so, but as far as Season 4 goes? Not bad! Reaffirmed to be... not bad!

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