September 9, 2014

The League: Season 5


Sooner or later, a group-of-friends comedy based on fantasy football is going to run out of new ways to make jokes about fantasy football. That The League has made it through five seasons and is now beginning a sixth is actually kind of shocking and impressive. Like most comedies, this show is best when binge-watched; there's really not enough content on a weekly basis to make it memorable or transcendent in any way, and "hanging out" with the characters for several hours at a time in two or three separate sittings is more rewarding than checking in with them on a weekly basis for half an hour. The hits and misses all blend together that way.

The most notable thing about the fifth season of The League was, bar none, a weird format-breaking episode that followed Rafi and Dirty Randy's ill-advised quest for vigilantism to Los Angeles. Rafi is a supporting character only seen in every other episode or so, and Dirty Randy, played by Seth Rogen, is a friend of his that pops in maybe once a season. To see The League devote an entire episode to the two of them being ridiculous, without any references at all to fantasy football, was surprising. That episode may have been the moment the show jumped the shark. It also may have been the series' best episode to date. Maybe both - why pretend both options are mutually exclusive?

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