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Hercules Tackles FX’s New Sitcom THE LEAGUE!!
SPOILER ALERT !!
I am – Hercules!!
An FX sitcom about a fantasy football league (remember that secret Paul Rudd was keeping From Leslie Mann in “Knocked Up”?) created and written by Jeff Schaffer (“Seinfeld,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm”) and his hot former d-girl wife Jackie Marcus Schaffer, “The League” stars Paul Scheer (one third of “Human Giant”), Nick Kroll (the funniest title character in ABC’s “Cavemen”) and Leslie Bibb (Carley Bobby from “Talledega Nights”).
There’s a lot of chatter among some critics about how groundbreakingly offensive the show is, but if you’ve seen “South Park” or “Entourage” or “The Aristocrats” or a Judd Apatow movie or sat in a comedy club or watched a Comedy Central roast or listened to Howard Stern’s radio show or Adam Carolla’s podcast, this is going to seem like pretty well-trodden ground.
As I recall, even FX’s (much funnier) “Testees” far eclipsed “The League” in terms of raunch.
Is “The League” funny? Not so much. Elicited no laughter from myself, who seemed to see every joke marching up Fifth Avenue. I’d guess the male half of the Schaffers is not the magic ingredient over on HBO’s “Curb.”
Critics are divided:
The New York Times says:
… in its astonishingly raunchy way, “The League” is pretty funny whether or not you’re a fantasy geek, assuming you’re a TV-MA kind of person. …
The Los Angeles Times says:
… There's nothing wrong with a show about lovable losers, but they have to be, you know, lovable. Here, the men seem to be products of their writers' contempt; they're such babies that even their profanity doesn't rise from the potty. …
The Chicago Tribune says:
… All in all, it would be easier to give the macho, frat-house vibe a pass if the jokes were funny, but much of the humor in the first two episodes falls flat. …
The Washington Post says:
… How is it possible to screw up America's favorite two contact sports -- sex and football -- this badly? … In the hubbub to get to the next wee-wee gag, the script forgets to mention a reason why any of these people have the slightest interest in football …
The San Francisco Chronicle says:
… ridiculously funny … traffics in shoulder-punching guy humor with an emphasis on lust and body parts. …
The Philadelphia Inquirer says:
… So much of the supposed humor involves coarse jokes about genitalia and sexuality that can't even be described in a newspaper. Sunny has plenty of that stuff, too, but it's almost always in service of broader, funny situations. …
The Cleveland Plain Dealer says:
… FX is more apt to slip on the proverbial banana peel when sliding into the comedy field. More depressing proof of this arrives at 10:30 tonight with the relentlessly crude, obvious and stilted "The League." …
The Kansas City Star says:
… So, is “The League” good reprehensible or bad reprehensible? Is it almost charming in its displays of loutish, self-centered, Peter Pan behavior, like the show it follows on FX, “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” ... or is it simply despicable, like “Gossip Girl”? I would say the latter, with one caveat: At least “Gossip Girl” is funny. …
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette says:
… begins poorly with too much emphasis on the fantasy football league the guys on the show participate in. … is more accessible in its second episode when the focus is on friendship among the guys and their respective marital relationships. …
The Newark Star Ledger says:
… It's the worst of all possible worlds. It's a comedy about fantasy sports, which will turn off anyone who doesn't play. But it has precious little fantasy sports content, which will turn off anyone who's experienced the horror and silliness of fantasy and wants a comedy to try to capture it. …
The Boston Herald says:
… Grade: D … about as funny as the Patriots’ loss in Super Bowl XLII … A show like this could make you hate football. …
The Boston Globe says:
… There’s a place in the world for good crude comedy. But guy humor about porn and girl-on-girl action has been deployed in every other similarly themed comedy. With a few more original situational jokes and male dirty secrets, “The League’’ wouldn’t feel played-out so quickly.
Entertainment Weekly says:
… You know men who devote an absurd amount of time to mocking one another? I do, and I call them ''me and my friends.'' Maybe that's why I so enjoyed this sitcom about a group of thirtysomething pals and their fantasy football league …
Variety says:
… crude but consistently funny … The pressure to be as edgy as FX's dramas can become its own kind of trap -- being smutty is harder than it looks without sacrificing wit -- but "The League" comes close to the goal of creating a TV show with "The Hangover"-type appeal. …
The Hollywood Reporter says:
… In the end, the legacy of "League" will almost certainly have less to do with the overall quality of the series, which is a mixed bag, than with the basic-cable taboos it shatters into itsy-bitsy pieces. …
10:30 p.m. Thursday. FX.
Uncensored!! Unauthorized!!
Who Really Created The Simpsons??
And Why Does It Suck Now??
$9: All Hail The King, Baby!!
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Paul Rudd was keeping rotisserie baseball from Leslie Mann.
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I'm sure it will be real popular on here. Wait. Is Spock in this? No? Yeah no one cares.
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"If you don't name your firstborn son Murphy we're going to put our dicks in your mouth."
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FX comedy? Football? What's not to love?
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...I don't think the "crude humour" is meant to be funny. It's just supposed to be crude if they're going for any sort of realism with it. I play in fantasy leagues all the time with my friends and we constantly bitch, moan, and berate each other with the crudest and most racist shit imaginable. Too some that might be funny (some of it is pretty hilarious to me), but that's not the point. The point is to bash the other league members as much as possible, because if you can't win the league at least you can make fun of the fact that whoever beat you the previous week is a cock sucking little momma's boy that couldn't get jerked off by the ugliest girl in his chemistry lab, let alone his own slut of a mother.
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Always Sunny is so ignored by and large and it is criminal. Following it won't help a show that isn't funny so, good luck to the League. Honestly "Sunny" have cornered the "immoral/raunch" market so I hope this show tries something different.
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I agree, but DVD sales convey the fact that the show has a significant following. I think it's the best thing on TV, up there with Mad Men and Rescue Me. But it's lack of recognition only shows how Seinfeldian it is in regards to how appreciate it is. Always Sunny is a show that will be loved more after it's gone.
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...aside from the misuse of "too", lol...
Maybe it is meant to be funny, but it's not going to be funny to the vast majority of people because they're probably just not in an environment of constant razzing and shit like that "in real life", thus they can't relate to it and take humour in it. Sure, most of you have encountered the crudest shit possible online, but that's completely different than saying it out loud.
Again, haven't watched the show yet, but based on reviews the only thing I'll be disappointed about is that it doesn't focus on the actual league enough. Can't really blame them for that though. That would limit the audience even more. -
Always Sunny is the funniest show currently airing on TV. Period.
I EAT STICKERS ALL THE TIME DUDE -
Always Sunny has taken over this thread!
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Well, played sir. I salute you.
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It's funny because he is thinking about football while he is having the sex!
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Cannot be made interesting for an entire season. Now, it could make for one good episode of a sitcom, but not the whole damn series. Who would want to watch an entire series about 4 friends who make a bet not to masturbate or a bunch of assholes who run a bar putting on a psychotic musical about some kid getting raped by the Night Man? No one with a brain. However, make it the subject of ONE episode and it's gold. This is just pathetic pandering to a niche demographic that some cable exec "discovered" while flipping channels one Sunday morning.
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is it going to have a 2nd season??
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Testees wins the award for most unappealing leads in the history of tv.
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Debuts a sports-related sitcom DURING game two of the fucking World Series?
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Your right about the DVD sales reflecting the popularity but it is the critical snub that bothers me for the most part. No nod, no recognition, no acclaim. Not a mention.
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Me neither.
Classic -
FX should air more repeats of earlier seasons in that time slot.
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Great first episode, it's just like my buds and I when we are picking fantasy teams for football and baseball. I was doubled over on the couch. The scene when they were showing the trophy! Paying with muffins!
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Oct 29, 2009 10:29:20 PM CDT
"Well, yes, I do love him...but it's not a love letter like you
by badmrwonka
Always Sunny will always be better than ANY of it's sad copycats. FX caught lightning in a bottle with Always Sunny, they need to stop trying to make shows for $5 every other month in the hopes one of them will catch on. Always Sunny is an anomaly, let it reign and leave it be.
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your World Series tickets."
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Whenever there's a potential riot, I'm getting blasted on grain alcohol.
Riot Juice! -
In between the 1,000th airing of X Men 2?
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Always Sunny > most crap on T.V.
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Sunny is the only FX comedy that has endured. Well, maybe not, if you count Nip/Tuck.Judging by the pilot, the League probably will probably be one and done as well.
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as Da Maniac on Sunny...another classic.
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Heh...
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That show had some pretty funny episodes. One of my favorite was the zombie one.
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and it didn't. It's probably doing me a favor.
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Congratulations, Lockes. Your 1000th cocksuck of a talkback. You have won yourself a life supply of nothing. IASIP is the funniest show on tv... on FX.
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Not that anyone is still reading this talkback, but anyway, thoughts so far from a diehard fantasy league player...
I'm about half-way through and it's great. Not really crude at all except for the "birthday song". The picking of the draft order bit was fucking amazing. We do retarded shit like that to determine order also. Not that insane though.
Anyway, I'd give it 8/10 so far. Now on the the second half bitches. -
Always Sunny is one of the most enjoyable shows around, has been right from the start. And Roddy Piper was great fun this week as down and out wrestler Da Maniac. Of course you'll hardly see any mention of the show around here, unless it's an amazon link or ratings roundup, because Hercules mainly posts about the shows he likes, not the shows that we like or may be interested in. Hence twenty million dollhouse stories for one of the biggest ratings disasters to Fox tv in ages, and yet barely a mention of your Always Sunny's and Sons of Anarchy's and actual quality shows deserving of attention like those.
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I stay quiet about it, because really, there isn't any point in it, but I'll just say this...
Stop making talkbacks/posts only about shows you like or you're "told" to write about. Clearly it's not helping the ratings at all (look at Dollhouse for example). How about making talkbacks for other shows that talkbackers are always taking over topics with? Not everyone reads these talkbacks all the time (I sure as hell don't), but a few topics dedicated to, say Always Sunny for example, could expose a few people to something great. Fight for the little guy, not the corporate stooge. -
Finished the episode. It tails off at the end a bit. Also, LOL I can't believe the guy that won the league a bunch of times took Forte 4th overall. What a clown. I'd give the episode an overall rating of 7/10. Started strong, ended a bit weak. Has potential though. For awhile it seemed like they wouldn't talk about real, current athletes, but then finally the Peterson talk kicked in and I was on board. I'll continue watching it after Always Sunny for the foreseeable future.
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It had precisely one clever bit: the way they determined the draft order. That was absolutely classic. Other than that, it tried WAY too hard, and it painted the broadest portraits of the cliche fantasy football guys (the clueless guy who picks someone who is retired, the guy who bitches because someone else took who he wanted to take, etc).
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Cliches work because they fucking exist. Are you retarded? Every league I've ever been in, even with nobodies I've only met online, has had at least 1 dude bitch about every pick "he was just going to make" and 1 dude pick retired and/or injured players. That's just being realistic. So what if it's cliche? It's cliche for a fucking reason.
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At least I gave that shit SGU 5 eps before giving up on it! And you need to catch the Sinbad episode of Always Sunny...
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WTF does that have to do with anything, Herc, you fop?
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I realize that cliches are cliche for a reason. Hell, I've written an article about it (http://www.cracked.com/article/103_11-obnoxious-characters-from-every-fantasy-football-draft/) for God's sake. It just felt like every one of the characters was written to fill a specific role among those cliches, and nothing new was really added.
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That's fine, but with only one episode that doesn't give much time to set it up and flesh the characters out, so we'll just have to give it a bit more time to see what's added. I think they're headed in that direction (little things like the reveal of their jobs for instance) and more will eventually come into play. But as a "pilot", so to speak, I have no problem with how the characters were presented to set them up.
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It was better that that hack Leno.
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Although the humor hits more if you play fantasy football, I found the show to be pretty good. I didn't have a problem with the likeability of the characters. That really hasn't been an issue since the '80's anyway (Married with Children and Buffalo Bill, anyone?). I'll stack anything FX is putting out on Thursday night against NBC's alleged "Must See TV" line-up...especially that goddawful Community dreck.
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Jon Lajoie as "Taco"... YouTube some of his music videos, most notably "High as F@#k" and "Everyday Normal Guy". The man is hilarious.
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