the best new series out that no one else is gonna tell you about
but i'll do the honors!
Last week, right before bed, I put on the first episode of a Disney+ series my mom had recommended to me a few weeks prior. She had watched the first two episodes with my 5-year old niece and found them endearing, comparing the show to Inside Out, which I honestly was not crazy about. When I saw the second one and learned that it was a box office record breaker, I was shocked that people cared so much about it. That being said, I wasn’t in a rush to watch a show similar to those films. Plus, my viewing schedule at the time was pretty packed with reality TV with weekly new episodes (Love is Blind, The Traitors), my typical nightly Jeopardy viewings (it was the TOC!) and other network television, like Abbott Elementary. But after a week of being under the weather and binging a few new series like Deli Boys and Running Point and the season finales of my reality shows, I suddenly had time.
It helps that Disney+ is one of the only streaming services I use without ads, so I prefer it for bedtime TV because if I doze off while watching, there are no chances of me being woken up by a glaringly loud and bright commercial1. So I opened the app and scrolled until I saw the show, Win or Lose.
The eight-episode miniseries is Pixar’s first attempt at a series, and the animation style is one I like enough–the character design reminded me of Turning Red, a movie I adore. (If my mom said the show reminded her of Turning Red, I probably would have tuned in sooner.) The show follows a co-ed youth softball team called the Pickles and the adults who work alongside them including the coach (also a player’s dad), the umpire, (also a teacher at the kids’ school), and some of the kids’ parents. It does a pretty masterful job of interweaving their stories with an overarching message of “You never know what’s going on in people’s lives off the field.”
I watched the first episode half-heartedly, playing a puzzle game on my phone, looking up every few seconds. It focused on Laurie, the daughter of Coach Dan, and her insecurity about her place on the team as well as her general anxiety. While each episode uses imagined forces that only the character of that episode can see, this is the only one where that imagined thing is a physical manifestation of an emotion, in this case, a blob of anxiety sweat aptly named “Sweaty.” Watching the episode, I thought that Laurie’s anxiety looked a lot like OCD. There are scenes of her praying to God that everything will go right, and she tries to hold herself to extreme standards of practicing at softball so that she can get better. It’s also apparent that she’s a kid whose life feels out of control, with her parents separating and her wanting to feel close to her dad who no longer lives at home with her.
I searched the series on Reddit to see if anyone else picked up on the OCD thing, but found a much different conversation about how a trans character’s storyline had been erased from the episode and replaced with a Christian one. I felt puzzled reading that part, because Laurie’s prayers did not make me think of her as some ultra religious kid, but just as an anxious kid looking for a handle on life. Still, I rewinded to the beginning to try to catch the trans character’s erasure and did notice that Kai, a teammate who practices with Laurie, seemed like she was someone who hid themselves in baggy clothing that didn’t bring any extra attention. Others also pointed out a scene where an old name is scratched out on her baseball mitt, replaced with “Kai,” which is such a frequently used trans character name that there are memes about it.
It’s worth noting that later on in the series, Kai has her own episode, which makes her trans identity quite apparent through a number of conversations, the most obvious (to me) being her father lamenting that she used to be so good at baseball in the wake of her deciding she wanted to join the softball team, as baseball is typically a boys’ little league sport while softball is typically a girls’ little league sport. However, while the episode certainly portrays moments of Kai struggling with fitting in and feeling safe, it centers more on her trying to exceed her dad’s expectations of her as a player, suppressing her own needs to make him happy, which, now that I’m typing it out, also seems like a pretty strong allegory for being trans.
According to Chanel Stewart, the transgender voice actress who portrays Kai, Disney representatives called her mother before the show’s release to let her know that Kai’s storyline had “been cut” from the show, though the character would still be in the show. “It’s just that my character would now be a cis girl, a straight cis girl,” she said in a statement to Deadline. Storyboards of the scene that was erased were leaked online, portraying Kai in a tense moment of choosing which bathroom to use, being walked into the women’s room by her teammate, and helping a kid in that bathroom turn on the sink. But worried about how the child is perceiving her, Kai panics and runs out, spiraling–the animation depicts her face distorting and falling off in pieces and her picking them up. The scene looks like it would have been powerful if Disney chose to keep it, so it’s a shame that they didn’t. But I also think that even without seeing anything online about Kai’s identity, I would not have read her as a cis girl, and everyone else I recommended the show to also didn’t read her as such.
Some people have opted out of watching the show for this reason, so including this information at the top felt necessary, but in my opinion, the show is certainly still worth watching. If I still have you, I’ll tell you why.
After a first episode reminiscent of Inside Out and following a child, I was not expecting the second episode to focus on the adult umpire, referred to as “Blue.” His ump gear transforms into armor, which he uses to shield himself from parents hurling insults at him, but also to hide his emotions from the world. He’s a 32-year old teacher with a New Zealand or Australian accent (sorry I’m not that good at differentiating Aussies and Kiwis!) who loves fantasy novels and is trying to build himself back up on the heels of a breakup with a woman who he thought he’d have forever. We learn it was his own hesitancy to commit that led to the breakup, and that his ex is a fellow teacher at his school, making intermingling with everyone a task he avoids by eating lunch alone in his classroom. A hilarious and slinky (and I think, gay?) janitor sees through his armor and encourages him to put himself out there, helping him revamp his dating app profile, which leads to a few duds and one great conversation that ends up going nowhere–how realistic! I absolutely didn’t expect an entire episode dedicated to an adult’s inner turmoil, but this was actually one of three in the series that center on just that.
The first episode to make me cry was the third, which followed Rochelle, one of the team’s star players who is so disciplined and organized because she feels the weight of responsibility on her, with an immature single mother also raising a baby brother. Her imagination-force is a business-bitch suit that she wears in her head while she hustles to raise money to play softball next year after learning her mom lost her job–her mom told her she quit to focus on full time content creation, which we believe because she’s often seen talking to her phone screen when Rochelle is trying to get her attention and recording sweet moments to post online. When Rochelle’s part-time job at the softball field’s snack shack doesn’t earn her enough money as a result of player dues going up by $1,000, she doesn’t even let her mom know about the increase and instead opts to dedicate every free hour of her time to helping tutor kids and doing their homework for money. I loved that this show took an episode to show what it’s like for kids who have to parent their parents, and it was done with such care.
That care was even more apparent in the following episode, which followed Rochelle’s mom and gives her side of the story: she’s a single mom with no childcare help, so when an emergency occurs and she has to leave her job at a supermarket bakery to pick up her baby from daycare, she gets fired. She finds solace and understanding in the community she has online, which makes all the talking to her phone screen a lot more forgivable. And even when she’s worried about where her next check is gonna come from, she tries to get her daughter nice things to reward her for her hard work, which is kind if not misguided and irresponsible. Watching the episodes back to back showed all their miscommunication which came down to neither of them wanting to add more to the other’s plate: Rochelle’s mom know her daughter worries about her finances so she pretends she has it under control, Rochelle knows her mom is worried about money so when the team dues go up, she doesn’t relay this info to her mom and instead seeks to raise the money herself.
I won’t go into full synopses for each episode, but those two really stood out to me and were the heart of the series in my eyes. But every episode is great. Other storylines follow a first love blooming between two players, Yuwen and Taylor, going deep into why Yuwen acts out in the ways he does and how it affects Taylor and her feelings. It was a sweet, honest and surprisingly poignant depiction of young love and how hard it is to navigate those feelings when you’re still trying to figure out your place in the world. Another favorite centers on Taylor’s younger brother Ira. As a result of being ignored by her while she’s focused on her new relationship, he finds other ways to entertain himself at the park during her games and practices, namely in hanging out with older kids who are troublemakers and bad influences that capitalize on his innocence to further their schemes, one of which being their mission to rob the snack shack at the park. Ira is torn between his morals and being accepted into a friend group at a time when he feels alone, and it’s heartbreaking to watch but also so real.
The accuracy of these kids’ and adults’ experiences in the show is really well done, making it a powerful and emotional watch for kids and adults alike. It is definitely primed to conjure up memories of youth for anyone who has been in similar situations, whether they were anxious about a parents’ divorce, worried about family finances and responsibilities, or fell in with the wrong crowd. Adolescence is one of the worst things a person goes through, and this show gets that in ways that few shows do (PEN15 is my top pick for this), and also is honest about the fact that growing pains never really stop, even when you’re an adult. I love that the adults in this show do not have it all figured out and are just as clueless and tortured as the preteens at times, because that’s real (also explored in Degrassi!).
Whether you’re watching alone or with family, you are bound to find enjoyment and emotion in watching Win or Lose. Get your tissues ready, though, and maybe a notebook for jotting some memories you want to explore with your therapist.
For the record, I am no novice. I have two different custom TV picture settings for bedtime, one that makes it so dark I can’t see anything, and one that turns the backlight almost all the way down but still allows me to see what’s happening. The super bright commercials still fuck me up, though. This is also why I can’t watch Superstore before bed, the show itself is way too bright!!