A League of Their Own (2022)

This is valuable storytelling and necessary storytelling. But also, in these hands, it’s often a whole lot of fun. Which means that by the end of the season, the series does succeed in delivering the sort of thrills you get from watching a great game being played — leaving you rooting for a second season.

With its compelling character arcs, natural comedic chemistry, and attention to period details and social issues, A League Of Their Own seems to be the heir apparent to Netflix’s GLOW, another female-centric sports dramedy.

What makes it a success isn't really the worldview, but the comedy: Ms. Jacobson, Ms. Carden and Ms. Adams, the starring lineup, are uniformly wonderful, but their "team"—notably Roberta Colindrez as Lupe, Kelly McCormack as Jess, Gbemisola Ikumelo as Max's comic-book obsessed pal, Clance, and, again, Ms. Berlant—are .400 hitters in the comedy division. ... "A League of Their Own" is really a series all its own.

The show leads with equal humor and heart, crafting its characters with a loving hand and allowing them ample time to slowly discover themselves. ... But what’s so outstanding about A League of Their Own is that it can effectively mingle the highs and lows of life without constantly mining trauma for exhausting dramatic effect.

The result is a show that is more fun than the original. This “A League of Their Own” is able to explore and laugh with more of its characters, finding their depth, celebrating their new-found freedoms, but also casting an unflinching gaze on the ways their society still held them back—not just as women, but also as lesbian or bi people, Black women, and Latinas.

Jacobson and Graham have used a known IP to spend worthwhile time digging deeper into that time period’s veneer of ragged hair and men in crisp uniforms who make women swoon. Now it’s just a matter of whether audiences will batter up and hear their call.

The show, unlike the movie, is not a memory looked back on from the present; it is the present, little anachronisms crashing into each other so the characters' concerns never feel like relics of the past. Keeping viewers on their toes works for comedic effect, too, giving the series a dry sense of humor that cuts through its warmth.

The writers do a commendable job keeping Carson and Max's parallel arcs afloat while squeezing in some subplots for the superlative supporting players — but later episodes of League buckle a bit under the weight of so much story. ... But none of that really mattered when it came time for the finale, a barn burner of an hour that blends a legitimately moving championship climax with a critical relationship cliffhanger.

Tis feels like a more complete version of the story. It is as touching as it is funny, even if it turns out that there is crying in baseball, after all.

A League of Their Own isn’t just another remake. It’s taken its source material and helped it blossom into something much more nuanced and relevant. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you might even learn something about baseball.

This "A League of Their Own" does what any successful remake must: it finds its own voice, standing apart from its predecessor while also honoring its legacy.

By the end of the first season, it’s hard not to be invested in the Peaches as a team, but it’s an occasionally bumpy road getting to the point that the series and its characters become entirely embraceable.

Presenting Max's and Carson's storylines separately acknowledges the reality of segregation in Jim Crow America. But this also means Max doesn't get to participate in the heights of each Peaches victory or the nail-biting worry of the team's setbacks. The scripts create an engaging arc through which Max discovers where she belongs, but she's never a fully enfranchised participant in their emotional highs and lows. ... Still, their earnest effort to do right by her comes off well.

This “League” is like someone took the original concept and found a new playbook. It works, but it’s also more adult than you could imagine. ... Because there are so many players to consider, they’re often reduced to their personality traits or positions. They all get playing time. Some, however, are more prominent than others.

This new version of A League Of Their Own explores territory that the original movie didn’t even attempt to explore. Whether that makes the series a coherent whole is yet to be seen. But it certainly is off to a good start.

The exploration of their, and others’, sexuality becomes as driving a force of League‘s narrative as the Peaches’ underdog quest to reach the championship. Lest this all sound too mopey and serious, rest assured that the series comes alive on and off the baseball field, with a vivid mix of colorful personalities taking wild swings at life, convincing themselves this is all real and that it’s OK to want something and live your dream. [15 - 28 Aug 2022, p.4]

It’s a talented ensemble, but what they’re asked to play, and how they’ve chosen to play it, doesn’t always sync with what is supposed to be the world of the series. ... As it reaches its finale, A League of Their Own conjures up the same heady, wistful feeling so essential to the film.

The halfhearted comedy of the first half (manifested mainly through Carson’s tendency to ramble incoherently when she’s nervous) gives way to richer, deeper emotions in the second as Carson, Max, Greta and others allow themselves to more fully explore who they really are and what they really want.

If you make it through the messy early episodes, “League” turns out to be a sweet show and downright wholesome in its own way.

Early episodes struggle to balance multiple storylines, introduce characters, and immerse viewers in a new world that looks so close to the one they already know and love. But thanks to a sterling ensemble (cast by Felicia Fasano) and absolute dedication to its open-minded approach (a credit to the co-creators), the eight-episode first season slowly comes together around a heart that was always in the right place.

This series casts a refreshingly queer and diverse eye on all the knotty stuff director Penny Marshall left out of her 1992 tribute to women in baseball. But even when the creators fumble the ball by reducing characters to social agendas, their intentions are honorable.

Inevitably building toward a big game, A League of Their Own doesn't go down in the box score as an unqualified success -- it's basically a solid single -- but credit the producers with an interesting idea, slickly produced, which feels a bit too stretched and slow spread over eight episodes. In terms of the streaming field, that's a league, frankly, in which the show has plenty of company.

The show is built on two central figures who aren’t as strong as the minor characters orbiting them. ... So much of it could be gloriously delightful if it were just a little less conscious of navigating around the triumphs and drawbacks of its predecessor.

Not quite a home run, but it captures some of that Lioness pride in women dreaming, and scoring, big.

One issue is the disconnect in tones between the Peaches’ story—which, done right, would be more than enough to fill hour-long episodes—and Max’s equally complicated family drama. Both plots are worthwhile, but they crowd each other out. Which leads to an even bigger problem: with runtime at a premium, Graham and Jacobson rarely find space for fun.

This new League(*) is interesting and fun in many ways, with a strong cast highlighted by D’Arcy Carden from The Good Place. But in attempting to improve on perfection — or, at least, to point out the imperfections of the mainstream movie studio comedy system of the early Nineties — the show reveals some large flaws of its own.

The show splits its time between the nascent Rockford Peaches and Max (Chanté Adams), an ambitious pitcher excluded from the league because she’s Black. Both halves of the narrative wind through queer spaces and various character awakenings but only with a well-meaning mildness that feels like preamble rather than actual story.

This show seems at times unsure of what to say next, or where to take its story. And attempts to broaden the scope of that story can alternately present an admirable curiosity about what more can be said about the history of women in baseball and a tendency to avoid engaging history on its own terms.

Many of these actresses are doing the best they can with the material and deserve another swing, but as it stands now the show is no home run.

Partly hampered by their fealty to the original film, Jacobson and co-creator Will Graham don’t swing for the fences. Instead, the eight-episode first season of “A League of Their Own” is, say, a solid single up the middle. At least they didn’t strike out; a second season could hold much potential.