Win or Lose

Overall, though, Win or Lose is a pleasant surprise. It’s not a traditional baseball tale and is less interested in the minutiae of sports than the minutiae of those who play them. It gets at various issues bigger than baseball—anxiety, financial pressures, loneliness—but seamlessly weaves in curveballs through funny gags and inventive bursts of animation.

Win Or Lose manages to tell detailed stories about each of its characters, with emotions rooted in reality while taking advantage of Pixar’s ability to create a fascinating visual landscape.

This is the best Pixar project since Turning Red, and despite some corporate interference, it represents an exciting new direction in a sequel- and spin-off-heavy environment. Plus, it’s the funniest Pixar cartoon in a couple of years.

Some characters elicit more interest than others, which could very well remain the only reason to see what’s in store, and it’s not uncommon for a background character or two to add a bit of weight to their own story several episodes later.

I would almost be tempted to call it a home run — if not for one egregious error that tinges what should be a clear win with a sense of loss. .... Critics weren’t sent the episode centered around Kai, and she hasn’t played a significant role in the ones we have seen so far. So I can’t tell you how the last-minute rewrites play, how central her trans identity would have been to her narrative, or how erasing it changes our understanding of her.

The four episodes I've seen of "Win or Lose", especially Episodes 3 and 4, are among Pixar's strongest work in recent years. .... Yet I can't escape the dread that the last-minute changes to the show's second half could threaten its tight narrative construction as well as its positive inclusive ethos, so my praise is measured and tentative.

Pixar is still clearly trying to iron out the wrinkles in how to best use episodic television to tell their types of stories, but Win or Lose is a great step in the right direction.

While it is appreciated, it is interesting that adult themes are willingly injected into a show for kids who have yet to experience things such as feeling lonely after ending a relationship. And yet experiences that do impact kids, like gender identity and sexuality, are stripped away because it is supposedly difficult for them to engage with.

Win or Lose’s lack of trans representation merely puts it on a par with virtually every other show on TV, and might ordinarily have passed by unnoticed. But it’s another reason why it feels like a swing and a miss.

Win Or Lose is a middle-of-the-road affair, a decent-enough way to pass the time with America's greatest pastime. It's not a triumphant success for Pixar, but it's not a complete disaster either

The Mickey Mouse-shaped softball field the series operates in holds it back in a way that fails creators Carrie Hobson and Michael Yates’ original vision. .... “Coach’s Kid” is the most “Inside Out”-esque of the bunch, heartwarming but oddly familiar. The other episodes take strong liberties that feel refreshing even for Pixar. .... Though Kai’s episode “I Got It” wasn’t screened for me, her appearances in the episodes portrayed her as straight and cisgender. It felt like a one-two punch after the sheer cowardice of “Captain America: Brave New World.”

The series mostly flounders because of the very nature of its structure. By telling its story from multiple perspectives and then forcing viewers to piece together the overall narrative, it’s hard to deeply care about any of the characters.