The League: Further into Fantasy

One last season with all the favorites... and Taco.
 "Maybe you're the part of my brain that's so crazy it won't allow me to accept that I'm crazy." - Ryan Newman, Wilfred, S03E01



FX's fantasy football centered comedy is drifting further and further toward fantasy and farther and farther from football. With the final season of the show having premiered now two Wednesday's ago, it's clear that although it's a bit of a step up from the previous couple of seasons, the roots of the show have changed drastically.

The League started out as a show essentially about four men, friends since high school, who lead rather mundane lives, one as a lawyer, one as a doctor, one as a prosecutor, and one as number of various low-paying jobs. Also thrown in are the stoner younger brother of Kevin (the prosecutor,) as well as his football-knowledgeable wife, Jenny. For the most part, though absurd things happen to them in the first three seasons, allowing football to influence their lives, these are regular people, with regular lives, who happen to just have an obsessive hobby. There were quirks to the characters, with Ruxin being more a snarky asshole than the others, Andre being the butt of all jokes, Kevin being a bit of a pushover, and Pete being our leading man, but again: these were regular people. Guys that you could imagine being friends with and guys you could imagine hanging out in a bar with. All of this began to change around season four.

In the fourth season of the show, plots began to get odd. Sometimes, this was for the best. An episode guest starring J.B. Smoove involved a racist player piano which, although strange, was still funny. But with plots like this one, the realism of the show slowly began to change. No longer did The League fully rely on incredibly intelligent writing. Now, though still with funny quips and such, the strangeness of the happenings began to make up for some of the comedy, progressing past the fourth season into the fifth, sixth, and now seventh editions.

From ass to psycho: RAFI!
One of the best case studies of this transition is the character of Rafi, the psychopathic brother-in-law of Ruxin. Upon introduction in the second season, Jason Mantzoukas's character was an asshole, but in a very real sense. Rafi made dick jokes at odd times, talked about sexuality and feces a good deal, and would be the kind of guy to steal someone's drink at a party to try to be friendly. He referred to all of the members of the league as his best friends, despite the fact that they all hated him and wished he would leave the league. From there, Rafi would make appearances now and then, becoming one of the funniest characters on the show. However, the oddness of Rafi began to get escalated as the show went on. At some point, probably around that pivotal fourth season, Rafi took a turn towards violence, as well as outrageous sexuality. He took a transition from un-self aware to just psychopathy. All of a sudden Rafi was carrying a knife everywhere he went, masturbating in every bathroom that our central characters happened to be near, and at this point in the show, literally just hiding out in people's houses without them knowing to do weird sexual acts. Rafi, as well as the actual show of The League went from clever to straight out ridiculous. Now, although this sounds like a harsh criticism, this does not necessarily mean that Rafi or the show itself has gone sour.

Though it's true that post-season three, the overall quality of The League took a bit of a drop, I've still very much enjoyed watching it. As we went to more absurd areas of comedy, it's almost as if The League became a different show with familiar characters. For instance, in the second episode of the current episode, Andre and his new girlfriend, the ex-wife of Pete, throw the League's draft. However, for no apparent reason, they decide to make it Gilded Age themed, making everyone come in ridiculous 1800's costumes, and ending in Andre randomly having learned karate and beating up angry Asian people who came to get their kidnapped friend (courtesy of the now auctioning-off-humans Rafi,) back. It was a funny episode and an enjoyable twenty-something minutes of television, but it was just... odd. It felt as if the writers abandoned their original premise and undertook a complete paradigm shift.
The classical Ruxin Face

While I'll attack the show for changing itself so much from original humor, there are a couple aspects of The League that have never changed. The two standouts are Ruxin, played by Nick Kroll, and Andre, played by Paul Scheer. These two actors have long been the highlights of the show - one being a more raunchy, more Jewish, and overall better Chandler Bing, and the other being one of the most self mocking characters I've ever seen. Scheer is fearless in his ridiculous outfit choice, and has iron skin when letting his coworkers brutally make fun of him in them. Kroll can talk a mile a minute and make viewers have to rewind the show just to catch all of the hilarious lines coming out of him. I always wonder if there's an alternate timeline wherein Nick Kroll could be a star of Veep, as he would probably fit in perfectly. Though Katie Aselton, Mark Duplass, and Steve Rannazzisi do their parts quite solidly, at this point, I really watch the show for Ruxin and Andre's humor.

In an overall sense, it's bittersweet to see The League begin its final season. On the one hand, this animal has been wounded for a long time, and to see it end before it has a chance to go way downhill is a positive. On the other hand, as with any show that's been on as long as this one, it'll be sad to say goodbye to our favorite fantasy football players. Though it may not be must-watch television since season three, The League provided a yearly crop of episodes that, if nothing else, were just enjoyable. Though it may be drifting further into the fantasy aspect of comedy than the football one, it'll still be sad to bid a final farewell to Ruxin, Andre, Pete, Jenny, Kevin, Rafi, and even Taco in only eleven short weeks. Hopefully, they don't throw any balls instead of running them in the final moments of the show.

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