First Impressions: Back In the Game ‘Pilot’ – Minor Leaguers in Life

What’s the most important aspect of a comedy pilot? It’s a question I find myself pondering a lot, especially with the last two years of horribly underperforming sitcom pilots (that are neither funny, nor interesting, nor feature any characters I can connect/empathize/care about). The way I see it, sitcoms of all formats “succeed” as pilots if they can do two things (neither of which is be funny; most humor in sitcoms come from understanding characters, nearly impossible to do in a pilot): present a likable cast full of unique characters, and show us why their interactions matter. An audience needs to enjoy watching people talk and be goofy; if they don’t, they’re not going to watch them from week to week. By the same token, if there’s no purpose for the show’s existence, no core philosophy to hang its hat on, there isn’t much of a show: there has to be something tying it all together. In theory, these two things should be simple: but Back In the Game is a perfect example of how difficult it is, taking a masterful premise (a father/daughter reconciling their relationship) and filling it with uninteresting, unlikable adults. The most interesting part of Back in the Game are the kids: and the show doesn’t recognize this, putting its chip in a cranky, laughless James Caan, and a female character (Maggie Lawson) who finds herself forced into reconciling with her father, who she openly hates.

It’s a very confusing angle for a sitcom pilot to take: Caan’s Terry is a grizzled former pro baseball player, living as a drunk old man and handing out his shitty life advice left and right. He taught his daughter to intimidate people to be accepted, pushing her into a tomboy childhood then rejecting her in college, never attending any of her four years of games as an All-American softball player. For fuck’s sake, he doesn’t even know the name of his own grandson, his only advice to him to beat a bully in his class with a baseball bat. There’s nothing redemptive about his character: he’s a bitter drunk who has nothing but contempt for himself and the world – and the pilot oddly avoids giving us any reason why we should like him, or look forward to the budding relationship between him and his daughter.

Lawson’s Terry Jr. is the show’s other big swing and miss. She moves back in with her father after a messy divorce that isn’t explained, and ends up taking a job as the baseball coach of the worst team in the league because she had to prove herself to a misogynistic father of another student (the guy’s name is Dick… how hilarious, right?). While I’m all about seeing a woman whack a dude with a baseball because he’s being a dickhead, her later attraction to him completely undermines her character, and establishes her as a woman who’s never come to terms with her daddy problems. And the show never pushes her to try to, either: the wish-fulfillment ending only blinds her from seeing what an ass he is, fulfilling her wish of him attending a game by having them all on tape. He still never went… who gives a fuck if he watched them alone in his garage? What a bitter old bastard!.

But Back In the Game isn’t into challenging its main characters: the sloppy, sugar-wrapped resolution shows that concern was placed on what looked good and made every feel happy, not actually portraying any kind of nuanced relationship between complex characters. Terry’s a dick, Terry Jr.’s a single mom “just trying to scrape by”, and her kid is weird and bad at sports (and kisses a bully to scare him away in the pilot, the one interesting and funny thing in the show’s 22 minutes) – that’s all there is to Back In the Game, a show where people being terrible to each other and refusing to grow personally is supposed to make me laugh. No thanks.

Grade: D

One random observation:

– I could write thousands of words on the use of baseball in the show, and what it meant philosophically to the main characters. But the show doesn’t care (selling itself as a modern Bad News Bears), so I won’t waste my time talking about the meaning of home plate, the stitching on a baseball, and why it’s so important that the first scene shows her pitching, then cuts to a shot of Terry preparing to swing (a metaphorical moment I doubt the directors intended). It’s too bad it completely ignores it, though – if it utilized it, it could quickly become one of the greatest sport-related TV shows in history.

Back in the Game

Created by Robb & Mark Cullen

Pilot written by John Requa & Glenn Ficarra

Directed by Robb & Mark Cullen

Airs Wednesday nights on ABC