Anyone thinking Ted Lasso would usher in a new generation of great sports series, I have some bad news; outside of a few random highlights from niche sports – USA’s short-lived Dare Me, Starz’s underrated Heels, and Yuri on Ice for the anime fans – original sports series haven’t exactly benefited from Ted Lasso‘s half-dozen great episodes of TV (not the space for us to talk about seasons two or three; let’s just pretend they didn’t happen).
There certainly have been some basketball series around – but the less we talk about the equally-embarrassing Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty and Clipped (the Hulu series with Laurence Fishburne, not the 2015 TBS Ashley Tisdale sitcom about a barbershop), the better… not since the days of One Tree Hill‘s early seasons – and maybe Yahoo! Screen’s (lol) uneven 2013 series Sin City Saints – has television had an original basketball series worth watching.
Running Point, the new single-camera comedy from co-creators Mindy Kaling and Ike Barinholtz (alongside Elaine Ko and David Stassen), is Netflix’s attempt at throwing its hat in the proverbial ring; and it certainly has a couple groan-worthy moments attempting to rub elbows with Ted Lasso‘s more saccharine notes – or when it adheres a bit too close to executive producer Jeanie Buss’s real life experience with her family and the Los Angeles Lakers. Thanks to a strong premise and an impressive ensemble (I will tell you now: Chet Hanks is not terrible) are more than enough to make “Pilot” one of the more intriguing first offerings of the spring season… even when the many, many stories it starts juggling in this first half-hour aren’t always the most exciting (or particularly original, though adherence to familiar narrative tropes is natural, and almost welcome, for a quality sports series).
Set an unknown number of years after the death of the Gordon patriarch, Running Point‘s first half hour finds itself quite busy laying out the family tree and their intertwined roles within the ownership structure of the Los Angeles Waves (look, they didn’t get the NBA license – which I think is greatly to the show’s benefit). When team president and eldest brother Cam (Justin Theroux, in a hilarious recurring role) crashes his Porsche on a crack binge, he names his younger, overlooked sister Isla (Kate Hudson) as his successor, to the chagrin of second older brother Ness (Scott MacArthur) and young half-brother Sandy (Drew Tarver), who obviously have their own ideas about the direction of the franchise, itself at a turning point with a 14-22 record and a pair of unhappy star players (Chet Hanks and Toby Sandeman).
“Pilot” squarely focuses its attention on Isla – which isn’t always to its detriment, but certainly drags when Running Point does try to slow down and contend with Isla’s place within her organization and family. It’s certainly no fault of Hudson’s performance, which reminds me a lot of Malin Ackerman’s performance in Sin City Saints, both providing voices of reason and confidence within a male-dominated structure that’s very clearly starting to come apart at the seams.
But when “Pilot” really starts to shine when it shifts its attention off Isla’s background and qualifications (there’s a climactic sequence of her engineering a trade that would be effective, if it weren’t so poorly explained and sequenced) and starts to build out the personalities of its ensemble. Most of these are only introduced as cliff notes – like Ness’s basketball career in the Philippines that ended in scandal, or Isla’s assistant Ali Lee (an enthusiastic Brenda Song), who curses her way through every bit of dialogue and brings a lot of energy to the fairly dry, superficial depiction of a professional basketball team’s inner workings.
In fact, so much attention is spent setting up some of the more obvious notes with the Gordon family and their burgeoning external conflicts, that it barely has any time to get into some of its most promising elements (like Buddhist head coach Jay Brown, or the actual inner team dynamics of the Waves) before it has to rush through Isla’s big first decisions as president, and the subsequent vague threats from the board chairman, whose agenda is … not very clearly laid out, except that he has the power to pull the plug on the whole family affair (which… is bad? It’s probably bad).
Regardless, with a 10-episode first season, Running Point has a little bit of room (and some roomy running times, with each running 26-32 minutes) to explore the studio space hardwood a bit. It’s almost hard to judge “Pilot” without context, because there are so many elements – like Isla’s husband, a shooting guard Isla signs from the G League, and the unseen Gordon family matriarch – that “Pilot” doesn’t even begin to introduce, as it is scrambling to establish the dynamic of difficult, underwhelming star Travis Bugg (a surprisingly adept Chet Hanks) and selfish franchise icon Marcus Winfield, and how Isla’s introduction affects both them and disrupts the known family dynamic.
It’s a lot for any first episode to contend with, especially a half-hour one; and for the most part, “Pilot” keeps it moving at a brisk pace by focusing on Isla’s first days in the executive office, following years of disappointment and an artificial glass ceiling placed on her head. And when it does slow down, it does so to introduce some surprisingly earnest dynamics between her and brothers Sandy and Ness – both of whom have some quasi-antagonistic roles within the plot, but are the one element of the series that hews closer to Ted Lasso (the good parts), rather than something more caustic like Succession or Dynasty.
With a bit of streamlining, hopefully Running Point can find its voice a bit; the real knock against “Pilot” is that it’s solid at many things, but not outstanding at any; while it doesn’t go out of its way to impress the audience (an easy avenue for disappointment), it also plays things fairly safe and close to the chest, in a way that feels a bit soft and rounded off, a little unsure of itself on its feet. For any comedy in 2025 trying to find its identity on a streaming service, this is natural; however, a bit of panache and enthusiastic commitment goes a long way, and is hopefully something we see the series embrace as it starts to get comfortable in its own shoes.
Though its not exactly going to blow anyone away with its ingenuity, Running Point‘s consistently entertaining first half hour makes for one of the more promising comedy series Netflix has offered in awhile – and perhaps more importantly, one of the more potentially exciting sports series any network has offered in recent memory.
Grade: B-
Other thoughts/observations:
- Welcome to reviews of Running Point! Anytime someone brings a basketball series to television (that isn’t a clear embarrassment to the genre… looking at you, Clipped), you know I will be there.
- It’s too bad Justin Theroux is only a recurring role, because his deadpan delivery as Cam gives “Pilot” a rhythm that it sorely misses when he’s off screen.
- I know I’m getting old, because childhood flashbacks are taking place during my childhood now.
- “Alcohol, cocaine, and crack…. I love it.”
- Lots of great actors in this pilot, but I particularly enjoyed seeing Stephen Guarino (Happy Endings) as Roger, and Jon Glaser as a ESPN-esque talking head we see on TV.
- The end of “Pilot” adds another major wrinkle in the final seconds that is too big to really even discuss here; after briefly following stadium employee Jackie Moreno (Fabrizio Guido), it is revealed he is a secret half-brother of the Gordon siblings, a plot that will surely reverberate and truly kick off the narrative in the second episode. It’s too late in the episode to be annoying, but also too late to really factor into anything “Pilot” tries to accomplish.