Reality 3, Fantasy 0

There’s an awful lot of basketball on screens these days, and it’s not just because we’re about to enter March Madness.  Even streaming platforms where such rights aren’t ubiquitous are devoting some quality time and algorithm build to it, not that that’s news unto itself.  After all, in consecutive years we’ve had the Roman Candles of fact-derivative fiction from HBO’s WINNING TIME, the embellished adaptation of the saga of the 80s era Los Angeles Lakers from a book ironically named SHOWTIME, as well as FX/Hulu’s response, CLIPPED, which took us through the sordid saga of how the Don Sterling era of their one-time housemates at Staples Center, the Los Angeles Clippers, was brought down by an overzealous and occasionally sexually accommodating “personal assistant” named V. Stiviano.

And this weekend we’ve got two more such efforts, one pure fiction and one pure fact, on Netflix and MAX, respectively.  The former’s already dropped, a peppy little 10-episode effort from the Mindy Kaling camp of what they consider comedy for the generation of bingers and chillers called RUNNING POINT.  I caught up with it last night admittedly unable not to be drawn in by the charm and beauty of Kate Hudson, who literally was born into this sort of work as the daughter of someone who practically invented the concept of an attractive woman being thrust into an unfamiliar world dominated by men, Goldie Hawn.  Her mom’s execution of the theatrical version of PRIVATE BENJAMIN remains one of my all-time favorites and Hudson’s grabbed such a mantle with her generation as the de facto romcom queen of the oughts with HOW TO MARRY A GUY IN 10 DAYS at the top of my list.  Plus, I happened to splurge on enough athleisurewear from the company she co-owns, FABLETICS when I had the money–enough to that they gifted me several hundred dollars more of what is now my go-to work wardrobe as a “VIP”.   So yes, I like HER.

What I don’t like is redundancy, and in both RUNNING POINT’s plot and the tone it is presented in from the Kaling-verse gang there is to me a strong sense of deja vu.  The show is loosely based on the life of Laker scion Jeannie Buss, whose saga was one of the more alluring bits covered in WINNING TIME.  As the eldest biological daughter of the longtime Lakers’ owner and party animal Jerry Buss she was tabloid and talk show-worthy long before Instagram, both serving in key administrative roles as the team won championships and being photogenic enough to pose for Playboy covering her quite lovely boobs with little more than NBA-sized balls.  In her private life, that honor fell to the team’s coach and zen center, Phil Jackson, with whom she had a years-long and very public romantic dalliance for years while her dad ran the show.  When Jerry Buss passed in 2013 there was an in-family power struggle with her brothers, who had been given favored nations status by their misoygnistic pop merely by being male.  But the real Jeannie Buss was and is a far more passionate student of the game than any of the Buss boys and being involved with Jackson, who had previously coached the Michael Jordan-era Chicago Bulls to six titles before landing in LA to help restore the Lakers’ SHOWTIME era prominence as the era of Shaq, Kobe and Staples Center emerged.   These days, Jeannie’s the key tie to the family legacy and thanks to Lebron James, who has far eclipsed even Jordan’s longevity and productivity and now his newly-acquired running mate Luka Doncic today’s Lakers are well on their way to creating yet another glory era.

So as a sports fan, I know the real version of this story better than many, and the fact that Jeannie Buss is involved as an executive producer (along with Linda Rambis, the wife of longtime Lakers’ role player and executive Kurt) should have allowed this to be a more truthful and honest tale than the one Kaling, brought in several years after Elaine Ko’s initial version received a chilly reception from Netflix, has given us.  Instead of Jeannie Buss of the Lakers, we have Hudson running  the Los Angeles Waves, who apparently play in an arena and wear uniforms that look a lot like what you see with Pepperdine University, the perennially mediocre West Coast Conference representatives of Malibu.  FORBES’ Monica Mercuri did her best to spin the description of Hudson’s lead character:

Kate Hudson stars as Isla Gordon, the only sister in a fiercely competitive family who has always been sidelined from managing their basketball team. But when she’s unexpectedly appointed team president, she wants to prove herself in the male-dominated sports world and show her family she belongs there.  When Isla Gordon unexpectedly steps into the role of team president, she must prove to her skeptical brothers, the board, and the larger sports world that she’s the right person for the job. 

Isla Gordon has an even more party animal and complicated past than does Jeannie Buss, and still shows glimpses of it early on when she has a penchant for toppling over Pelatons and food vendors as well as having her bestie along for the ride as her chief of staff.  And she’s played by Brenda Song in yet another role that effectively plays up her own roots as London from SUITE LIFE into an earthy and oversexed sidekick that teeters between competency and overtones of dominatrix. It’s that role, and their ensuing escapades, that seems particularly out of place.  Beyond that, the show has many other familiar faces for fans of Gen X/Y-appeal fare, including THE RIGHTEOUS GEMSTONES’ Scott MacArthur, NEW GIRL (and THE NEIGHBORHOOD’s) Max Greenfield, and AMERICAN PSYCHO’s Justin Theroux.

But they’re all on hand as mere support for Hudson, who emerges as the silencer to her doubting thomases in manners we’ve seen from the likes of Cameron Diaz in ANY GIVEN SUNDAY to Hannah Waddingham in TED LASSO, yet another streaming sports comedy where an unlikely leader emerges.  Again, we’ve seen the likes of Isla Gordon elsewhere, and for the most part the critical reaction is far below the initial embracing of RUNNING POINT as number one on Netflix (which we know can be artificially inflated by launch and push),  CINEMABLEND’s Heidi Venable rattled off a few, including this one:

Kristen Baldwin of EW says their collective comedic talents are wasted on uninspired writing and unlikeable characters. She gives the series a C-, writing: Running Point’s] three (!) showrunners (David Stassen, Ike Barinholtz, and Mindy Kaling share that title) settle for the most predictable conclusions to most of the narrative set-ups, from episode-only arcs to the all-too-obvious finale cliffhanger. The lazy writing and general lack of originality is especially confounding given that Kaling is the mastermind behind Never Have I Ever and The Sex Lives of College Girls, two recent streaming comedies that are as fresh and funny as Point is futile.

A somewhat fairer but equally underwhelming view is offered by Venable as somewhat of a counter, perhaps the one I resonate with the most:

Ben Travers of IndieWire…call(s) it an “office comedy built with the general blandness of most broadcast TV.” With some swearing, of course. It also wastes Kate Hudson’s talent, Travers says, as he gives it a C- and writes: In the case of Netflix‘s Running Point, the problem is foundational. With so many broadly defined characters pivoting to do whatever the story requires, and so little investment in any one facet of the 10-episode first season, Mindy Kaling’s latest sitcom struggles to connect — sincerely or comedically. It tries to do too much and rather than sticking by the choices it makes, Running Point is simply overrun.

But waiting in the wings to provide something more substantive is MAX’s CELTICS CITY, which naturally BOSTON.COM’s Chad Quinn previewed earlier this week:

One of the many, many things that the extraordinary new nine-part HBO docuseries, titled “Celtics City,” gets right is those through lines from one era of the franchise to another, and one special player to another.  “Celtics City,” directed by Lauren Stowell, is told chronologically, with a new episode available for streaming on Max each Monday beginning March 3. (Bill Simmons is an executive producer, and this is clearly a project he was always meant to do.)

Yet threads and juxtapositions and those through lines of Celtics history are deftly woven through each hour-long edition. Some are simple and charming — Tatum’s appreciation for fellow St. Louis native Jo Jo White, and the contrasts of Dee Brown and Jaylen Brown in the dunk contest more than 30 years apart, and the comical difference between their spare former practice site at Hellenic College and their facility in Brighton now.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL’s John Anderson offered a much less biased yet even more effusive review which, along with the trailer I viewed last night has already had me adding this to my list of HBO must-records along with WHITE LOTUS and LAST WEEK TONIGHT.  Anderson approaches it from the perspective that I have viewed CELTICS CITY:

Want to start an argument in New York? Tell a Yankees fan her team isn’t the greatest dynasty in sports. Want to start an argument in Boston? Call the Celtics the greatest small-town basketball team ever. What really can’t be disputed is that Boston has the largest number of NBA championships, per capita. Or that the history of race relations in America can’t be separated from either the team or the city.

No one tries to argue otherwise. Not the former players, or the journalists, or the writers and commentators who were asked to weigh in because of their ties to Boston—Lawrence O’Donnell, Nelson George, Howard Bryant, Chuck Klosterman, sportswriter Jackie MacMullan, all people who remember the various fabled lineups of the team, and the place where they used to play. “The [old Boston] Garden was kind of a health hazard,” says Bill Simmons, the series executive producer who is interviewed alongside his father, also Bill, a season ticket holder for decades. They recall their greatest moments. And the unairconditioned hellhole in which the faithful used to gather. “Of course, it always smelled of elephants,” says Charles Pierce, referring to the redolence of the circus.

The team’s NBA.com beat writer Taylor Snow teases still more reasons for lovers of the sport, let alone the C’s, to follow my lead on intent-to-view: