End zone looms for League’s warring pals
LOS ANGELES — The NFL has had to deal with an assortment of off-field situations over the years, from spousal abuse to drug use to deflated balls. These might have been headaches for the league, but they were solid gold for the FXX series The League.
During the seven seasons that the cable series about people who participate in a fantasy football league — created by the husband and wife team of Jeff Schaffer and Jackie Marcus — has been on the air, many of the plot lines have dealt with NFL issues and players.
The series struggled during the early years when some viewers were afraid each episode would focus on the minutiae of trades and how a fantasy football league works. Instead, it has been about people brought together by their love of the NFL.
Their worlds often collided with real players. In the opener for this final season, tonight at 10, Marshawn Lynch, the Seattle Seahawks running back who was threatened with huge fines to get him to talk to reporters, makes an appearance as a chatty friend of the group.
“I think it’s very rare that you can be on a show for seven years that stays relevant. But because the NFL keeps giving us such great material to work with, it’s a show that really can keep going,” says Katie Aselton, who plays Jenny.
Being able to have real NFL players and personalities — such as Antonio Gates, Terry Bradshaw, Terrell Suggs, Maurice JonesDrew, Matt Forte, Deion Sanders and Jim McMahon — work with the cast of Aselton, Stephen Rannazzisi, Mark Duplass, Jon Lajoie, Nick Kroll and Paul Scheer has helped make the fantasy part of the story more grounded in fact.
And now it’s time to say farewell to the participants in both leagues.
It’s tough on Kroll because The League is the first time he’s been on a series that lasted seven seasons.
“Working with this cast is like going to camp every year. You know that you are coming back to a really funny, talented, nice group of people,” Kroll says. “And all of our lives have, sort of, changed and evolved over the last seven years, and yet we are still all, as much as our characters hate each other and are awful to one another on the show, in real life, it’s actually a very supportive, loving group of people, which makes it that much more difficult to say that I’ve blown up all of your cars.”
As one series launches its final season on FXX, another launches its second.
You’re the Worst, on tonight at 10:30, is a dark comedy from Stephen Falk that takes a look at love and happiness through two people who have had little success with either.
Jimmy Shive-Overly (Chris Geere) and Gretchen Cutler (Aya Cash) are forced to move in together, which neither is particularly thrilled about. It’s a relationship that will either grow into love or result in a double homicide.
Cash is not certain how much growth the characters will show in this second season. So far, they have taken two steps forward and two steps back. The actor expects the couple to take at least one step forward by the end of the season.