The comedy focuses on a group of Chicago friends who get together to discuss fantasy football.
A Review from Variety
The League
(Series -- FX, Thur. Oct. 29, 10:30 p.m.)
By BRIAN LOWRY
Filmed in Los Angeles by Chicken Sticks and FX Prods. Executive producers, Jeff Schaffer, Jackie Marcus Schaffer; producers, Keith Raskin, Kyle Clark; director, Jeff Schaffer; writers, Schaffer, Schaffer.
Pete - Mark Duplass
Ruxin - Nick Kroll
Taco - Jon Lajoie
Kevin - Stephen Rannazzisi
Andre - Paul Scheer
Jenny - Katie Aselton
Sofia - Nadine Velazquez
With:
Meegan - Leslie Bibb
After firmly establishing its dramatic footprint, FX is beginning to make serious inroads in comedy with its preview of the animated spy spoof "Archer" and now "The League," a crude but consistently funny half-hour that appears to be a bull's-eye with the channel's male-skewing audience. Like TBS' "My Boys," this show about a group of guys connected by their impassioned fantasy football league mixes sports with other primitive male qualities, blending confusion about the women in their lives with the need for a stat-generating quarterback. For FX, it's a major step toward a truly diversified offense.
The topnotch ensemble includes Pete (Mark Duplass), who consistently wins the fantasy league crown while suffering through a quarrelsome marriage; Kevin (Stephen Rannazzisi), whose wife Jenny (Katie Aselton) secretly helps develop his team's draft strategies; the sexually frustrated Ruxin (Nick Kroll), whose wife ("My Name Is Earl's" Nadine Velazquez) is withholding sex after having a baby; and Andre (Paul Scheer), a plastic surgeon whom the other guys constantly abuse.
Each of them hold respectable day jobs except for Kevin's brother, Taco (Jon Lajoie), a committed pothead whose absence of a social filter includes singing a filthy song at a kid's birthday party. The others, however, are so blinded by their competitive ardor that Kevin, a district attorney, and Ruxin, a defense lawyer, actually negotiate a fantasy player trade as part of a criminal suspect's plea bargain.
In a very good sign, the second episode is funnier than the first, introducing the term "Eskimo brothers" (don't ask), "special" sex and a riotous double date where the wives -- who more than hold their own -- engage in a discussion about post-natal breasts that includes feeling each other up.
Created by the husband-and-wife team of Jeff Schaffer ("Curb Your Enthusiasm") and Jackie Marcus Schaffer ("Disturbia"), "The League" is consistently juvenile and raunchy -- all in the service of demonstrating that men never really outgrow their teenage years. Like little boys, rather, these guys constantly trade insults, talk smack to each other and generally behave like asses, while obsessing over the prospect of having to "trade" Peyton Manning.
The single-camera series will premiere after FX's long-running "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," which possesses a similar sensibility but has proved uneven in its execution. The pressure to be as edgy as FX's dramas can become its own kind of trap -- being smutty is harder than it looks without sacrificing wit -- but "The League" comes close to the goal of creating a TV show with "The Hangover"-type appeal.
Sitcoms are already enjoying a mini-resurgence on broadcast TV. With these fantasy football guys and what we've seen of "Archer," FX is indicating that basic cable can hold its own in that league, too.
Camera, Patrick A. Stewart; production designer, Gary Kordan; editor, Jon Corn; music, Jeff Cardoni; casting, Jeanne McCarthy. RUNNING TIME 30 MIN.
A Review from The New York Times
Television Review | 'The League'
Playing Fantasy Football and Wallowing in Real-Life Raunch Off the Imaginary Field
By NEIL GENZLINGER
Published: October 28, 2009
The sorry losers who take part in fantasy sports may have a hard time recognizing themselves in “The League,” a new FX comedy about longtime buddies who have a fantasy football league. For one thing, several guys in this league actually have sex with their spouses or girlfriends.
Real fantasy-sports nerds, of course, have no sex, because we — I mean they — tend to do things like hold lengthy conversations about the hamstring health of professional athletes and spend their anniversary-dinner money on sports magazines and tipsheets. But Jeff Schaffer and Jackie Marcus Schaffer, the creators of this show, which starts Thursday night, smartly realized that they had to put some sex in it to attract any viewers other than fantasy-sports nuts, who make a lousy audience anyway, because they’re constantly switching over to ESPN to check for hamstring injury updates.
The Schaffers, who are married, have injected rather a lot of sex and vulgarity into “The League,” so much so that by Episode 2 it pretty much takes over the show and fantasy football becomes a secondary plotline. That turns out to work pretty well: in its astonishingly raunchy way, “The League” is pretty funny whether or not you’re a fantasy geek, assuming you’re a TV-MA kind of person.
For the uninitiated, in fantasy sports participants create fake teams made up of actual athletes, and those teams rise or fall in the standings based on the real statistics those athletes put up. Fantasy leagues have drafts, trades, prize money for the winners, and lots and lots of trash talk.
The guys in the league of “The League” cover the expected assortment: the man-boy (Mark Duplass); the arrogant annoyance (Nick Kroll); the stoner/ladies’ man (Jon Lajoie); the happily married father (Stephen Rannazzisi); the one all the others pick on (Paul Scheer). The show moves quickly and somewhat sloppily, and the stars, mostly sketch-comedy types, aren’t likely to win any acting awards. But they do get laughs.
“The League” has just enough savvy fantasy-sports humor to keep aficionados amused. The way the guys determine who has first pick on draft day is hilarious, and a couple of trades have preposterous repercussions in areas that have nothing to do with fantasy football.
But the show spends far more time on the league members’ interpersonal relationships and love lives. One is staring at divorce; another is pondering having more children; a third — the stoner, whose name is Taco — picks up women without even trying.
And all of it is oh so filthy. “The League” follows another FX exercise in ribaldry, “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” on the schedule, and if anything is even more crass.
Helping make it so are the women in the guys’ lives, including Katie Aselton, whose character may be the brains behind her husband’s team, and Leslie Bibb, who in an outlandish scene in the premiere does a thing during sex that — well, never mind.
THE LEAGUE
FX, Thursday nights at 10:30, Eastern and Pacific times; 9:30, Central time.
Created by Jeff Schaffer and Jackie Marcus Schaffer; directed by Mr. Schaffer; Mr. Schaffer and Ms. Schaffer, executive producers; Keith Raskin, line producer and unit production manager; Linda Morel, production coordinator. Produced by FX Productions.
WITH: Mark Duplass (Pete), Stephen Rannazzisi (Kevin), Nick Kroll (Ruxin), Paul Scheer (Andre), Jon Lajoie (Taco), Katie Aselton (Jenny), Leslie Bibb (Meegan) and Nadine Velazquez (Sofia).
A Review from The New York Daily News
The League
New FX sitcom 'The League' plays dirty in show about fantasy football buddies
David Hinckley
Thursday, October 29th 2009, 4:00 AM
THE LEAGUE
Thursday night at 10:30, FX
The new FX sitcom "The League" is betting that if it's really clever, the audience won't mind if it's also really raunchy.
Or maybe, for some of the target audience, that should be phrased the other way around.
In either case, it's a delicate balance that "The League" is still working out. While some of the show is wildly funny, the raunch at times overshadows the humor.
Built around five guys in a fantasy football league, "The League" in many ways is a traditional suburban family sitcom.
It jokes about the kids and wives that some of the guys have and some of the guys don't. It jokes about the neuroses guys have and exaggerates everyone's obsessions.
The fantasy league, naturally, is inflated to a cartoonishly central role in all the guys' lives - as it is in the real lives of just enough guys so the jokes become funnier.
You've got geeky Andre (Paul Scheer), an enormous success who burns for any semblance of respect from his cooler friends.
You've got Pete (Mark Duplass), who wins the championship almost every year and doesn't see what else he needs to accomplish.
When assistant district attorney Kevin (Stephen Rannazzisi) meets with defense attorney Ruxin (Nick Kroll) about one of Ruxin's clients, they launch plea-bargaining negotiations in which the central chip turns out not to be the defendant's guilt, but a first-round draft pick in the fantasy league.
They finally work out a deal: They will swap picks and the client will go up the river.
It's a great joke that would work nicely in a mainstream sitcom. But that's not the plan here.
At a children's birthday party, the smiling, guitar-strumming entertainer sings an extremely graphic song about the moment of their conception.
That joke gets our attention for the same reason as the plea-bargain joke, because a character keeps a straight face while behaving in an outrageously inappropriate manner.
That's classic sitcom, and "The League" could easily entertain a classic sitcom audience. It doesn't need to talk dirty to be funny.
The question is whether it wants that audience, and the answer, pretty clearly, is no. FX has always had a good idea what viewers it's after, and the way TV works these days, a loyal cult can be enough. "The League" certainly has the goods to get one of those.
A Review from The LA Times
TELEVISION REVIEW
'The League'
Crudeness abounds on new FX show about five guys in a fantasy football league.
October 29, 2009|MARY McNAMARA, TELEVISION CRITIC
It's rare that a television show leaves me at a loss for words, but "The League," man, I just don't know what to say. The FX comedy purports to be about "friendship, marriage, parenting and growing up" set against the backdrop of a fantasy football league, but as far as I can tell from the first two episodes, it's essentially an excuse to use anatomical terms normally heard in the locker room on television.
Many shows are crude -- Lord knows this season of Showtime's "Weeds" shoved the boundaries of discretion so hard it left bruises and FX's "Nip/Tuck" and "Rescue Me" are no shrinking violets -- but on each of those shows, the crudeness served the narrative and the characters.
In "The League," created by husband-wife team Jeff Schaffer ("Curb Your Enthusiasm") and Jackie Marcus Schaffer ("Disburbia"), the crudeness seems to be the narrative. And, to a certain extent, the characters as well.
The five friends who form the league are, intentionally or un-, a smudged and cloudy bar-mirror image of the kind of girl-bonding made famous by "Sex and the City." There's Pete (Mark Duplass), the league organizer and reigning champion whose childish chest-pounding is neither explained nor made more sympathetic by the fact that he is violated by his own wife in the first episode. Nick Kroll ("Cavemen") is Ruxin, the over-anxious, over-sexed, insecure Jew of the group (a fact he references often). With equal levels of desperation, he wants to win this year's pool and have sex with his very hot new-mommy wife, which leads, in the first quest, to the verbal and emotional abuse of a child and in the second, way too many graphic descriptions of his unfulfilled sexual desires.
Kevin (Stephen Rannazzisi) is a guy so deep he watches porn while on the Stairmaster; he too has a winner of a wife. Jenny (Katie Aselton) sees herself as one of the guys, which means (a) that she wants Kevin to listen to her vis-a-vis draft picks and (b) she is not afraid to get drunk and profane in public. See, we didn't need an Equal Rights Amendment after all.
If these are "real guys" then heaven help us all, and if this is a show about friendship, marriage and parenting (parenting!), the social institution of adulthood is doomed.
There's nothing wrong with a show about lovable losers, but they have to be, you know, lovable. Here, the men seem to be products of their writers' contempt; they're such babies that even their profanity doesn't rise from the potty. Yes, their wives are awful, their lives are empty and the only thing that connects them is fantasy, but they don't seem to have an original thought among them and for that they've got no one to blame but themselves. And, of course, the Schaffers.
A Review from The San Francisco Chronicle
TV review: FX's losers in 'League' of their own
Tim Goodman
San Francisco Chronicle October 28, 2009 04:00 AM
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Back in 2003, when FX was still a fledgling cable channel, it developed a wonderful little comedy called "Lucky," starring John Corbett. But the channel had no other sitcom to pair it with and instead went heavily into drama development.
It wasn't until two years later that it launched a pair of comedies - "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" and "Starved" - hoping to get a foothold into the world of humor.
Well, if you watch television at all, you can probably guess what happened. "Sunny" became a cult hit, then a bona fide hit, and then a DVD boxed set sensation, defying the theory that you can't have just one entry in a genre. "Starved" didn't make it, and FX since that time hasn't been able to find the magic combination to make its audience laugh (last year's "Testees" being a good example of such failure.)
Looks as if things have finally turned for FX.
The channel recently aired a sneak peek of an animated series, "Archer," and the critical reaction was impressive. "Archer" will return to the schedule full time in January. But on Thursday, FX will premiere its latest comedy, "The League," a ridiculously funny, male-centric look at four friends in a fantasy football league that doesn't entirely close the door on female viewers - a more difficult feat than you can imagine because that kind of balance has probably been the main culprit in the long search for just the right comedy. ("Sunny," for example, initially looked as if it was going to attract the young male demo but has delivered a fanatical female following as well.)
"The League" was co-created by Jackie Marcus Schaffer and husband Jeff Schaffer in one of those honey-why-can't-we-be-like-this deals where beer drinking, sports talk, references to genitalia and scathing put-down humor was encouraged by both sides.
If the notion of fantasy sports is a nonstarter for you, think of "The League" more as a heightened look at male-female relationships with the occasional reference to Peyton Manning and Adrian Peterson - not knowing who they are means only a small reduction in appreciating the humor.
Sharp edge
FX calls "The League" a comedy "about friendship, marriage, parenting, suburbia and growing up - or refusing to grow up." That makes it sound like something you'd see on CBS instead of a sharp-edged lifestyle satire that, in the second episode, will launch the term "vaginal hubris" into the lexicon in a truly hilarious fashion.
Jeff Schaffer has written, produced and directed for "Curb Your Enthusiasm" the past three seasons, so he knows a little about fearless jokes, and Jackie Marcus Schaffer is a producer ("Old School," "Disturbia"), so the strength of the first two episodes (of six) should be a good indication of what's to come.
"The League" focuses on Pete (Mark Duplass), a bit of a slacker married to Meegan (Leslie Bibb), who hates his addiction to "faux" football. But Pete has won the league three of the past four seasons, so he's not quitting anytime soon, even if it jeopardizes his marriage.
Ruxin (Nick Kroll) is determined to win this year even if he needs to hire a child savant to do it. He's married to Sofia (Nadine Velazquez), "a hot, complicated mess" who wants Ruxin to dote on their newborn when he should be brushing up on key fantasy stats.
Kevin (Stephen Rannazzisi) is Pete's best friend and the commissioner. He's got a secret: His wife, Jenny (Katie Aselton), really runs his team. And she's ruthless and confident. Also, she's got "vaginal hubris." Kevin's younger brother, Taco (Jonathan Lajoie), is "a part-time musician and full-time stoner." He won the league once but doesn't remember. He writes inappropriate songs.
Last there's Andre (Paul Scheer), a loser in high school who got all the grief - and not much has changed now that he's a successful plastic surgeon and unsuccessful fantasy league player.
Guy humor
"The League" traffics in shoulder-punching guy humor with an emphasis on lust and body parts. When Kevin talks about getting what Jenny calls "special sex," he's mocked and asked: "Are there unicorns spewing tears of Elton John songs?" But the wink is these guys are mostly powerless husbands, damaged or geeky. As in "Sunny," they are almost-lovable losers, and that's a formula FX is now perfecting.
An Article from USA TODAY
By Steve Coogan, USA TODAY
Aug 7, 2011
What was a TV show about friends playing in an intense fantasy football league going to be about if there was no football?
That was one of the big issues the producers of the FX Network comedy The League were facing as they were planning their upcoming third season while the NFL worked out its labor issues.
Speaking at a news conference during the Television Critics Association (TCA) press tour on Saturday, husband-and-wife co-creators and executive producers Jeff Schaffer and Jackie Schaffer addressed the possibilities.
"We had a Plan A, which was to do the show, and we had a Plan B, which is what happens if there's ‑‑ if there's no football," Jeff Schaffer said. "Plan B basically revolved around them losing their minds. The CFL would have been very happy."
Jeff also credited the network for allowing the team to pushing back shooting and a premiere date to ensure the show could start when the NFL season got under way, adding that they just started filming within the last week.
"We desperately, desperately wanted there to be football," he said. "And we waited, and we waited, and we waited until there was football. And FX was cool with us pushing our shooting date and pushing our air date so that we could make sure that we started when football started."
Jackie Schaffer explained that since the series, which stars Mark Duplass, Stephen Rannazzisi, Nick Kroll, Paul Scheer, Katie Aselton and Jon Lajoie as friends who will do anything to win, often focuses on their lives outside fantasy football, the NFL's 2011 season wasn't as necessary for its survival.
"As we started writing Season 3, I hate to say it, that even though we love football, we realized we could write this show without football," she said. "And there's so much great, rich territory to explore with these guys' lives ... We could have done it without that ... for us, it's just whatever the funniest stories are."
Q&A: Duplass, Aselton: In 'The League' and in love
Jeff Schaffer added that they since they had to ask the question, "Would these guys still be friends if there was no fantasy football?" when writing scripts, they realized they could "could fold it all of this into a great season" when the NFL did return.
The sitcom, which returns Thursday, Oct. 6, has featured cameos from NFL personalities and players in previously. The Jaguars' Maurice Jones-Drew, new Seahawks wide receiver Sidney Rice and ESPN fantasy sports expert Matthew Berry all will make appearances early this season.
"The first season, you know, we reached out to the players, and they were open to doing it, and now the players reach out to us," Jackie Schaffer said.
Also keep an eye out for A-list comedic actor Seth Rogen. He'll play the infamous oft-mentioned but never seen "Dirty Randy."
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