Plenty of parents and caregivers know just how intense youth sports have become. And sadly, many of them don’t understand that the outcome of a fourth-grade soccer match or softball game doesn’t really matter. Sidelines can be crammed with very vocal adults trying to relive their glory days, yelling at their children (and other people’s) and getting into fights with umpires. In turn, modern sports fields are filled with kids who are under an incredible amount of pressure to perform well.
All of that makes the new Disney+ series Win Or Lose ripe for unpacking. The eight-episode show marks Pixar’s first original series (Dream Productions, which arrived in December,was set in the Inside Out universe) and follows The Pickles, a tween co-ed softball team, the week before their state championship game.
Every short episode (the five made available for review each clocked in at around 20 minutes) tells the story from one character’s unique perspective. Twelve-year-old Laurie (voiced Rosie Foss) just wants to make contact with the ball. Parentified kid Rochelle (Milan Elizabeth Ray) has a mom who seems more concerned with garnering social-media likes than her children. Younger brother Ira (Dorien Watson) is bored by having to go to all the games and makes some bad choices. And umpire Frank (Josh Thomson) is decisive on the field but much less so when it comes to his love life.
In true Pixar fashion, the characters’ feelings are brought to life with creative visuals. Insecure Laurie is plagued by a little amorphous creature known as Sweaty (Jo Firestone), who says things like, “Let’s just replay all the mistakes you made today” while growing bigger and bigger. Frank dons a metaphorical coat of armor to protect himself. And Rochelle suddenly wears a power suit when she’s forced to act like an adult instead of a child.
Pixar has rightfully earned a reputation for getting at emotional truths. And it bodes well that Win Or Lose writers, directors, and executive producers Carrie Hobson and Michael Yates previously worked together on Toy Story 4, a movie about growing up and saying goodbye. Plus, last year’s Inside Out 2 honed in onwhat it’s like to be on the cusp of adolescence and struggling with newfound independence and outsized feelings. And looking back, 2009’s Up touchingly explored losing your spouse and getting older. In comparison, Win Or Lose feels very surfacey, merely skimming the truths about youth sports instead of doing a deep dive into them. (That said, the strongest of those five episodes centers on Rochelle’s mom, Vanessa [Rosa Salazar], and accurately brings the stress of parenting to life.) Which is a shame, as there is such a dearth of programming aimed at children who are too old for Disney Junior but too young for Squid Game. Pixar has a real opportunity here to reach tween viewers—and kind of strikes out.
The series mostly flounders because of the very nature of its structure. By telling its story from multiple perspectives and then forcing viewers to piece together the overall narrative, it’s hard to deeply care about any of the characters. If you want to know what is happening with Laurie, who is literally being crushed by her insecurities, you don’t really see much of her again after her episode. Strangely, the most consistent characters in the series are a trio of friends known as The Bleacher Creatures, one of whom wears a chicken costume at all times. They’re fond of egging cars, stealing candy, and skipping school. The trouble is that they’re fine for mild comic relief but are hardly worth getting invested in.
Will Forte is the most well-known member of the cast as the voice of Dan, the coach. But after the premiere, even his character is only seen intermittently (at least in the episodes screened). One expects that all of these disparate storylines will converge in the season finale, which, according to the logline, is centered on his character.
But what viewers won’t see is any reference to the team’s star player, Kai (Chanel Stewart), being transgender. Kai is still in the series (the seventh episode, “I Got It,” is told from the character’s perspective) and is voiced by a transgender actress, but Disney announced in December that the show had removed any dialogue that mentioned Kai’s gender identity. It feels like now more than ever we need to stand up in the face of hateful rhetoric and damaging discrimination policies. Instead, Disney cowered under excuses, with a company spokesperson noting, “When it comes to animated content for a younger audience, we recognize that many parents would prefer to discuss certain subjects with their children on their own terms and timeline.” The way to fight hate is to show young people that differences are not something to be feared or maligned. If corporations are afraid to even include a few lines addressing such a subject, it does not bode well for the next four years. And that sure feels like a loss for us all.
