Kate Hudson (How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days and Almost Famous) stars as Isla Gordon, an executive at a NBA team in Los Angeles, known as the Waves. She works there for her brothers who are higher executives, including her eldest brother who is the President of the NBA team. Unfortunately, her eldest brother has become a drug addict and alcoholic who has started getting into car crashes and engaging in other destructive behaviors. He has to go to rehab and turn over control of the company to someone else. His two younger brothers think that it will be one of them, but her eldest brother instead chooses Isla to be the next President of the Los Angeles Waves, which shocks everyone including her two other brothers. They're shocked due to jealousy and pride. Others are shocked due to sexist reasons. The series then becomes about her trying to prove herself as the female leader in this male-dominated industry.
Hudson is of course the main focus, but this series was created by Mindy Kaling, one of the supporting actors and writers for The Office (2005), but ever since then, Kaling has become a significant force in the television landscape. She also recently won the Tony Award for Best Musical for producing A Strange Loop (2022), but mainly she works in television. She created The Mindy Project (2012), Champions (2018), Four Weddings and a Funeral (2019), Never Have I Ever (2020) and The Sex Lives of College Girls (2021). She created a few of those latter shows with another creative. Here, she's made this show with the help of Elaine Ko (Modern Family and Family Guy) and Ike Barinholtz who was an actor and writer on The Mindy Project. This show feels like the most similar to The Mindy Project, which ran for six seasons and was probably Kaling's most successful TV show of her own making, so it feels as though she's trying to recreate that magic.
Scott MacArthur (The Righteous Gemstones and The Mick) plays Ness Gordon, a former NBA player who got injured and then got into trouble, so instead of a basketball career on the court, he was hired by his family to work as the General Manager of the L.A. Waves. This series is a comedy, so he's not a serious person when it comes to managing the team or the organization. We never see him do much work, but that could be an argument made in a lot of sitcoms or shows such as this. In a lot of ways, MacArthur has a role that feels like a role that Ike Barinholtz himself would have, if we were an actor here. MacArthur's vibe feels like a bit of a watered-down version of Barinholtz's character in The Mindy Project for example. He's the more idiotic character, the dumber of the brothers, and blissful in a lot of his ignorance. Of all the brothers, his character feels like the least necessary. His presence could have been totally removed from the narrative and not much would have been affected.
Justin Theroux (The Leftovers and Six Feet Under) plays the eldest brother, Cam Gordon, and his role is intentionally not to be that large. He basically hands over the NBA team to his sister, Isla, and he goes away to rehab. He pops up every now and then, but even though he has less screen time, his role feels more significant or consequential than MacArthur's role. Cam is a more memorable brother than Ness. Cam is in rehab, but he's lying to his doctors or therapists. He's a no-nonsense kind of guy that gets some pretty funny lines, so his impression is a more lasting one than Ness.
Drew Tarver (Unfrosted and The Other Two) co-stars as Sandy Gordon, the younger brother who also works as the Chief Financial Officer or CFO of the L.A. Waves. He is in a lot of ways the opposite of Ness. He's not idiotic. He's very smart and very sharp. He's also very serious about his work at the team and getting things done. If I had to describe him, he is playing the role that Jason Bateman (Ozark and Arrested Development) would have had. Tarver feels like a younger and gayer version of Bateman. A lot of the looks and mannerisms feel the same.
It was great to see Sandy have a same-sex relationship with his dog groomer boyfriend, Charlie, played by Scott Evans (Barbie and One Life to Live). It's funny because Evans was in a TV series called Hit the Floor (2013), which was also about a fictitious NBA team in Los Angeles. The focus was on the cheerleaders, but a lot of the show were about the players on the court. Evans played a character who was involved in a same-sex relationship with a member of the front office. However, it also focused a lot on one of the players who was secretly gay. The story line came a year after Jason Collins came out as LGBTQ becoming the first person to be openly gay while currently playing in the NBA. It was also years after several women came out in the WNBA. It was also the same year that Michael Sam came out as LGBTQ, making him the first person to be openly gay in the NFL. It felt like a sea change was occurring, but over a decade later, there has been no other person to do what Collins did in the NBA. There were reports where Sam talked about athletes still being closeted in the NFL, so the same was likely true in the NBA. It's a shame that this series couldn't address the idea of a gay athlete on the team. Hopefully, that could be something addressed in subsequent seasons.
Chet Hanks (Empire and Shameless) also co-stars as Travis Bugg, probably the one NBA player on the team that gets the most attention and the most screen time of any of the other players. He's one of those White guys who is very Black coded. He's into rap music for example, which isn't unusual to White people, but he behaves in a lot of ways as if he grew up in a Black ghetto, as opposed to his true background. It's revealed that he grew up with a single mother in Florida who is very much that over-the-top, southern stereotype. Strangely though, it seems as if he's a bit, if not a lot sexist or misogynistic in the initial episodes. When Travis' mother shows up in Episode 7, that earlier sexist behavior becomes very curious. His mother says she used to be a stripper, so it's assumed that's what informs his opinions of women. There's a later story line where Travus develops a drug problem, but otherwise, his character felt like he only existed to be problematic, particularly on a public relations basis, rather than a genuinely interesting character.
Uche Agada is a relatively new actor whose debut was Rise (2022) in which he played a real-life basketball player. This is Agada's second project and again he's playing a basketball player and in terms of all the NBA members, his character of Dyson Gibbs is the standout. Dyson is the rookie who was drafted from a D-League. Seeing him dealing with financial issues when he's surrounded by richer teammates and then later seeing Dyson dealing with his humbling free throw problems are way more interesting and compelling than anything regarding Travis.
Otherwise, the series ignores the other players, including Marcus Winfield, played by Toby Sandeman (The Game and Power Book III: Raising Kanan). Marcus is supposed to be the team's star player. He's probably this show's equivalent to LeBron James or something similar. Yet, the show gives us not much insight into who Marcus is beyond his status. The show doesn't take us into his life at all. Travis who is the least interesting sucks up all the oxygen in terms of stories about players. Chet Hanks is the son of Tom Hanks, which is likely why his character gets more attention.
Jay Ellis (Insecure and The Game) is part of the cast as Jay Brown, a Zen Buddhist who is the head coach of the Waves. He's clearly set up to be a potential love interest for Isla, despite the fact that both he and Isla are in relationships at the beginning of the series. It's so obvious that the show is going to angle toward putting the two of them together. If there is a second season, this possible relationship might be explored. Isla would be having an affair with someone who is her employee. There might be a problem with that, given the real life scandal of Ime Udoka in 2022. Otherwise, Jay is not much of a factor in the overall plot. The show does more for Jay than Marcus, but not much more.
Fabrizio Guido (Perry Mason and Mr. Iglesias) rounds out the cast as Jackie Moreno, a young man who works as a food vendor at the the stadium where the L.A. Waves play their games. When his mom dies of cancer, it's revealed that Jackie is the half-brother to Isla and her other brothers. He's a bit of a naive character who has to learn to integrate himself in the family and also be a contributing member of the company. He's a compelling person, but the show doesn't delve much into him and his experiences or life, as much as one would think. It's interesting to see the contrasts between how Jackie grew up, which was in poverty, as opposed to how his half-siblings grew up. The show could've made more of that contrast and juxtaposition, but it doesn't.
Rated TV-MA-L.
Running Time: 30 mins. / 10 eps.
Available on Netflix.