A League of Their Own is so gay and so good – The Spinoff
Finally a show that gets straight to the point with its queer protagonists, writes Madeleine Chapman.
The lowdown
A League of Their Own, created by Abbi Jacobson (Broad City) and Will Graham, follows the Rockford Peaches as they compete in the first professional women’s baseball league. Released in its entirety on Amazon Prime last week, the show’s first season runs at eight hour-long episodes.
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The good
Movies and TV shows about female athletes are rare. Movies and TV shows about the queer communities within women’s sports are virtually non-existent. So much so that the original A League of Their Own movie from Penny Marshall (which is excellent) is a queer classic, despite having no openly gay characters and Marshall apparently being staunch in her position that even Rosie O’Donnell’s character was straight (lol).
The new series takes the subject matter – women playing baseball in 1943 – and draws a reasonable conclusion: extremely gay. (Since the real-life league folded in 1954, several of its players have come out as gay.) What that means is there are no extended glances from across the room in episode one, with a brief handhold in episode three, and then a confused kiss in the season finale. That storyline, so often dragged out for whole seasons in other shows, begins and ends in the first episode when it is made clear apparent that a lot of these women are gay as hell.
So with that out of the way, the series is able to look into the lives and struggles of women who, for a variety of reasons, feel they can’t be entirely themselves all the time. What has potential to be an earnest and bleak look into the sexism and racism of the time is instead a joyful peek into queer culture in the 1940s, with a little baseball on the side. Seeing women tentatively discover themselves, and then excitedly discover their own community, in real time is so fun to watch, whether you’re into sports or not.
Fans of the original will remember the scene when an unnamed black woman returns a practice ball to the Peaches with an impressive and powerful throw. She’s then never seen again. Now, that woman is Max Chapman, an aspiring pitcher who isn’t allowed to try out for the league or play in her local men’s team. Her story is even more tumultuous than the Peaches’ (and she forms a stumbling friendship with Jacobson’s Carson) but operates largely in a parallel universe, where playing at all is the main struggle. It’s a welcome widening of the lens to include the realities of those who weren’t included in the history-making women’s league.
Ps. Rosie O’Donnell makes a sweet cameo as a bar owner that very much could be her own character, Doris, all grown up.
The not-so-good
The set pieces are done well and most of the characters are established enough early on to support their various storylines, but some of the plotlines jump around in ways that made me wonder if scenes were cut at the last minute and then not patched over.
Animosity between team-mates explodes for seemingly no reason. Decisions are made that don’t align with how a character has behaved for half the season. Even one of the core relationships within the show – and one that viewers naturally cheer – becomes a bit tiresome by the end, with each character becoming reactionary in ways that feel only just believable.
Chapman’s storyline is necessary for a show being made today, but in order to not rewrite history, the creators were required to essentially make two shows: the Peaches, and Max Chapman. While the Peaches are trying to win a championship, Chapman is trying to play any game at all that will have her. It was probably the only way to do it but it does, at times, come at the detriment of the show as a whole to be operating with two leads, two sets of supporting talent, and effectively two worlds, all within the same town. As the show goes on (I hope it does), the sooner the two storylines can merge, the better.
The verdict
Highly recommend as an all-in-one-weekend binge. I can’t wait for season two where they’ll hopefully be allowed to wear shorts.