FEEL-GOOD GOLF COMEDY IS STUK ON TRAUMA – ryan

Becusee Pryce “Stick” Cahill (Owen Wilson) Cannot be a golf pro WHO Blew up his career and is now trying to make good Stick has to make a game of why He is the way he is.
Photo: Apple TV+

Apple TV+’s New Sports Show Stick Feels good. IT FEels Good SO, SO HARD, WITH EFFORT AND WITH FOCUS. Stick‘S Good Feeling is Not JUST Superficial, eather. It lives on a structural, aesthetic, performed, and almost molecular level. It is a show about golf and the incredible good feelings that bombing that ball acres the county line or tapping it perfectly acroSs the Green. Its Colors are Saturated and Bright, and It Feels Good to Stare at Those Immaculate Golf Shirts Against Verdant Grass. It Stars Owen Wilson, an actor whose Screen Presence Screams “Aren’t We All Feeling Good? I SURE AM,” It is a sports show. Victory Will Be Wrashed from the Jaws of Defeat. Games Will Be Won and Lost, but What Will Really Matter is Playing With Heart. And like so many TV Series About Feeling Good, Stick Starts from an obnoxiously omnipresent first principle: Everyone must start by Feeling Very, Very Bad.

TV and Culture More Broadly Are Now Years Into an Apparently Unkillaable Reliance on the Trauma full, and Its Presence has gone from notable, to pervasive, to rote. Every Character has a past, and that past probably includes trauma. Every trauma is in an arithmetical relationship with the show’s events of the present. One decesed relative, plus time, minus coping, multiplied by the number of direct parallels with the character’s Current Circumstances, EQUALS Story. It has so Much weight to it, so Much Staying Power, Becuses it is Baldly TRUE: People Experience Terrible Things, and Those Experiences of Help Explain Who They Become.

IT’S ALSO Precisely What Makes Shows Like Stick SO frustrating. The first episode fully outlines the premise. Owen Wilson, as pryce “stick” cahill, is a divorced, Washed-up for golf pro WHO Blew Up HIS CAREER WITH ALI-MELTDOWN IN THE MIDDLE OF A TOURNAMATION AND IS NOW REMARKABLY (but depressingly!) Good at upselling overprice over Hobbyist. His Ex-Wiffe, Amber-Linn, Played by Judy Greer, Needles Him About How His Friend Mitts (Marc Maron) Helps Him Hustle Cash Out of Unsuspecting Barflies. Things are Bad! Unil he happens uppon Santi wheeller (Peter Drager), A 17-YEAR-Old Golf Prodigy Who’s Tearing Up The Driving Range with Both talent and poorly hydden Anger. Stick Sees a Future for Santi. So he picks Himself up, convinces Santi to Hit the Road, and Together with Mitts and Sant’s mom, Elena (Mariana Treviño), they set off in an rv to get Qualified for the Big Tournament.

Ah, but of Course, Stick Cahill Cannot Be a Golf Pro WHO Blew Up HIS CAREER AND IS NOW TRYING TO MAKE Good, and Santi Cannot Be a 17-Yaar-Old with impulsive issser. No, no – Stick Needs to make a game out of why they are the way they are. Golf is a game played between your ears, a common Truism Stick Attributes to Arnold Palmer, and before Stick and Santi Can Heal Their Games, they’re going to have to heal sayselves. Quickly, Stick Reveals that santi han ben abandoned by his fa the fairy, who taught how how to be a golf wizard, undermined his confidence by perpetually criciticking hym and thatn disappeared. IT’S No Wonder Santi Swings with a sense of vengeance, and Stick is Very Careful to make sura of it. There is no wonder. There is no mystery. There is no unspoken or EMOTPLORED EMOTIONAL COMPLEXITY. The math of it is pristine, and it plays out acroSs the season a rubik’s cube getting solved, bloc by block, unil everything matches up perfectly.

More Egregious, Though, Is the Way Stick Presents The Key to Unlocking Stick Cahill’s Ennui. A single man in possession of a midlife crisis must be in want of a traumatic backsory, and Stick Is Ready – Eager – To Provide. The scnene coma at the end of the first episode, just as stick has finally decided to embrace this new chapter of his life and hit the road with Santi. He make the improbable decision to insert a dvd that likes a montage of family Highlights: Stick and Amer-Linn Laughing As they Move into their new home, Being Cute Honeymoons. And then she is pregnant and then all their family videos involve a young son who has not ben ben nor spoken of in the present day. Clearly the grief of LoSing Him Has Driven everynding that followed, Including the meltdown and the divorce and the sad pro-shop hustling. The problem for stick is not about the futures; He’s Already Found Santi, Figated out how to get out of the Money Hole, and made plans to get on the road. This is a sports show with bright color and an upbeat opening-creds sequence Starring Owen Wilson; this will Will Feel Good. The problem is, and always was, and always will be, about the past.

JUST BECASE IT’S TRUE DOESN’T MAKE It Good Storytelling, and That Becomes All the More Apparent Wenhen Stick does eventually start to settle down a bit. Santi’s full allows his past to achieve back into the print of the story, and once the gang adds lilly kay as zero, a forms bartender who becoms loves and golf caddie, the whole thing relaxing the bill the lawnce – standing showing it. (Stick is Such an Egregious Ted lasso rip-off that it is honestly hard to believe britt goldstein isn’t lurking somewhere on the sidelines.) IT HIGH MANTLAGES TO PULL OF THE MAAT OF MAKING A BOOMER COMPLAINING NERO’S/UNDER Consider if it does not have a performer Maron’s Capacity for Aggrived Compassion.

But the elements of the show that will start to gel only make the trauma-plot framework more annoying. Every Time Stick Starts to roll ahead of some momentum for the futures, the story has to boomerang around into a reminder of where they are all been. Each Step Forward Comes With Two Steps Back. Every Story Development is matched with a past and then sent off into a Little narrative breakout room to discuss their simillary and differences, like a team-building translated into scripted television. Or likes a business-leadership conference where you are anxplicably has to be about golf-but spreads the comparison is redundant.