Episode 27: A League Of Their Own
Justin:
For as much as I enjoyed A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN, I couldn’t help but feel like it was also a bit of a tease. I was extremely impressed with some of the issues it brought up by using a more progressive 1990s lens to view the clearly misogynistic era of WWII America. However, I was left thinking that they left a decent amount of meat on the bone in terms of actually dealing with the issues briefly raised throughout the two hour runtime. And I think part of the problem is in that constraint right there - two hours is not enough time to tell the much larger story that’s clearly here...especially when you have to give two minutes to Tom Hanks drunkenly peeing.
This is why I was pleased to see that Amazon is developing a series based on the film starring D’arcy Carden from THE GOOD PLACE and Abbi Jacobsen from BROAD CITY, two women who can bring the funny for sure, but strike me as actors ready to tackle some of those bigger issues. The press release claims that the upcoming show “takes a deeper look at race and sexuality, following the journey of a whole new ensemble of characters as they carve their own paths towards the field, both in the League and outside of it.” This feels right to me, and something that will hopefully have a longer leash to explore some of those stories with it being made in the 2020s than it might have had in the early 1990s (case in point: CBS aired just three episodes of a sitcom based on the movie back in 1993).
Again, I very much liked the movie for what it is; I just constantly felt the pull of a maybe R-rated, no-holds-barred approach to what these women had to go through and what the larger issues at-hand were (and still are). I’m thinking of something more like Netflix’s GLOW, but with baseball. I would’ve loved to see more interactions with some of these women and their husbands, namely whatever loser Stillwell calls a father who wouldn’t take care of his own kid so his mom could play professional baseball. There was also a chance to have Madonna’s Mae continue to fight sexual repression and further the idea that her body is hers and have her be consistently comfortable with that. The door was slightly ajar to have a story about Rosie O’Donnell’s Doris be a lesbian and explore some of that taboo-of-the-times. And of course there was the famous shot of the black women in attendance for a game, sequestered off on their own, and showing with one heave of the ball that they belonged on the field right alongside all those white women. So many fun, interesting, and important roads to go down… and instead, Penny Marshall and company opted for the PG, family-oriented, at-times slapstick comedy… which works! Again, I’d just like to see more of that other stuff too.
So in the end, I’m grateful for the world-building that Marshall did and hopefully this upcoming new iteration can deliver on the promise of the already-fantastic foundation of this classic sports comedy. To put it in relatable baseball terms, the 1992 A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN put runners in scoring position. It’s about time someone brought them home.
