Oh, you should totally watch 'Players', too

Your dad mainlines 'Yellowstone' on Paramount+, use his login

Yesterday I slimed my way back into your inboxes/❤️s with FOUR TV recommendations, three of which I felt haven’t gotten the media attention they deserve and one whose excellence should just continue to be shouted out from on high, at least until the next show where hype and quality are evenly matched (hint: it’s not ‘House of the Dragon’).

Somehow, though, lost in the excitement of re-opening this channel for the 87th time, I forgot about my favorite, and arguably most under-sung show of the summer: ‘Players’ on Paramount+.

You’re forgiven for not even knowing what the hell this is! ‘Players’ landed mid-June not on Amazon, not on Peacock, but Paramount friggin’ Plus, aka The House that ‘Yellowstone’ Built. Minimal advertising, even here in Los Angeles. Almost no Vulture/IndieWire/EW chatter. One more wave in a sea of streaming options, done zero favors by the above key art, which out of context suggests ‘Honey, I Shrunk the Kids’ set primarily on a gaming PC. But it’s totally NOT ‘Honey, I Shrunk the Kids’ set primarily on a gaming PC!

‘Players’’ most direct inspiration is the 2020 sports documentary series, ‘The Last Dance’, which chronicled the career of Michael Jordan, specifically the utter 90’s basketball dominance of his Chicago Bulls. If you haven’t seen it, add that to the list, too. You don’t even need to give a shit about basketball, or sports, or Starter jackets — it’s practically Greek mythology, these demi-gods clashing then embracing as they remake the very parquet floor beneath them.

Now imagine those basketball playing gods as acne-scarred, sophomoric esports pros, pounding their keyboards for a team called “Fugitive Gaming,” and you’ve got a good starting point for ‘Players’. Which, I’ll be honest… if that’s as far as it went? I’m not sure you could squeeze more than 2-3 episodes out of that kind of parody. It’s very possible some of you even saw the ‘Players’ pilot, felt like you got the joke, and peaced out shortly after. I wasn’t hooked out of the gate myself.

What kept me going was my confidence in the show’s creators, Dan Perrault and Tony Yacenda, whose previous mockumentary (reductive term, but maybe the most accurate) ‘American Vandal’ explored depths of emotion you might not expect from a show whose elevator pitch was literally “‘Making a Murderer’ but it’s about a high schooler spray-painting cars with dicks.” Would you believe that ‘Vandal’ is a straight-up masterpiece? It is! By the end of its eight episode first season, not only have Perrault and Yacenda unraveled a compelling, credible mystery; they’ve put our own biases and projections under the microscope. ‘Vandal’ balances jokes and pathos like Tony Hawk pulling off a sick-ass grind, transforming the oft-repeated “who drew the dicks?” into some profound philosophical question. What was funny is now sad, and vice versa. Both seasons of ‘Vandal’ constitute some of the richest stuff Netflix has ever produced, and I’d swear to it on a stack of goddamn bibles.

Your honor, ‘American Vandal’ is fucking tight

.…and ‘Players’ gets there, too! ‘The Last Dance’ drew its primary dramatic power from the antagonism between Michael Jordan and, you know, every one of his teammates. Here you’ve got veteran League of Legends player Creamcheese (Misha Brooks), one of the best to ever do it — albeit still sans LCS title, seven years into his career — forced to team up with hotshot rookie Organizm (Da’Jour Jones). The former’s outspoken and emotional in his gameplay; the other a brick wall, cold and calculating on the field and not exactly impressed by his mentor’s championship record. Easy but solid esports jokes in the first episode or two (the names alone!) give way to great documentary storytelling, and exactly what ‘The Last Dance’ achieved: the drama of people incredibly good at their jobs, animated by psychology that sometimes feel insane, butting heads and occasionally working together to achieve the impossible.

If I’m loathe to go into much detail about ‘Players’, it’s because the series’ main viewing pleasure is surprise. Not in what happens, necessarily, but the in the way you start feeling something for characters who, in another context, would be played entirely as a joke. What I CAN tell you is that by the end of the season, still understanding at best maybe a quarter of the League jargon, you’ll be rooting for Fugitive Gaming like they were the ‘98 Bulls.

Anyway, check it out!