The trailer for Apple’s new comedy series Stick isn’t subtle in making its pitch to potential viewers. Mixed in among various glimpses of Owen Wilson playing washed-up former pro golfer Pryce Cahill is a title card that reads, “From the home of Ted Lasso.”
No one involved in the making of Apple’s biggest comedy hit has anything to do with Stick, which was created by Ford v. Ferrari screenwriter Jason Keller. But with its combination of sports, uplift, and a fast-talking, self-deprecating, middle-aged white-guy hero who tries to encourage the people around them to be their best selves, the new show feels like the inevitable end product of someone at Apple corporate looking at the numbers for Jason Sudeikis and friends and demanding, “Get me another Ted Lasso. I don’t care who you have to kill to make it happen!”
But if Stick is derivative — not just of Ted Lasso, but of underdog sports movies and shows in general — it’s also not without its charms, starting with its leading man.
It’s funny to think that, in a little under a year, Apple has launched two different series (Bad Monkey is the other one) where one of the stars of Wedding Crashers is playing a past his prime, but ultimately nice, loser who survives through his ability to spew out BS at a mile a minute. Pryce, we’re told, was once a legitimate star on the pro circuit — not necessarily Tiger Woods level, but someone you wouldn’t be surprised to find at the top of the leaderboard going into the final round of a tournament. Then he had a meltdown on the course — for reasons you’ll likely figure out before Keller turns over that particular card — and in the process lost his marriage to Amber-Linn (Judy Greer), his career, and even a place to live. (When the show begins, he’s squatting in the home they shared, even though she got it in the divorce and is waiting for him to vacate so she can sell it.) He makes money as a country club golf pro, and by running short cons with his former caddy Mitts (Marc Maron) that play off his reputation as a guy who will always lose his cool in a high-stakes situation. But he seems like a good enough guy, who just finds himself lost in a version of his life he never planned for.
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Then, while working at the country club, he hears a golf club hitting a ball so hard, it sounds like artillery fire. Following this sweet music to its source, he finds Santi Wheeler (Peter Dager), a teenager who was once a hot golf prospect before his budding career imploded for reasons that overlap with Pryce’s. In Santi, Pryce sees a second chance for himself — not as a player, but as a coach. He gives all his money from the divorce settlement to Santi’s wary mother Elena (Mariana Treviño), and soon the three of them are on the road with Mitts — himself lacking direction since the death of his beloved wife — and Zero (Lilli Kay), a bartender Santi falls for in their travels.
From left: Lilli Kay, Mariana Treviño, Judy Greer, and Marc Maron complete the ensemble.
Justine Yeung/AppleTV+
Everything runs more or less how you would expect it to. Pryce’s relationship with Santi goes on a lather-rinse-repeat cycle for much of the season, with trust between the kid and his new mentor coming and going so rapidly that each successive shift has less impact. (While longer TV seasons are generally better, the story Keller’s telling seems better suited to eight episodes than the 10 he has, if not fewer than that.) Zero is gender-fluid, which inevitably leads to old man Mitts being cranky and confused on the subject. (In one scene, just as I was groaning at the realization that they were doing a “Who’s on first?” riff about Zero’s pronouns, Mitts literally says, “I’m not gonna play ‘Who’s on first’ with the pronouns!”) And Zero at first comes off as a humorless Gen Z caricature. Both Pryce as a character and Stick as a show are so fond of citing pop culture that at one point, Santi says he doesn’t know the movie he assumes Pryce is quoting, and Pryce has to assure him, “Not a movie — just me talking.”
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But many of those stories eventually evolve into something more interesting, including Mitts and Zero inevitably becoming friends. And the season’s concluding chapters — which bring in Tim Olyphant as a professional rival of Pryce’s who was never as good a golfer but is vastly more successful in retirement — build real narrative and emotional momentum, after the middle episodes seem to be running in circles.
Mostly, though, when you have Owen Wilson at the center of a show, it covers a whole host of sins. Keller is smart to make Pryce someone who’s both wiser and kinder than he seems at first when he’s trying to talk people into submission. The actor is incredibly charming, and he’s great at the serious moments, too. Between this and Loki, he’s slid pretty gracefully into his streaming TV era.
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As craven as Stick seems from the outside, it delivers what it promises by the end, in a way that made me more interested in seeing a second season than I am in the recently-announced Ted Lasso Season Four.
The first three episodes of Stick begin streaming June 4 on Apple TV+, with additional episodes releasing weekly. I’ve seen the whole season.
