Stick – Season One Review

If you’ve been lamenting that AppleTV+ doesn’t currently have a new comedy centered around a middle aged straight white man who refuses to deal with a personal trauma and instead tries to go out of his way to help those around him at the expense of his own mental health that stars a beloved (or at least well-known) comedic actor, well, have I got a new show for you! Stick, the new AppleTV+ comedy starring Owen Wilson, manages to check all of those boxes while also dipping into the well of “sports-themed path to finding oneself as well as a new found family” that Ted Lasso spent a good deal of time at during its run. In fact, I’ve had a couple of people ask me if Stick is basically Ted Lasso but with golf instead of soccer. And the answer is no, it’s not. And no, it’s also not as good as those early episodes of Ted Lasso were either. It’s a perfectly fine, paint-by-numbers comedy that gets by on Wilson’s inherent charm while both the narrative and most of the supporting cast coast with little to no true energy.

Wilson plays Pryce “Stick” Cahill, a former PGA champion who is now a washed up shell of himself, working in a pro shop and squatting in the house his ex-wife (Judy Greer, actually getting to play a really lovely character and not a shrew of an ex) is desperate to sell so they can both officially move on with their lives. Everything changes for Pryce when he notices 17-year-old Santi Wheeler (Peter Dager, who is fine as the Gen Z teen) absolutely crushing balls on the driving range. Inspired, Pryce decides he should mentor Santi, convincing his mother (Mariana Treviño, who I wish got more to do) to let him take Santi out on the amateur circuit. Pryce convinces his old caddy Mitts (Marc Maron, playing the same surly character he always plays, but with a bit of a tragic backstory this time) to come with and they pile into Mitts’ RV to see if Santi can become the champion Pryce thinks he can be. Along the way they pick up Zero (Lilli Kay, whose performances is incredibly wooden), a complication for Santi that could make or break his development.

Naturally, every character has something in their past that they’re refusing to deal with. And with the help of their new found family, they’re each forced to confront that stumbling block (or, in the case of Santi and Pryce, the smoldering block of pain that could destroy them that neither has wanted to acknowledge for years) in order to grow and become a more complete person. And if I sound a bit flippant when explaining this series, it’s because that, unlike with season one of Ted Lasso, every story beat in Stick feels manipulative from the jump. Nothing about the narrative feels organic. Each interaction between characters is clearly placed to get them from Point A to Point B to Point C in their character arc. Now, you might be saying, “Well, that’s how stories work.” But the problem here is that you can see the strings pulling the characters along as they go. It’s pretty bad that I can watch a key piece of Pryce’s backstory be revealed at the close of episode one and then accurately predict the entire scope of his season arc nearly perfectly in that moment.

Now, if you’re looking for a comedy that will allow you to turn off your brain and laugh a bit at Owen Wilson’s aw-shucks antics (Pryce is your peak Wilson character: fast-talking, sweet but a bit dumb, heart of gold but a bit broken), Stick is perfectly fine. It’s nothing special, the characters are mostly good, you’ll be rooting for them from the jump, and the “villains” are obvious and get what’s coming to them. It’s a harmless series that’s trying to hit the vein of Ted Lasso but failing to reach any of the complex layers that series hit. Largely because it won’t let its characters be complex. They are precisely who they appear to be, their flaws are all internal, and once they work through them in a single episode (they each get their chance in various episodes to do so), they’re able to lumber on without that baggage weighing them down and become “happy.” There’s no sense of needing time and a deeper understanding of their pain – a la Ted or Jimmy on Shrinking – in order to conquer it. They address it in the moment, have an emotional chat, and move on.

There’s certainly an audience for this less-mentally and emotionally strenuous type of comedy out there. Stick is serialized comedy, but it retains some hallmarks of more episodic shows – characters learn things about themselves and remember them, but none of the revelations are all that deep or hard to adapt to. (Even though every single character on this series absolutely needs to spend some time in therapy, stat.) It’s a cool glass of lemonade on a hot day. A series you can sit down, watch, and then promptly forget about until the next episode. And that’s perfectly fine. It’s just not a great television series. The characters are thinly drawn and Wilson and Maron are the standouts, but both are simply playing variations on characters they’ve played time and time again. If you’re looking for a show that won’t challenge you but will let you float on a minor dopamine hit for a half hour, Stick is the show for you. At least until something with a bit more substance like Shrinking comes back for another season.

Stick premieres on June 4. All ten of the season’s episodes were provided for review.