About a decade ago, when I was interviewing True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto, he said something that perked up my ear: “I don’t really care about cop shows. It’s just an easy way to sneak in all the other things I want to say.”
The philosophy-minded writer, apart from being generally (and characteristically) misanthropic, was making a profound point. TV formats (or at least TV executives) have rigid requirements. But if you pick the right genre at the right time and are smart about it, you can expand a show in all kinds of ways without most people even realizing you’ve done it.
I thought about that this Emmys season when watching Stick, a show about golf that isn’t really about golf, and again when watching The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins, a show about football that isn’t really about football, and then when watching Margo’s Got Money Troubles, a show about a retired wrestler (and OnlyFans entrepreneur) that isn’t really about wrestling (or OnlyFans entrepreneurship), and yet one more time when watching Off Campus, a show about hockey that isn’t really about hockey.
All these shows are nominally about sports. And yet it’s an easy way to sneak in all the other things their writers want to say. (I would have thought about it when watching Heated Rivalry, but I’m on an Emmys-eligible-only viewing diet this time of year.)
I started to realize something else, too. Sports has become the perfect embodiment of what should now be called the Pizzolatto Rule: choosing the best genre conduit at any given moment for all the other life stuff. The kind of life stuff that’s humorous and heartbreaking. The kind of unflashy, true-life stuff network TV did well for so many decades, and then indie film did even better for so many more decades.
This should come as no surprise when some of the shows are littered with personalities from those worlds. Viewers of Stick will find the names Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris in the credits of every episode as executive producers and sometime-directors; Dayton and Faris are behind Little Miss Sunshine and Ruby Sparks, two of the ultimate indie films of the 2000s that traffic in exactly this sort of endearing melancholia. Creator Jason Keller is a stage and film veteran himself.
But I don’t think it’s just a matter of auspices. Something about the forum of sports, specifically at this moment, lends itself to these kinds of lived-in moments. Perhaps it’s the healthy outlet of team mentality that unhealthily pervades politics and all other parts of life; perhaps it’s that now sports are the only universal language we have, cutting across gender and ethnic lines, with more leagues and varieties than ever.
Or maybe it’s just that sports is one of the few optional activities that involve leaving the house and interacting with people in real time, something our tech age increasingly discourages us from doing. Whatever it is, it has become an impeccable demonstration of the Pizzolatto Rule.
What’s more, the category didn’t need to be invented from scratch. Hollywood has been exploring its underdog themes for years, with Hoosiers, Miracle, The Blind Side and Moneyball. Streaming shows — with their more leisurely pace and longer arcs — have simply been able to come by and iterate.
So now there isn’t just one archetype of the Rocky underdog character sort. There isn’t just one main character at all. Stick is about the journeys of at least a half-dozen people: fathers, sons, divorcees, widowers and struggling Gen Zers.
Even these shows’ main characters are not what you’d expect. Stick and Dinkins (and Margo) may seem like series about washed-up ex-athletes looking for redemption. But their thematic concerns actually vary widely. Owen Wilson’s character in Stick is a study in how to (or not to) process grief, Tracy Morgan’s title antihero in Dinkins is about living with your own bad choices, and Nick Offerman’s retired wrestler in Margo is about how to (maybe) fashion a new life. And Off Campus, while looking and feeling like a youthful romance, is also really about identity and the kinds of partners we do (or don’t) see ourselves with.
Plus it’s just some damn effective television. If you haven’t seen Stick since it dropped on Apple TV last summer, there’s an episode late in the season, “Dreams Never Remembered,” that gets inside the mind of a grieving parent in a way I don’t think I’ve ever seen onscreen.
Ted Lasso started this wave, as Bill Lawrence realized just how perfect sports were at this moment to tell larger human stories. These shows this season have taken his baton and run. (Although what is Scrubs but a sports show with surgeons vs. residents instead of Richmond vs. Manchester City?)
The sports drama may yet return to the big screen, with a number of new projects in the pipeline. And that’s a good thing. But I’m not sure a 90-minute feature can contain all the messy multitudes these series do. When you settle down to watch a show, you want a piece that a marketing executive — OK, streaming algorithm — told you was perfect for your interests. And then you blissfully want to find out it’s about something completely different.
This story first appeared in a June stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
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