A middle school softball team is set to play in the big championship game at the end of the week. But it's going to be a big week for everyone: the young players dealing with problems at school, the parents trying to juggle their own lives with their kids', and even the umpire who will be calling the game.
I noted that Dream Productions felt like a Pixar movie that had simply been chopped into four pieces. But Win or Lose makes specific use of the television format. Each of the eight episodes centers on the perspective of one character. Some events replay in multiple episodes, with added context coming from the viewpoint shifts. The result is a surprisingly layered story with an accessible and potent message: everyone is out there, going through their stuff that you might know nothing about.
Also different for Pixar is the relatively grounded nature of the story. Many of the characters' inner thoughts are realized in the form of a unique animation style that gets shuffled in with the "Pixar standard." But still, it's their inner thoughts. The story isn't taking place in a fanciful rendition of a teenager's mind, or a farflung post-apocaylptic future, or a world where you can attach balloons to your house to make it fly away. Win or Lose is unusually realistic for Pixar, which serves its realistic message well.
In different episodes, we see characters battle anxiety manifesting in many ways, using many tactics. One person seems to literally armor up to repel the negativity of others. Another character summons a professional alter ego, prepared for any situation. Still another refuels with likes from social media... and so on.
It's actually a sprawling cast of characters, played by a wide variety of comedians, voice-over artists, people you might know from any number of places. Will Forte is the "big name," but you might also know Josh Thomson, Rosa Salazar, Lil Rel Howery, Melissa Villaseñor, Scott Menville, Rhea Seehorn, or others. You need this many people to tell this many intersecting stories.
There's a lot to recommend about the show -- though I do have to acknowledge one place where cowardly interference by Disney compromised the Pixar team's original intentions. The Pickles are a co-ed softball team, and one of the characters was written as a trans girl. Disney reportedly asked Pixar to remove any specific mention of this. While you can still read between the lines and see the intention in the finished product, I feel like a more spelled-out portrayal would have been better. It's really kind of disappointing, though sadly not surprising, that in a show all about "not knowing what other people are going through," the trans story line gets compromised in this way.
But overall, I found Win or Lose to be a successful experiment for Pixar -- well-made generally, but especially well-crafted for the television medium. I give it a B+.
