Win or Lose

Last week, I talked about Iwájú and how impressed I was with Disney Animation’s storytelling capabilities, even in the long-form animated format. Well, even though I can say that it’s a bit uncertain whether it would have worked as is in the streaming format or if it would have worked better in the feature-length format, I still remember feeling very impressed with what Disney decided to try out of that format and see what nuggets of gold could have been dug out of this.

Well, during that creative phase, Pixar decided to get in on the action, too, with its original storytelling. And the result is an enjoyable, cute, and surprisingly insightful series called Win or Lose.

So what is the story here?

It would have been the usual setup. A local softball team, the Pickles, prepared for an upcoming State Championship game. And even though it seemed like there would have been a major rival team for them to go up against – in this case, the rival team was called the Tots – not much attention had been paid to them. Instead, the show focused on a select few teammates from the Pickles. Each episode basically chronicled the two or three days that would have passed as the Pickles prepared for their big game, along with other people connected to the Pickles.

And that’s one of the first things I ought to give the show credit for.

Whereas, with most other sports shows or movies, they usually focused on the sports, the progression of the team in question, and their ultimate climactic game, in this case, it didn’t focus so much on the sport as it did on the people involved in the big game that’s coming up. And like I said, it didn’t even focus on just the players. It also took the liberty of paying attention to some of the other characters in the show who have been working alongside them to get things all squared away for the big game. And the show did that by devoting each episode to a different single character at a time, shedding light on what each one went through, individually or as a team.

The very first episode of the show, ‘Coach’s Kid’, focused on a young blonde girl, Laurie, who had anxiety issues, especially when it came to living up to her father’s expectations of her as a fellow Pickles player. It was best personified by an ever-expanding sweat droplet that came to have a mind of its own and was always saying off-putting things into Laurie’s head that would have represented what her inner self was telling her.

The next episode, ‘Blue’, focused on the Pickles’ umpire, Frank Brown, and just what kind of private life he’d been having, or struggling with, when he was not busy helping out the Pickles team. In this case, he was living a lonely single life until he had some good luck meeting a woman he started liking online through a dating website. After going out to get his usual morning coffee before work, he wondered if perhaps the barista he enjoyed chatting with every visit may have been that woman. But it ultimately didn’t matter, because Frank was still excited to be in a relationship with a woman at all. And whenever he was out and about doing his own thing, he was usually defensive about it or refused to open up about it, as exemplified by a blue armor suit and a shield that always popped up.

Another episode, ‘Mixed Signals’, focused on a seemingly generic bully, Yuwen, who picked on others. At least, in the first few episodes in which he was shown being his ornery self, it would have seemed that way. However, as this episode cleverly showed, beneath his hardened shell lay a more childlike, theatrical, and desperate kid who wanted to be noticed and heard, especially when it came to wooing his teammate, Taylor.

Another episode, ‘Raspberry’, highlighted the turmoil of a general overachiever, Rochelle Rodriguez, who attempted to raise some money to secure a spot on the Pickles team for another season. In this regard, she reminded me of Mei Ling from Turning Red. Of course, because Rochelle’s desperation to reach her dream quota for her spot in the team meant that she had to help her classmates with their studies back in school, it ended up preoccupying a lot of her spare time until certain circumstances came up that tested her willingness to get the job done and secure the last bit of dough she needed to reach her goal. Her confidence was conveyed in the form of Rochelle as a successful adult businesswoman, but even that manifestation, like Laurie’s sweat droplet, could have reflected her inner struggles at their most nagging as the situation became more hectic.

The next episode, ‘Pickle’, focused on Rochelle’s mother, Vanessa, who was single, unpredictable, and had just quit her job in the hopes of getting closer to her daughter and her baby son, Zane. Much like ‘Blue’, this episode focused on her insecurities and what she had been trying to do to put on a straight face and show her worth, especially since, in this case, she was a single mother trying to prove her worth to Rochelle.

Another episode, ‘Steal’, focused on a young boy, Ira, who looked up to Taylor, who was his older sister, but was starting to mix with the wrong crowd when he got together with a group of teenagers, including Chicken-Kev (I’ll explain more about him shortly), who turned out to have been local troublemakers around town. So, by the time the little boy thought he finally had friends to count on, that’s when he started to catch on to the error of his ways, and just what a bad influence these people may have been to him.

Another episode, ‘I Got It’, focused on a young girl, Kai, who had just moved in with her family and done her best to live up to her parents’ expectations, just like Laurie at the beginning of the show. Except in her case, she was always panicking about disappointing her parents, as best represented by her sinking further and further into the ground.

Finally, the last episode, ‘Home’, focused on the Pickles team’s coach, Dan, who was also Laurie’s father, and the struggles he had to endure to knock it out of the park — and win the State Championship — for his fellow players. Of course, being the last episode of the season and the series, it also tied everything together, reincorporating what occurred throughout the remainder of the show beforehand and embodying them to form a complete and insightfully told story about the Pickles teammates and what they had to go through to either set themselves on the right path or to just come clean about their insecurities.

In short, this is less of a sports series and more of a psychological series in sports series’ clothing.

At first, I thought it’d be pretty hard to talk about the episodes, since they’re each focused on a different character. So, to talk about the episodes would’ve been to talk about the characters instead. But then I flashed on what else wowed me about this series: the story structure.

Each episode did more than focus on a single character and their individual struggles. Half the time, the characters’ expositions even occurred within the same time frame.

For example, when Rochelle hopped over to a nearby party to try to sell her precious pair of shoes so she could collect the money to reach her quota, a misunderstanding and a quarrel with the people she intended to sell them to left her stranded at a gas station. And in another episode, Vanessa, who was busy with other tasks, not to mention trying to score some likes on her social media account, was left in the dark about Vanessa’s social life, academic achievements, and her attempts to work her way into the Pickles for a while longer. And when Vanessa caught wind of Rochelle’s plot to sell off the shoes she had given her earlier, she stormed into the party after Rochelle left, demanding to know where her daughter was. And this would have happened while Rochelle was stranded at the gas station, making a call to her mother to tell her what happened. And that scene in particular didn’t even occur in ‘Raspberry’. Instead, it happened at the end of ‘Pickle’, almost as a recap of what happened earlier, only from Vanessa’s point of view.

But it’s not just these characters. Many other elements can be traced with the other characters throughout the series, too.

For example, in the very first episode, it began with what looked like an apocalyptic scene, complete with red clouds, strong winds, and, of all things, a giant, balloon-like man inflating and screaming up in the sky. That kind of surreal imagery left me wondering what would have happened for it to lead up to this. And if so, how?

And then, for the rest of the series, it chronicled the generally grounded affairs of the Pickles team as they either prepared for the upcoming game or dealt with whatever fallouts came their way. But given the grounded nature the series began with, how did it lead up to that freaky apocalyptic-looking image, especially when the whole series concerned preparations for a big game instead? It was an imaginative if unanticipated hook that piqued my interest, and it only flourished from there.

For example, Yewen was introduced as just your everyday overbearing, mean kid who always picked on others, especially his teammates, to gain attention. You remember how he commented on Laurie’s softball performance after it was caught on video and uploaded online with special effects? Well, later in his episode, it would have retraced the story from his point of view and shown how he tried whatever it took to gain his peers’ recognition, even if it meant making fun of someone else. And when he was seen wooing Taylor the first time, she would have been fleshed out by this point, for more was exposed of her through the eyes of Ira. Taylor would have looked at Yewen with initial fondness until she eventually dumped him. In one episode, because of our preconceived ideas of who Yewen was, her dumping him would have been interpreted as a triumphant moment. In Yewen’s episode, however, you can see just how much of an effort he put into winning her affections and how much it would’ve broken his heart when she turned him down.

Hopping back to Rochelle, in her episode, she tried to sneak in some cheat notes to her friend, partially at Kai’s insistence, but was caught red-handed by her teacher, who happened to be Frank Brown, the Pickles umpire. It would have occured twice in row: the first time in ‘Blue’, when you see just how seriously he took kids and his job as a teacher when he wasn’t busy with his own problems, and again in ‘Raspberry’, when Rochelle acknowledged how much trouble she ended up in for her overreaching methods to make her own way with her goals in the form of those cheat notes.

I usually adore stories like this, where you look at something from one person’s point of view and, when viewed from that of another, it’s reinterpreted as something else entirely, either through a fraudulent or a more sincere lens. And for what ‘Win or Lose’ had going for it, it threw out a lot of neat, engaging scenarios and ideas about what the Pickles teammates would have gone through and what even the adults connected to the team had also gone through.

What I found most compelling about this setup was that, unlike a progressive series, which would have ended on a cliffhanger to leave you guessing what would’ve happened next, this series stood out because what each episode ended on left you guessing what was happening at the same time. And because this series hopped from one character to another, and almost at the same time, you’re left wondering what was going on that one character or the rest knew nothing about, until, ultimately, it all added up, came together, and formed a whole picture in the life of a sports team preparing for the big game.

For example, ‘Coach’s Kid’ ended with Laurie striking out, and then that was the end of her story. And in another episode, Ira was starting to get along just fine with her so-called new buddies, including Chicken-Kev. But as he noticed them stealing the bake sale jar, that was the end of his story.

In some cases, the show would have addressed the consequences of what happened in the previous episode in the next one, like with Rochelle and her mother’s individual episodes. In other cases, however, the fates of the other characters remained uncertain until they resurfaced later in the series. So, the series skillfully used cliffhangers to keep me guessing what was about to happen next, or at the same time.

And Coach Dan, being, well, the Pickles coach, did everything he could to ensure that the gameplay and teamwork ran like clockwork so they could’ve scored big time and won the State Championship. So, when things started to go sideways, south, or in ways the coach did not see coming, he would’ve reacted with an ever-expanding nervous breakdown that, without giving anything away, would have tied into what opened the series in the first place.

In fact, because of what had been established throughout the seven episodes that led to this, ‘Home’ had to do everything in its power to wrap up everything that had occurred with the characters throughout the series. It had done so with great panache, juggling all the different characters whom it paid attention to in ways that were short, sweet, to the point, and in most cases, came away with satisfactory conclusions. And not just conclusions, but conclusions that help complement those of everyone else.

It ultimately leads to one of the show’s most impressive parts: the animation.

Now, if you look at the animation style, you’d notice how it felt a lot like Turning Red, with its exaggerated moments and cartoony style. But I think it went a little further with its imagination, because while the animation style used in Turning Red was best used to visualize Mei Lee’s inner struggles as well as the imaginative styles of her dilemmas, Win or Lose basically took the inner demons that each character was going through and expressed them not only to surreal degrees, but also with a distinct style that would have matched how each character looked at certain things or people and how they dealt with it. And all of it was generally relatable.

In Laurie’s case, her insecurities were presented as a sweat drop, animated in the same vein as the rest of the show. However, in some episodes, such as those centering on Yuwen and Ira, their insecurities were presented in a more pencil-sketch-like manner, highlighting the characters’ motivations, ages, and aspects of their personalities. Ira’s imaginative figures were rendered in a childlike style, like what he would’ve drawn in a school notebook. In Yuwen’s case, while it was conveyed in an appropriately childlike manner, the crudeness of the style and the melodramatic lighting helped convey the anguish and, if any, the immaturity he expressed. And they all jibed well with each of their characters.

It actually reminded me a little bit of what Inside Out 2 did, where it continued what it did well with its computer animation while also tinkering around with other forms of animation to complement it. Win or Lose went all out in achieving that for the sake of its characters, its story, and even their stories. And that’s why it’s a little hard to choose a favorite among all the characters as well as all the episodes of the show. Because, like I said, each episode revealed something personal about the characters each episode highlighted, and in one way or another, they each would have expressed a little bit of themselves that I suspected from the start would have eventually come together in the final episode.

Speaking of which, I have to give props to all the voice actors who took on their roles in the show, too.

Will Forte, who played Coach Dan, brought him to life with his zany deliveries and his borderline overconfidence in his team. But other times, Forte was terrific in softening himself up once he expressed Dan’s more fatherly side, and even that was shown to be imperfect from Dan’s end.

Rosie Ross, who played his daughter, Laurie, highlighted a particular anxiety that she expressed about pleasing her father, which became more prominent when Laurie became more neurotic, even in the middle of the game. However, Ross also nailed Laurie’s general contentment when she went out with other people. So it did highlight a general back-and-forth mentality going on with Laurie.

I also really like the voice actor who played Yuwen, Izaac Wang. He did a great job of making me feel uneasy about him because of how rough around the edges he sounded. At least, when I was first acquainted with Yewen, I felt as such. But Wang was also terrific at highlighting the general anxiety he had built up, which hit home just how vulnerable he was and how much of an outer shell he’d put on to protect himself.

I also admire Milan Ray, who played Rochelle. Whenever Rochelle was most relaxed, Ray highlighted her inner sense of self-worth, as if she were confident in what she was about to pull off. And she perfectly expressed her panicky moan when things didn’t go according to plan or when she found herself in a pickle, if you will.

I also am a fan of Rosa Salazar, who played Vanessa. She owned it when it came to highlighting her excitability about getting her job done or having her likes met. But since her character was a mother, you can also tell just how seriously Salazar took her role when she started to sound concerned, disappointed, or whatever anxious tone you can sense in mothers worried for their babies.

The actress who played Kai, Chanel Stewart, may not have had much to write home about, but her general lack of interest and, at times, her less-than-self-preserved personality did help her come across more as a new kid trying to blend in. Even the general lack of noticeable features in Stewart’s performance contributed to Kai’s overall humility.

However, if I have to pick my favorite actor, it would be Dylan Buccieri, who played Odo, the one kid who stared at people with weird orange eyes whenever he finished his orange soda. This kid, with his orange pupils, stared out at other kids and even adult figures, making eerily prophetic or wise statements before belching and walking away. Buccieri excelled at conveying his ominous nature in his voice whenever he spoke to others, even if his belches reaffirmed his childlike nature. He helped own the fact that this kid was sometimes wise, other times not, and presented it in such a way that I could not even tell whether he truly said what we thought he said or if that was just the characters’ own imaginations playing with them.

On a side note, Chicken-Kev, who was the Pickles’ team mascot, the chicken, was a knockout character who came to be evaluated in more ways than one. In the first few episodes, he provided good physical comic relief. But in some of the later episodes, including ’Steal’, he showed his true colors by being part of a band of delinquents who caused trouble throughout town, especially in the softball field. He was also one of the fake friends with whom Ira thought he had befriended and idolized. So it added another layer to their relationship and made the Pickles’ team mascot look like he gave the Pickles a bad name. So, many dynamics were at play regarding how the Pickles team was looked at socially.

Now, I will admit that it had its share of controversy because, just like Elio, the series faced some troublesome production issues regarding the inclusion of LGBTQ themes. But whereas Elio’s issues focused on queer themes, Win or Lose’s issues concerned transgender themes. But again, just like with Elio, it’s a little hard for me to determine whether removing LGBTQ themes would have neutered the show or been best for it. The character in focus was Kai, and this proposed aspect of her character would have led me to reevaluate her struggles and why she sought to make her parents proud. It was relatable enough as it was, since arguably any child would have felt this way, but to feel these struggles from someone who was transgender would have thrown in a whole other angle to her character that would have made it more exclusively hers.

In which case, it might have neutered it, since the show focused on multiple characters and shed light on each of their dilemmas. So the idea of throwing an LGBTQ character into the mix would have been a more appropriate way to add the needed diversity. But given how touchy transgender themes have become, the uncertainty I feel about the exclusion and what to make of the necessities of such designated characteristics for Kai still stands.

All in all, this show was very creative, profound, and inventive within the general sports genre. The characters were interesting, their expositions were engaging, the animation was as expressive as it was distinctive, the voice work was exemplary, and its storytelling took on a more psychological approach to the whole sports formula, making it all the more refreshing, with its interweaving nature making it more ingenious. From what I remember hearing, Disney was trying to realign its creative teams, which means we might not see any more long-form series from Disney+, Walt Disney Animation Studios, or Pixar. That is a shame because both Iwájú and this show proved that Disney and Pixar had serious talent to express in their storytelling, whether it’s for film or, in this case, for television, or even streaming TV.

For the time being, we should be happy with what we got from Disney and Pixar, given what they were allowed to do for the streaming network. In so doing, they left us with a unique and, well, very clever series that I’m sure will leave viewers hooked to their TVs and interested in exploring more of the realms of creativity as only Disney and Pixar have mastered.

Make a pitch for this and see what you’ve been missing.

My Rating

A high A-