Millennial Nostalgia: "The League" was Great Television Anchored By Three Great Actors

I have been re watching "The League" on Hulu for the past couple months. I was a fan of the show when it was on, I watched it on Netflix, and when I saw it was on Hulu, I decided to give it another viewing. The show is very good. It is well written, well acted and it seems like the people involved had a lot of fun making it. It was also pretty cool to see a show centered around fantasy football.

In this third viewing of the show I have realized 3 of the performances stand above all else. The other actors are still great, I enjoyed them all, but Paul Scheer, Nick Kroll and Jason Mantzoukas are, far and away, the best part of the series. Paul Scheer plays Andre, the put upon friend that everyone else makes fun of, even though he may be the most successful. Andre is the number one plastic surgeon in Chicago, he has a humongous apartment and seems generally happy. He even won the league twice in the series run. But, everyone makes fun of him. He is the butt of all the jokes. He has to do the worst punishments. And he takes it all in stride. The way Scheer portrays this character is so perfect. We all know people like this. We all had or have that friend that we keep around to bag on. Sometimes it may be you that is that friend. But the way Scheer does it is so good. He is funny. His outfits that he wears are so bad, and when he tries to rationalize how great they are, you almost believe that he truly believes it. His unlucky love life is hilarious. Be it the girl he blinded or his crazy Uber driver or Meegan, he plays them all perfectly. And to be the type of guy that buys into whatever fad is the thing at the time, I loved it. When he was an urban forager I loved it. When he was wearing a daishiki, hilarious. When got into vlogging and internet culture, it was tremendous. Scheer was so, so good on this show. It is the best thing I have seen him in to date, and that includes "The Disaster Artist" or "The Good Place". He was phenomenal on "The League".

Nick Kroll, as the smug and arrogant Ruxin, was equally as great. He played the insecure and over confident lawyer so well. He was the shit talker of the group, yet he still believed that everyone was colluding against him whenever his team got beat. He was never really secure with much of anything going on in his life. Every time Taco, Jon Lajoie, was at his house, hanging with his wife, you could see the jealousy. When his friends would convince him to do something stupid in fantasy football, he would just do it against his own will. He was the one fantasy player that constantly second guessed himself. Even when he lost his wife, a very weird turn in the final season, he still tried to get easy fantasy football wins. His own wife's death didn't stop him from trying to win a stupid trophy. His smugness, his shit talking, his tinkering, it was all so perfect. This is clearly one of his best roles.

But, the best of the best, and this may be a hot take, was Jason Mantzoukas as Rafi. He is so gross, weird, scary and absolutely hilarious. My favorite episodes are the ones that feature him and Dirty Randy, Seth Rogen. A lot of people hate these, but I adore them. The episode entitled "When Rafi Met Randy" is my favorite of all time. To see them in a mental institution, and turn into the characters they became there was so amazing. Outside of the episodes featuring him and Randy, whenever he showed up with the main cast, I always got pumped up. I knew it was going to be great. When he first shows up, and he, Pete and Andre go to a party, and he agrees to be the designated driver, then gets hammered, awesome. When he starts to date Ruxin's au pair, played by Brie Larson, tremendous. When he "meets" up with sex addict Russell, Rob Huebel, it was disturbing and hilarious. When he helps film a porno in Andre's loft, I was cracking up the whole time. But, outside of the Dirty Randy episodes, again, was after Sofia died, he stays to help Ruxin grieve. It is so weird and gross and disturbing, yet I found myself enjoying his performance more and more.

"The League" was a great show, but Scheer, Kroll and Mantzoukas were far and away the best part of the 7 seasons. If you are considering watching the show, or revisiting it, watch these three a little closer. They really stand out. I'm glad I watched it again, and I'm glad that I paid more attention this time to all the actors. These three really shined.

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast. He is next thinking of going into the way back machine and find out just what is “Blue’s Clues”

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