Steaming on: Apple TV+
Episodes viewed: 10 of 10
You have to feel a bit sorry for Stick, or indeed any vaguely sports-related comedy drama that dares show its face on Apple TV+: the comparisons to Ted Lasso are going to be inevitable. In fact, this golf-based feel-goodery has as much in common with Apple’s other hit comedy-drama, the therapy-based Shrinking. It follows the tone and feel of both of those shows: a lovable but broken hero, grappling with grief and a failed marriage, who ultimately finds emotional salvation in a found family.
Stick comes from Jason Keller, whose previous sporting life includes a co-writing credit for Ford V. Ferrari. Here, Owen Wilson is our putting protagonist, in a role that feels custom-made for him, given free rein to take his Texan charm into turbodrive. His Pryce ‘Stick’ Cahill is a classic Wilsonian hero, a fast-talker and eternal hustler with a stubborn optimism and a twinkle in the eye. He’s a former golf pro who could have been one of the greats, had he not screwed up his chances with a spectacular public meltdown, for reasons that are gradually revealed. Now working in a golf store and down on his luck — he’s “triple-bogeyed his entire life”, as one character puts it — he chances upon a golfing wunderkind, Santi Wheeler (Peter Dager), and persuades him to take him on as his coach and caddy.
Very sports-movie-by-the-numbers stuff.
Wilson is capable of all the shades the character needs, the broken soul and the giddy lightness. You sense, in fact, that the writing somewhat coasts on his well-formed charms; had this featured another actor in the role, it might not have been nearly as compelling. This is very sports-movie-by-the-numbers stuff, and some of the life lessons imparted here land the wrong side of schmaltzy. “Sometimes we just need to take the swing,” offers Santi in one episode, one of many slightly tortuous golfing metaphors. “Let’s see where the ball lands.” One wishes the show itself had taken Santi’s advice and just gone for it.
The found-family approach is nice enough, though, with a heart rigorously in the right place. The show understands that this is a story containing golf, yet not actually about it. The dynamics between these people — Pryce, Santi, Santi’s fierce Latina mother Elena (Mariana Treviño), Pryce’s grouchy best pal Mitts (Marc Maron) and ex-wife Amber-Linn (Judy Greer, in a very Judy Greer-esque role) — are not unpredictable but are thoughtfully sketched out. Sometimes it leans towards sitcom staples — getting stuck in a folding bed, a freak encounter with a bear — despite not strictly speaking meeting the definition of a sitcom. But character takes precedence over plot here.
The only real misfire of the ensemble is Zero (Lilli Kay), Santi’s love interest and a Gen-Z-er transparently written by a Gen-X-er, who describes themselves as a “gender-queer anti-capitalist postcolonial feminist” and fixates on things like pronouns and vegetarianism in a way that no real human young person would; an excruciatingly broad-brushed caricature. It’s in the quieter, more unspoken moments, when it moves away from culture-war clichés — when it delves deep into its characters' respective traumas and tribulations — that Stick really sticks in the mind.