Eastbound & Down
Cast & Key People
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Our Review
Danny McBride’s monumental portrait of self delusion: Kenny Powers, an over the hill major league relief pitcher with a rocket arm and a personality disorder, returns to his hometown to teach middle school PE and claw his way back to the Show. Kenny is one of TV’s great monstrous protagonists, egomaniacal, tender underneath, narrating his own greatness in a fog of denial, and the show’s genius is that it never fully redeems him. Every season ends with growth; every next season flushes it.
Four seasons of escalating bad decisions (Mexico, Myrtle Beach, the Russian league detour), with Steve Little’s Stevie Janowski, the world’s most loyal, most disgusting sidekick, as the comedy fulcrum. The finale does the impossible: gives Kenny a genuinely earned emotional ending without pretending he’s changed his nature. Jody Hill and McBride’s whole comedic worldview, arrogant men failing upward, starts here, and it’s still the purest expression of it.
Verdict: Watch it. You’re fucking out!
