But lately, the team hasn’t been living up to its name. The highest-paid player, Travis Bugg, embarrasses them with foul-mouthed interviews off-court and poor leadership on-court. All-star Marcus Winfield still plays well, but he’s mentally tapped out from the franchise otherwise.

So when Waves President Cam Gordon (Isla’s eldest brother) is forced to step down because of a drug problem, it falls to the rest of the family to make some changes.

Next eldest, Ness, is the only Gordon who can actually play the sport. In fact, his dad even drafted him for half a season. But then he got demoted to a league in the Philippines, which ended in jail after Ness tried to bribe a club bouncer with Ecstasy. He is the Waves’ general manager now, but he’s certainly not smart enough to run the whole shebang.

Isla’s younger half-brother Sandy Gordon is smart, driven and good with numbers. That’s why he’s Chief Financial Officer for the organization. But he knows nothing about the game itself and wouldn’t even know where to begin recruiting new players.

So, the presidency falls to Isla. It’s actually a pretty good choice. Although she’s been the “Coordinator of Charitable Endeavors” the last several years, Isla loves basketball and actually knows quite a bit about the sport and the business behind it. But since her dad was “old-school” (read sexist), he never gave her a shot. So she acted out, partying it up until she hit rock bottom. Then, after her dad died, Cam gave her the charity position to restore some of her dignity and family honor.

Now, Cam is counting on Isla to run point. But with problematic players, angry sponsors and unruly brothers—including a newly discovered other half-brother, Jackie Moreno—Isla’s got her work cut out for her.

Feinting and Flapping

Netflix’s Running Point, starring Kate Hudson, is somewhat based on the life of Jeanie Buss, president of the Los Angeles Lakers, who, like Isla, had to prove herself as the female leader of a male-dominated franchise after her father passed away, states The Hollywood Reporter.

The show sort of gives off Ted Lasso vibes. But instead of being brought together by a wholesome coach from Texas, the Waves are united by a party-girl-turned-girlboss. That isn’t to say that Kate Hudson isn’t portraying a strong lead, just that her character isn’t nearly as endearing as Jason Sudeikis’ Ted Lasso.

And the show itself has just as many problems as Ted Lasso, maybe even more. We see a couple of sex scenes, people take their clothes off, the Gordon’s dad was involved in multiple extramarital affairs, Sandy Gordon is in a same-sex relationship, and Isla lives with her fiancé, whom she’s been engaged to for three years.

Language is also foul; players are often crass; and more than one character makes some really derogatory, sexist remarks. Not to mention the abundant drug use of Cam Gordon, which acts as the show’s inciting incident.

Hudson says the show is more family comedy than rom-com, but most families are probably gonna want to steer clear of this TV-MA rated series.

(Editor’s Note: Plugged In is rarely able to watch every episode of a given series for review. As such, there’s always a chance that you might see a problem that we didn’t. If you notice content that you feel should be included in our review, send us an email at letters@pluggedin.com, or contact us via Facebook or Instagram, and be sure to let us know the episode number, title and season so that we can check it out.)

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Stories don’t end, really. Not as long as the protagonists have breath in their lungs. Luke Skywalker brought down the Empire but became a bitter, old dude. Harry Potter defeated Voldemort, grew up and had kids, and still came back more than 20 years later to defeat Voldemort again.

The kids from 1984’s Karate Kid? They grew up, too. Their stories didn’t end when Daniel LaRusso planted a heel in bully Johnny Lawrence’s face. They went on, well after the movie’s credits finished rolling. And maybe the most important parts of their respective stories are still to come.

READ ON, READ OFF …

It’s been 30-something years since Daniel and Johnny squared off in 1984’s All Valley Under-18 Karate Championship. From that pivotal moment, their lives diverged radically.

Daniel leveraged his underdog victory to propel himself to modest fame and fortune—mostly as the cheesy spokesman/owner of his own line of car dealerships. Meanwhile, Johnny wallowed in self-pity, hating Daniel and vowing to get revenge someday.

Well, that day comes when Johnny and Daniel each reopen their old dojos—Cobra Kai and Miyagi-Do, respectively—to compete (or, at least, have their students compete) in the All Valley Under-18 Karate Championship once again.

While Daniel continues the gentle, defense-only strategy of his old sensei, Mr. Miyagi, Johnny teaches his pupils the same motto his own sensei, Kreese, taught him: “Strike first. Strike hard. No mercy.”

Yessir. Johnny and Daniel both know how to land punches where they hurt the most.

But then Kreese makes a reappearance, taking over Cobra Kai and reimplementing the hard-hitting training tactics that he once trained Johnny on—and it makes Johnny realize that, you know what, maybe a little mercy isn’t such a bad thing?

He and Daniel ultimately team up to take on Kreese’s Cobra Kai dojo, causing Kreese to himself team up with an old friend named Terry Silver (the main antagonist of The Karate Kid Part III). And Silver is apparently still a jerk, because he gets Kreese falsely arrested in order to take over Cobra Kai himself…before Johnny and Daniel manage to get Terry arrested for his (authentic) crimes, too. And that shuts down Cobra Kai altogether.

But you (and honestly, Daniel) should know by now that it isn’t that simple. After all, how can a show called Cobra Kai not have the titular dojo?

Kreese and Silver each finagle their way out of prison. Kreese heads to South Korea to set up Cobra Kai once more, and Silver takes over the Iron Dragons, based out of Hong Kong. Both men then train their students in preparation for the same prestigious tournament the now-allied Johnny and Daniel train theirs: Sekai Taikai.

For Daniel, it’ll be his swan song in honor of Mr. Miyagi before he moves away from being a full-time sensei. After all, whatever dojo wins tends to influence the karate sphere into following that dojo’s karate strategy. But if either Kreese or Silver has his way, that’ll never happen.

Because in Cobra Kai, it’s not about the wax: It’s all about the whacks.

OUT OF BALANCE?

The original Karate Kid was relatively innocent and pretty inspirational—a PG film that inspired a generation of kids to flood their local mall-based dojos (and maybe even paint their parents’ fences).

Cobra Kai was the first real high-profile show from YouTube’s subscription-based addendum YouTube Red (which was picked up by Netflix in its third season). But it isn’t aimed at young viewers like the original was. At least, let’s hope not. Just as the show focuses on the now-50-year-olds Johnny and Daniel, the content is pretty grown-up, too.

The s-word flies more often than karate kicks, with plenty of other milder profanities (including the occasional f-word) landing blow after blow. Drinking and drug use land on the screen as well.

The show’s sexual content is also more in-your-face than you might expect: Daniel’s high school-age daughter, Samantha, is subject to sexual harassment and assault. And when she rebuffs her quasi-boyfriend’s advances, she becomes the subject of ugly and graphic rumors at school. A post-prom scene shows Johnny’s son, Robby, getting pretty steamy with his girlfriend, too. And it becomes pretty clear as the series continues that several high school couples are jumping in bed together. Parents and other adults are also caught in intimate moments, and at one point, Johnny searches online for a way to tell his star pupil, Miguel, that he’s “banging” Miguel’s mom, Carmen. And later, Johnny and Carmen are thrilled to learn Carmen is pregnant.

And naturally, Cobra Kai has some violent moments. I mean, it is a show predicated, at least in part, on beating people up. And sometimes, even characters we ostensibly root for have moments where they’re just plain mean. (Season 3 opens with one of Johnny’s students stuck in a coma after “good guy” Robby kicked him off a landing in an all-out karate gang showdown at school. And Cobra Kai’s final season reveals that Mr. Miyagi may not always have been a defense-based fighter, since he may have been responsible for one man’s death and another’s hospitalization.) But a few characters are murdered, too. And one young karate champ falls on his own blade after allowing his anger to get the better of him.

Ironically, though, it’s in the wake of those difficult moments that Cobra Kai, like its characters, finds a certain measure of redemption.

Cobra Kai is, after all, a story about folks trying to find their way to Mr. Miyagi’s mystical sense of balance, to find the middle way between being a pushover and being a world-class jerk. Everyone here, from oldsters Johnny and Daniel to their troubled pupils and offspring, is searching for redemption and meaning. Some tap into past hope and past sins, even as some of those hopes and sins are passed on to another generation. Families want to restore relationships, and friends work to make up for their regrets. Netflix’s show does more than simply play off Gen X nostalgia: It has a story of its own it wants to tell. Several, really.

But while those stories may have merit, they also come with problematic content aplenty. And that can make Cobra Kai a more difficult dojo to deal with than the original. After all, the motto is “No mercy.”

(Editor’s Note: Plugged In is rarely able to watch every episode of a given series for review. As such, there’s always a chance that you might see a problem that we didn’t. If you notice content that you feel should be included in our review, send us an email at letters@pluggedin.com, or contact us via Facebook or Instagram, and be sure to let us know the episode number, title and season so that we can check it out.)

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At the very least, in Rising Impact, golf has never caused this much excitement for a young elementary school kid or caused such tension and drama among rival golf students that will do anything to win.

Rising Impact is told through colorful animations and English subtitles and follows third-grader Gawain as he strives to become the best golfer in the world. Through mentorship from professional golfer, Kiria, and his classmates at Camelot Academy (a school for gifted junior golfers), Gawain works his way up from his first local tournament to landing a spot on Japan’s national team for a prestigious competition in England. And as viewers root for Gawain along his journey, they might learn about golf, too.

Gawain is very determined to be the best and he seems to take instruction well–both admirable qualities. Unfortunately, due to his confidence paired with his young age, many older golfers at the academy are filled with jealousy. There’s a fair bit of deception, anger, and some cartoon-ified physical violence (no blood)—just your stereotypical bad guy behavior.

Gawain’s relationship with Kiria can turn violent (which, while played for laughs, would technically be child abuse) and sometimes plays up Gawain’s schoolboy crush romance (concerning considering the large age gap). But by episode nine, Gawain says that Kiria has always felt like family.

Overall, Rising Impact is a mostly harmless anime that can spark family conversations about perseverance and, of course, the game of golf.

(Editor’s Note: Plugged In is rarely able to watch every episode of a given series for review. As such, there’s always a chance that you might see a problem that we didn’t. If you notice content that you feel should be included in our review, send us an email at letters@pluggedin.com, or contact us via Facebook or Instagram, and be sure to let us know the episode number, title and season so that we can check it out.)

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Those around the state of Louisiana might just call him a legend.

During his tenure as Evangel’s head football coach, Pastor Denny led the Eagles to 29 district championships, 14 state championships and a national title (in 1999). The team once won 60 games in a row.

Pastor Denny stepped away from the game for a couple of years, and the Eagles responded by losing. In 2020, Evangel didn’t win a game. Now, Pastor Denny’s back, and he’s hoping to bring back the program’s winning ways.

But he wants to do more than that. Sure, football’s important. But faith? That, he knows, is where the real victory is found.

Of Field Goals and God

Freevee’s docudrama God. Family. Football. takes us into one of high school sports’ most storied programs. Football, not faith, is the skeleton on which this reality show is built.

The cameras start running before the 2022 season, with players practicing in the heat and assistant coach Fabian Carter giving them a generous 90-second popsicle break. The show ends when the Eagles’ season does. And the central overriding tension through it all—at least superficially—is simple: Will Evangel return to not just prominence, but dominance? Will Pastor Denny stick another state championship trophy on the school’s mantel?

But the show, true to its title—and true, apparently, to Pastor Denny’s ethos—is about more than just runs and passes, X’s and O’s. It’s about the young men under his care. What they learn. How they grow. How they deal with their inevitable struggles and challenges and doubts, on the football field and off.

We’re introduced to twin brothers Peyton and Parker Fulghum (the team’s junior quarterback and star wide receiver, respectively). The boys’ father, Josh Booty, was an Evangel legend; coming out of high school, he was recruited ahead of future Hall-of-Famer Peyton Manning.

But Peyton Fulgham is quick to point out that his dad was AWOL for 12 years, and the boy never once threw the football with him. Peyton Fulghum, too, has NFL ambitions, but he says, “If [my dad] ever tries to take the credit, I’ll be very quick to correct him.”

Defensive end Gabe Reliford has NFL aspirations, too—spearheaded (or perhaps hampered) by his ambitious, critical father. Pastor Denny encourages Gabe’s goals, too, but he does so more gently. “You will get there,” the coach says. “Sometimes God just has to work it out.”

And we meet plenty of other kids as well—kids who just love playing football and love spending time with their friends. Haden “Toad” Perry rocks a mullet, drives an ancient F-150 and brags that “these guys are going to be a good band of brothers.” Backup QB Rodrigo Ro Ballesteros is told that the correct pronunciation of banana pudding in Louisiana is “banana puddin’.” Offensive and defensive lineman Jacob Carpenter has another goal beyond a state championship: He wants to get the giant, motorized Evangel helmet cart “up and running” before he graduates.

And that helmet cart just might be a metaphor for the school’s football program itself.

Faith and Long

The show is indeed about family, too—a football family. Pastor Denny is trying to turn these players into more than teammates: He wants to make them brothers.

“It’s tough to beat a really great team,” he says. “But it’s almost impossible to beat a really great family.”

As for God? He’s everywhere here.

Pastor Denny tells us the school was launched by his mother, Frances, in 1980 for “kids who might not [otherwise] have a future.” The school put God at its core and—at least according to the show—that commitment hasn’t wavered. The team practices in late-summer heat wearing “To God Be the Glory” shirts. A sign reading “Jesus above all” hangs above the weight room. Practices and games begin and end with prayer.

“I think the biggest part about us right now is this [Tuesday morning] Bible study,” says lineman Jacob Carpenter. “Going in that at 7 o’clock in the morning, 60 of us guys in that little room in there, just talking about the Lord.”

Sometimes that spiritual sincerity can feel just a little off or perhaps slightly misplaced. “We put our faith in Pastor Danny,” Carpenter says. Pastor Denny himself, of course, would remind the lineman to put his faith in someone higher.

But overall, God. Family. Football. isn’t interested in questioning or minimizing team members’ faith or its role in how the team operates. The show—which includes NFL quarterback and outspoken Christian Russell Wilson as an executive producer—treats that faith seriously and with sincerity.

God. Family. Football. Does come with a handful of issues. Football is a violent game, and we see hard collisions and injuries. Guys wear bathing suits around pools and hang out with their girlfriends. And occasionally a mild swear word or two squeaks out during practice.

But overall, God. Family. Football. gives us a compelling show that treats its subjects fairly and with affection. And while we root for the Evangel Eagles for success on the gridiron, the show reminds us that real success is found outside the stadium—and that win or lose, God is always with them.

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In 10 years, the Lakers won five national championships and pumped new life into the moribund National Basketball Association. Its 1980s vaunted “Showtime” teams boasted two all-time greats (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Ervin “Magic” Johnson) and a bevy of future hall-of-famers. Hollywood glitterati filled the stands and, for a time, the NBA galaxy rotated around the Lakers’ L.A. Forum.

Seems like, with all that talent, success would’ve been easy—as certain as a lazy skyhook, as effortless as one of Magic’s no-look passes.

Max tells us differently.

Woe-time

Max’s Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty takes us into Showtime’s earliest days, when real estate mogul Jerry Buss buys a down-on-its-luck Lakers franchise and, shortly thereafter, drafts sophomore phenomenon Johnson. Magic pushes the Lakers to a higher gear and bam! L.A. wins its first Showtime-era title in 1980, Magic’s rookie year.

Still, it was anything but easy.

Abdul-Jabbar, the Lakers’ longtime leader, barely talked to Magic. The Lakers’ rotated through three coaches. Players would bicker on the court; coaches and administrators would squabble off of it. And Buss—trying to rebuild his own family even as he rekindles the Lakers’ fortune—is kind of a mess.

In Season Two of Winning Time, with Lakers’ players wearing rings on their fingers and Buss and company sitting on the top of the NBA heap, the road to glory just gets harder. On-court injuries and off-court troubles throw roadblocks in the way. Magic’s rocky relationship with his coach threatens to divide the team; his outside philandering threatens to upend his lucrative endorsements. And up in Boston, a threat to L.A.’s basketball supremacy is beginning to take shape.

Slam Gunk

Like the 1980s Lakers, Winning Time is loaded with talent. John C. Reilly and Quincy Isaiah head an A-list cast that includes the likes of Adrien Brody, Jason Segel, Jason Clarke, Michael Chiklis and Sally Field.

And like the Lakers, it seems to have all the ingredients to win.

A sports drama couldn’t ask for a better historical backstory. Certainly, the show takes plenty of liberties with that backstory: All-time Laker great Jerry West threatened to sue the show for how he was portrayed, and the real Abdul-Jabbar said that the makers “replaced solid facts with flimsy cardboard fictions that don’t go deeper and offer no revealing insights.” Even a cursory look at Lakers history will show that this historical drama goes heavy on the drama and somewhat light on the history.

But the drama is well-written, well-told and well-performed, and the characters are, at least, compelling and multidimensional. Reilly’s Buss is a business visionary and a first-class jerk. Isaiah’s Magic is an electrifying talent and, at times, a bit of a brat. Abdul-Jabbar, as played by Solomon Hughes, seems especially interesting—with the longtime star learning, uneasily, how to share space with Magic. These characters are messy, and the show makes no secret of it.

Alas, while messy characters can make for compelling drama, it can also make for tawdry viewing.

Buss and Magic both had their share of affairs, and the camera focuses far more on bedroom-based activities than on-court action. We see (and hear) plenty—up to and including full-blown nudity. Even the conversations can be lurid.

Violence is an issue, too. If you’re familiar with 1980’s B-ball, you know that on-court violence was not a rarity. That violence literally bleeds out into the real world, too. In the first season, one disgruntled ex-Laker tries to arrange a hit on the entire team. (For the record, the player—Spencer Haywood—never actually asked anyone to murder the entire team. But he does admit that he thought about it.)

And the show never lets us forget that it takes place in the 1980s, a time of (at least according to the show) unfettered hedonism and excess. Liquor flows. Tobacco smoke fogs board rooms and bars. Drug use was a huge problem in the NBA at the time, and Winning Time doesn’t turn away.

The language can be, quite honestly, appalling. The show tallies more f-bombs than baskets, and most every other word that deserves a bleep is heard here, too.

The real Abdul-Jabbar makes an interesting point regarding the show’s language issues. Winning Time suggests that he used the f-word to, essentially, tell a child actor to take a hike in the movie Airplane!—“a shorthand way of showing my perceived aloofness during that time,” Abdul-Jabbar says. But Abdul-Jabbar insists it didn’t happen and never would. And that portrayal, he suggests, could hurt his real-life Skyhook Foundation, which promotes education for inner-city kids.

“When people see this show and come away with an impression that I’m verbally abusive to children, they are less likely to support my foundation,” he writes. “That means fewer kids will be able to partake in the program. So [creator] Adam McKay is giving those kids a great big ‘f— off!’ That lasts a lot longer than the easy laugh he got out of a dishonest joke.”

Winning Time takes one of the most successful sports franchises in history and does a deep dive on one of its most compelling decade-long chapters. But while the Lakers were great, this show—at least when it comes to discernment-minded viewers is not. Indeed, Winning Time, for families, is a low-rent loser.

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“Ball was our life,” Filthy says. “There was only one word in our dictionary: win.”

Of course, such a mentality is prone to leading people astray, so their father, ex-NBA star Chuck, and mother, Crystal, work together to keep them in line.

“In the game of life, family is the court, basketball is the heart,” Chuck tells them. “Always leave your heart on the court. Win or lose, y’all play together.”

Filthy and Jordan will still need to take plenty of steps if they ever want to play with the best of the best—and those include growing up, completing their schoolwork and overcoming many trials. And even if they do have what it takes to go pro, what happens when Jordan begins expressing doubts about whether he even wants to?

And with the family’s collective mind focused on basketball, how will they take it when negative familial circumstances begin conflicting with their dreams?

Not Quite a Slam Dunk

I’d really like to recommend, without reservation, The Crossover. I really would.

The Disney+ series has some great messages about family sticking together, conflict resolution, the difficulties of parenting and dealing with grief. And those are some pretty awesome lessons in a show that’s ultimately about basketball.

But while the majority of this show’s first season is quite clean, its second episode brings the biggest problems. The episode focuses on Filthy’s attempt to rid himself of a string of basketball game losses by buying a voodoo doll. We hear the characters discuss using voodoo to “unblock blessings,” and when Filthy’s mother finds out about it, she scolds him for not “honoring” the pagan practice rather than being critical for him engaging in it in the first place. It’s a somewhat strange response for a family that (the show suggests) is a Christian one.

There are some other issues, too. In one episode, a girl openly dates two boys (much to one of the boy’s frustration). In another, we see teenagers passionately kissing at a skate rink, and a couple adult female characters wear low-cut dresses. Two underaged people are seen drinking at one point. And in terms of swearing, viewers can expect roughly one misuse of God’s name per episode.

We can praise The Crossover for its many positive family messages. But the voodoo elements from episode two—combined with some smaller issues—just may be enough to muddy the waters of this otherwise decent watch.

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It’s not as if Ted’s a terrible coach. If he was coaching an American football team, he’d likely do just fine. After all, he did lead a team to a Division II title in his very first year as head coach. He even set social media ablaze with his goofy celebratory dance.

But football in the United States and futbal, well, everywhere else, is a different game. Literally. You don’t just kick balls through goalposts or to change possessions: you kick it all the time. Throwing and catching said ball is not just frowned upon: It’s a penalty. Players dribble the ball on the pitch—two terms that actually belong to two entirely different sports back in the good ol’ U. S. of A.

Yes, Ted Lasso has his hands—er, feet full in trying to coach the struggling AFC Richmond into a consistent winner. But after two losing seasons, even Ted can’t help but wonder if he’s truly cut out for this.

Extra Time

Ted, a drawling, relentlessly cheery motivator, seems like an odd fit for this jaded team filled with prima-Maradonas. When asked if he believes in ghosts, Ted says, “I do. But more importantly, I think they need to believe in themselves.”

That chipper, can-do attitude, and his complete lack of knowledge of the “beautiful game,” made Ted the perfect choice for Rebecca Welton, the team’s owner. She received the team as part of a divorce settlement from her philandering, football-mad husband. And for a while, it was her (ahem) goal to turn Richmond into a Premiere League laughingstock—her way of twisting the knife a little.

But things have changed since then. Ted managed to turn Rebecca’s way of thinking around, convincing her that winning (or at least trying to win) was far more satisfying than destroying her husband’s favorite team.

Now, Richmond’s bickering stars actually work together. Ted’s managed to instill goodwill and camaraderie in his locker room. And players have begun to see success both on and off the field.

It’s not perfect. The team is predicted to finish dead last this coming season. They’ve lost one of their coaches to their rivals, West Ham, now owned by Rebecca’s ex-husband Rupert. Ted’s now coping with a divorce, making it harder to see his son, and experiencing panic attacks. But Ted believes in his team. He believes in being kind. And he believes that maybe—just maybe—his particular brand of strange can do a strange, sweet work in Richmond.

Red Card

Ted Lasso is a strange work in itself. Featuring Saturday Night Live alum Jason Sudeikis in the starring role, this Apple TV+ comedy can sometimes suffer from a certain internal inconsistency. Ted’s exaggerated Texas accent paired with his ridiculously over-the-top folksy gullibility can make the character feel like he belongs in a SNL skit, not helming a series.

But the show, like Lasso himself, is smarter than it might seem at first.  

Ted is a nice guy, and the show suggests that nice guys sometimes do finish first: Or, if not, there are more important things than winning, anyway. While he’s easy to laugh at, the coach’s unflagging sincerity, decency and dogged determination to do the best job he can slowly shine through.

Ted Lasso is a funny and good-hearted, poignant show. And that makes the problematic content it also contains all the more vexing.

In another time and place, Ted Lasso would’ve been the sort of show that could’ve landed on network TV or basic cable, kept its nose relatively clean and earned a small-but-loyal audience (and maybe some Emmys, too). But today, in an oversaturated media landscape with very few rules, Apple TV+ has given Lasso license to be the TV-MA show that some apparently want it to be, but certainly doesn’t need to be.

Harsh profanities, including dozens of f-words, flit through the television speakers. Sexual jokes and revealing scenes also land on our screens. The show is strangely contradictory in that it features content that doesn’t at all line up with the themes that it promotes.

And yet, despite its many flaws, it’s difficult to miss just how nice the show is. Ted refuses to let his frustrating circumstances influence him negatively, approaching every situation with a smile, every conflict with a kind word. Even his hardened players begin to recognize that it’s hard to completely despise him. The extraordinary kindness of Ted Lasso is one that’s incredibly needed in today’s entertainment, even if it’s surrounded by objectionable content that isn’t.

It’s hard not to root for Ted Lasso, the coach. But suggestive content and profanity can make Ted Lasso, the show, hard to watch.

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He’s one of the best riders there is. Holding onto the bull despite all that thrashing and bucking makes him feel like he has a sense of control on his life. He needs it, because he’s never quite recovered from his father walking out the door and never looking back—allegedly because his younger brother, Carl Joseph, was born with Down syndrome.

Cody loves his brother, but he has no love to give to his father. So when his dad shows up unexpectedly one day to plead for forgiveness for his actions, Cody’s not interested.

“It is so much harder to stay angry,” Cody’s mother tells him.

“That’s where you’re wrong, mama,” Cody responds. “You have no idea how good being angry makes me.”

Indeed, that anger keeps Cody on each bull. But then he begins forming a relationship with horsewoman Ali Daniels—a woman who embraces life from a happier point of view despite her difficult circumstances.

And slowly, Cody finds that if he wants to conquer the real bull—life—anger just isn’t going to keep him in the saddle.

O for a Thousand Bulls to Ride

A Thousand Tomorrows is a six-part miniseries that follows the plot of Karen Kingsbury’s Christian fiction novel of the same name. It’s also the latest to arrive on Pure Flix.

But unlike many Christian fiction stories, the protagonist of this one isn’t a professing Christian—at least, not at the start. Cody’s relationship with his earthly father is so broken that he hasn’t even given any thought to connecting with his Heavenly one. Of course, both of those relationships begin to change for the better through his experiences with Ali and her family.

The story doesn’t shy away from tougher issues, including a father who abandons his children because one of them has Down Syndrome and a woman who grapples with cystic fibrosis. And it should be noted that while Cody engages in a few activities that Christians would frown upon, they’re much more sanitized than any streaming service not named Pure Flix would handle them.

A Thousand Tomorrows is a story of forgiveness and love, one that weaves the occasional Bible verse into the mix as a guiding light for the characters. So while there are a few small bucks on this ride, including some suggested sensuality, most fans of Kingsbury’s novels will likely find this small-screen adaptation of A Thousand Tomorrows a satisfying one.

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Sure, we know what the media has said about Mike Tyson: He’s an amazing boxer, with the majority of his wins ending in his opponent being knocked out. But what about the rest of his life? What about what happened before he rose to the top, and how did that fame change his life afterwards—both positively and negatively?

Well, Hulu’s docudrama miniseries about Mike’s life is here to offer its particular perspective on those events.

The story begins with young Mike’s troubled and violent childhood—one where trouble lurked just around the corner, even before anything went wrong for the boy.

“I ain’t never been arrested,” Mike says as a child.

“What 10-year-old says that?” his mother replies. “It ain’t nothing to brag about. You heading down the path of a doomed child. It’s coming, Mike. It’s coming.”

And what else was on that path for Mike as he rises to become a heavyweight champion? Well, lots—including dealing with a money-chasing manager, the constant need to be liked and jailtime for his rape conviction.

By the end of it all, you may just feel as concussed as Mike’s opponents usually did about five minutes after a match.

Step Out of the Ring

It’s no secret that Mike Tyson did not approve of Mike being created by Hulu. In fact, he took to Instagram with some pretty heavy words condemning the series.

“Don’t let Hulu fool you,” Tyson wrote in a post. “I don’t support their story about my life. They stole my life story and didn’t pay me. To Hulu executives I’m just a [n-word] they can sell on the auction block.”

That said, the series does draw from things Tyson has said about his life, borrowing parts of its narrative from Tyson’s 2013 HBO special Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth. In it, Tyson spoke for over an hour on his life story. In this dramatized version, Mike similarly shares his story on stage; but it also cuts to dramatized versions of the events so we can watch them unfold firsthand.

That means that viewers will endure a whole slew of content issues, some of which may be deeply disturbing to viewers (including Tyson’s rape conviction, which will be addressed shortly). Viewers will be exposed to extreme sex and nudity—showing everything except for female genitals. (In one scene, Mike is baptized, and in the next, he’s having sex with a woman who was watching from the pews.) We’ll hear intense amounts of the heaviest profanities; and we’ll see graphic violence, such as when children are shot in the head onscreen, as well as Tyson’s infamous ear bite. And none of that includes the drug use and heavy drinking.

In another category of spiritual content entirely, we’ll also see Mike convert to Islam.  

Along the way, the series shows that Mike has endured a lot of pain and abuse at the hands of others—until it flips the script in Episode 5. There, the narrative focus switches from Mike to Desiree Washington, the woman whom Tyson was convicted of raping. The episode is a difficult one. Though we don’t see the sexual violence Tyson perpetrates, we hear its sounds and listen as Desiree describes what happened.

The episode clearly sides with Desiree, pointing out that despite claims painting her as a so-called “gold digger” who was just after Tyson’s money, she “never sold her story to any publication or received any money for any interview.” It tells viewers that according to the New York Times, Desiree came forward because she felt that, as a Christian, she needed to speak up in order to stop Mike from hurting other women.

Mike Tyson’s life is riddled with pain—his own and the pain others endured because of him. Both this series and Tyson’s own special will make that very clear. But let us make it even more clear for you: If you step into the ring with this series, you won’t come out feeling like a heavyweight champion.

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Perhaps, women? 

No one really knew if they could do it, but a few investors and bigwigs, like candymaker Mr. Walter Harvey, were willing to give it a shot–provided that they could offer audiences women with good looks, short skirts and a bent for entertainment. So they began something called the All American Girls Professional Baseball League. 

For most, the league is a joke. But for Carson Shaw, well, this is all she’s ever wanted. Which is why she leaves her small town of Lake Valley, Idaho, hops on a train and makes her way to the league’s tryouts in Chicago–all while her husband Charlie is away at war.

When she arrives, Carson’s overwhelmed not only by the talent on the field, but by the number of women who, like her, were brave enough to try their hand at a man’s game. She’s got competition, that’s for sure. But it’s not just about baseball. For her–like for most of the women here–the diamond becomes a stage where she will work on other, bigger issues: her own abilities, her sexuality and the understanding of what it means to be a woman. 

A League, Revived 

In 1992, A League of Their Own was released in theaters, telling the story of how the All American Girls Professional Baseball League came to be, starring big names like Tom Hanks, Geena Davis and Madonna. The film is held by most as an untouchable classic. 

But Prime Video will hear none of that as they’ve just released their own remake of the film, with the same name, flipping the PG film into a mature-rated (meant for audiences 16 and older, according to Amazon) television series that aims to tell a different story. 

This rendition features a young woman, Carson Shaw, who is confronted by a myriad of issues: what is femininity, especially in the 40s? What happens if you’re gay? Where do Black people, specifically Black women, fit into this baseball world? Each of these questions are presented throughout this eight-episode series, but there is one message that speaks the loudest and it claims that you control your destiny.

The core of this series says that your choices determine your destiny and that you should let nothing get in the way of making your dreams come true–not family, not a spouse and certainly not societal expectations. 

So, what does that mean for viewers? Well, it means that you will see many of these young women, including Carson and Greta, kiss one another, make out and have sexual encounters where plenty is implied–even as a statue of Jesus on the cross hangs on the wall right behind said activities. 

It also means you’ll see heterosexual couples in bed together as things get steamy and you’ll see plenty of drinking and smoking. And if you thought that maybe the language was at least clean, guess again. Seems like this new remake is not much like the original at all. 

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