I have mixed feelings about the new A League of Their Own on Amazon Prime, which is not so much a sequel or remake of the 1992 movie as it is an homage or shared universe fan fiction where everyone is gay. The movie is referenced constantly— certain scenes and iconic lines like “there’s no crying in baseball“ are shuffled around and interpolated in new places. Rosie O’Donnell makes a guest appearance as the owner of a clandestine gay bar. Her character in the original movie, Doris, seems reincarnated in Jo (Melanie Field), a bouncer from New York who rolls into tryouts with her best friend, Greta (D’Arcy Carden), who seems analogous with Madonna’s Mae. There’s no Stillwell angel to be found, but a child of comparable brattiness shows up to mock one of the Peaches on a train.
League is an ensemble piece, but it primarily focuses on two ballplayers. The first is Carson Shaw (Abbi Jacobson), a disaffected housewife from Idaho who runs away from home to join the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League—a real league founded during WW2, when male ballplayers went to fight overseas or otherwise join the war effort. Carson is drafted by the Rockford Peaches and moves into a house with her new teammates. She falls in love with her fellow Peach, Greta, has a queer awakening, and eventually steps up to coach the team.
While the Peaches are a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Carson and her teammates, the AAGPBL did not allow Black players. The original movie briefly acknowledges this when a Black woman retrieves an out-of-bounds ball, throws it back to Geena Davis in a way that demonstrates her own untapped talent, and walks away, never to be seen again. The coolest thing League does is expand that moment into an entire character arc in Max Chapman (Chanté Adams). Max is a talented pitcher but no team will allow a Black woman to join — neither the AAGPBL nor the club team sponsored by Rockford’s screw factory. Max is also queer and struggles to imagine her own life and future until she connects with her mom’s estranged sibling, Bertie (Lea Robinson), a suave tailor who would probably identify as a trans man today. Max and Carson develop a clandestine friendship, but their stories never really overlap.
The Good
Max’s story is not beholden to the movie and as a result, it’s a lot more compelling. The show’s depiction of Black life in WW2-era Rockford is vivid and brimming with details. Her best friend, Clance, is a cartoonist in the vein of Jackie Ormes. The Black church features prominently, as does the hair salon owned by Max’s mom and a restaurant where Clance’s husband works as a cook. There’s also the screw factory where Black workers are just beginning to join the ranks due to an executive order banning hiring discrimination in industries supporting the war effort.
League doesn’t just include queer and Black characters, it centers their experiences. The show covers a lot of ground: the Great Migration, gay bar culture, butch/femme identity, The Wizard of Oz, and the mysticism of queer haircuts—just to name a few. The narrative also understands marriage as an economic institution and explores how for women, financial independence equals self-determination. Baseball is kind of an aside. In the movie, the baseball scenes serve to advance the plot. In the show, they are mostly ornamental and seem to illustrate that yes, the gals DO play ball.
The Bad
Carson stammers and mumbles through every line. By the end of the first episode, I felt exasperated whenever she appeared on screen. I felt the same way about Shirley (Kate Berlant), an eccentric ballplayer whose whole “deal” never quite congeals. She’s a hypochondriac and homophobe who’s afraid of spoiled food, but she’s also…horny? The most interesting characters fall into the background. I felt deeply shortchanged of Jess (Kelly McCormack) and Lupe (Roberta Colindrez)—butch best friends who hang out in a gay bar and compare notes on which of the Peaches are queer (“She’s always talking about Katharine Hepburn and pants,” says Jess, surmising Carson’s sexuality.)
The dialogue in League is awful. There’s a wild amount of therapy language; characters talk about “support systems” and “being in their body.” Carson and her husband discuss their relationship wants and needs. Greta’s lines, especially, have a tendency to sound like the most pedantic of Instagram infographics (“Why are you watching what everyone else is doing? Watch yourself.”) Growing up in the midwest, I spent a lot of time with my grandma and great aunts. Like Carson, these were white women of the Greatest Generation. They survived the Depression on lard sandwiches and spent their lives stockpiling yarn and reusing wrapping paper. My grandma had a plastic-lined purse that she would bring to Old Country Buffet to fill with dinner rolls. Let me tell you, they did not value open communication or self-actualization. If a kid at school was mean to me, they taught me to “kill them with kindness“ which is when you go out of your way to be really, really nice to someone who has wronged you. Why? To make them feel GUILTY.
Look, I’m not against anachronism in period pieces. Not only is it unavoidable, it can make a story more permeable and self-aware. The issue is that League aims to explore queerness and gender roles in a different time period, but it does that by plopping modern women in the past. Sometimes the characters go out of their way to reference pinball or celebrities of the day, other times they say stuff like, “your face is boring“ or “fucking epic.“ (Don’t even get me started on what the soundtrack is doing.) Even if the writers were determined to use the Lorde’s English, the anachronisms aren’t particularly thoughtful or provocative. If anything, it comes across like these characters don’t understand their own zeitgeist.
In the middle of watching League, my girlfriend and I took a break and put on the original. When I was little, I often watched A League of Their Own with my mom and as a result, this movie has real umami for me. My girlfriend watched it endlessly growing up and can recite each line by heart. Though it’s unfair to compare a Hollywood movie to a streamer series, the original is sharp and deliberate. There are no loose ends or extraneous B-plots. At the same time, I noticed that each queer-coded ballplayer has a moment of straight redemption—Doris flashes a photo of her boyfriend, Mae is always flirting with men, and Marla finds a nice guy to marry. At the end of the movie, the Peaches reunite as old women for a celebration in their honor at the Baseball Hall of Fame. In the decades since WW2, they’ve had families and careers and lived many different lives. Kit shows up surrounded by children and grandchildren. Her husband isn’t there, but his absence is deftly noted and explained (he’s parking the car). “She’s not gay!” the movie screams. “She has a husband who can park! Look at all the reproductive labor she’s done!!” The new League says “fuck that noise! YOLO“ and despite all my gripes, I liked it...mostly. I think they should do gay Field of Dreams next.
I love this show as a total work of art VERY MUCH - I can see being annoyed by the imposition of modern language / emotional awareness on these characters, I get it, but it doesn't really take away from my overwhelming joy. We were like "I think that Jo is the character who is being the MOST 1940s" whereas Carson is clearly not even trying to be 1940s and I'm like "ok well it's your show."
But also? I feel like everyone who made this show is doing it as an expression of how the movie was a root for them, and the feeling I felt when I was watching it over and over at home growing up is clearly shared by all these people! And that is so so rad. I could feel it through the screen!
Also I want to celebrate media that is not the L word!
Because the L word is objectively terrible! And yet I compulsively watch it!!
i really really really disliked this remake. abby's uhms bumbling were maddening. just from my experience as a queer child / teen in the 90s, the level of 'everyones gay!' for 1943 .... is just above and beyond believability moving towards excessively tokenistic. thanks for reminding me that i did appreciated the expansion of the story with max and clarance. but most of all, thanks for justifying my frustrations with it since all my queer friends seem into it (further annoying me / stoking my disdain.)