‘Stick’: Several Cliches Standing on Each Other’s Shoulders, Wearing a Trenchcoat
Have you seen a redemptive sports story ever in your life? Whatever you liked about that, you’ll find it somewhere in Stick.
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There are certain moments in your life when you pause and question your recent life decisions1. This might be when you wake up in a foreign prison with no memory of how you got there. Or perhaps when you’re somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert and the drugs begin to take hold. Or when you realize that you’re watching episode three of a TV series called Stick starring Owen Wilson2.
Look, streaming is out of hand. It’s just so easy to just tap a button and watch six hours of something. It’s too easy, and weak-willed idiots like me are being ruined in the process3.
Stick is a show created by Jason Keller, starring Wilson as Pryce “Stick” Cahill, formerly a world-class pro golfer, now down on his luck and hustling for every dollar as his life falls apart after a breakdown4. Pryce stumbles on Santi Wheeler (Peter Dager), a teenage golf prodigy, and convinces Santi and his mother to let him take Santi under his wing. He thinks Santi could be a legendary golfer, and this would be a way for Pryce to get back into the sport and maybe turn his life around.
Not exactly a unique premise, and that’s the thing about Stick: Nothing in it is unique. Nothing. It’s all done competently enough, it’s relatively entertaining, sure. But it’s essentially just a bunch of cliches standing on each other’s shoulders wearing a trenchcoat5. Which just goes to prove that if you want to, you can create a story that works well enough from nothing but cliches.
Failed Middle Aged Men Finally Get Their Moment
Let’s see, of what is Stick built from? A former athletic star turned broken-down loser6? Check. Is he being brightly divorced by an ex-wife who clearly still loves him? Check. Does he have an acerbic best buddy (Marc Maron) who stuck by him during the bad times7? Check. Does everyone have a sad story that is slowly dribbled out as the characters learn to love and respect each other? Check. Is it a road trip story, allowing for lots of forced bonding and episodic writing? Check. Is there a lot of father stuff? Check. Are many of the golf games structured to be come-from-behind triumphs when a character has an epiphany or emotional revelation? Check, you bastards, check8.
I mean, if you looked up Failed Middle Aged Man Dramedy in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Universe the entry would simply be the script for the pilot of Stick. It’s that cliche-ridden. There’s not a single aspect of the story that isn’t picked up from some previous sports-themed story of middle aged redemption9. About the best thing to be said about the collection of cliches used to build this series is that the show doesn’t lean in too hard on each one. Pryce isn’t a broken-down substance abuser, for example—he’s just a sad sack. Santi’s mother (Mariana Treviño) isn’t a shrill grasper who disapproves of her son’s pursuit of golfing glory, she’s just worried about him.
The restraint is admirable, and a big reason this cromulent writing works10.
Close Enough But Not Too Far
If they tried to make it all more operatic and feely, the rickety balancing act of all these familiar elements would come under severe strain. Dramatic, emotional character arcs need buy-in from the viewer—you have to care about the character sufficiently for their emotional mess to land—but a lower-stakes, more humorous approach is easier to accept11. Pryce’s emotional devastation is restricted to some sad expressions, a few unhappy flashbacks, and a general air of mopery, and that masks the absolutely bog-standard ingredients used to flesh out his character.
There is, in other words, often a direct relationship between the “lift” required by readers or viewers for the suspension of disbelief and the level of emotion they’re expected to accept. A mildly depressed character is an easy lift. An epically traumatized character requires a bit more—you have to believe it. In the former, you can easily overlook the fact that the back story is eerily similar to a lot of other stories you’ve read or watched in your life. In the latter, however, the seams will show.
One thing the show is very good with: Not explaining golf. At all. This is the right decision; if you know how golf works, you can decide for yourself if the show is depicting it accurately enough. If you don’t know golf at all12, then you’re never expected to put in that kind of effort. This is precisely how sports, hobbies, games, and other disciplines should be handled when the intricacies of their operation don’t figure into the plot13. All we need to know about Santi is that he’s very, very good at golf but unpolished and untrained. That’s it. Everything else is superfluous, and handling it as such is absolutely the right move in this context.
Faint praise, perhaps. But I will also say this: Crufting together cliches into a serviceable story is not nearly as easy as it looks. It takes real skill, so let’s acknowledge that. And then resume complaining, which is what we do14.
Also, golf remains an absolute mystery to me, but then I’m a man who has spent the last 30 years trying and failing to learn chess, so it’s entirely possible I’m an idiot15. Cheers!
NEXT WEEK: Doctor Who has reached terminal levels of expository toxicity.
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For me it’s every single Saturday when I realize I have to cobble together another essay for this Substack. What have I done?
This one. Definitely this one.
To be fair, I was ruined by burritos and whiskey a long time ago.
If I took the title out of this, that sentence would describe approximately 15,000 movies, TV shows, and novels.
I mean, as a middle-aged white dude who loves whiskey, plays guitar, and can quote batting averages from 1987, so am I, but at least I’m self aware about it.
When I played Little League baseball all the other kids joked that my position was Left Out. It was hurtful.
Marc Maron, it should be noted, is both a delight and born to play middle-aged curmudgeons.
My own experience with sports involves shockingly few come-from-behind victories. If you made a sports movie about my athletic career, it would just be a depressing descent into hell.
Trust me: You hit an age when stories of middle-aged redemption become shockingly compelling.
Is Cromulent Writing: It Works! the title of my memoir? <bursts into tears>
My lower-stakes, humorous approach to all relationships is essentially how I incept myself into people’s lives. Five years later I’m living in your guest room and you have no idea how it happened.
Ed. Note: Like a normal person. Said the man who is currently learning how to play Mahjong.
Maybe I think this because I am that person who learns the superficial aspects of a game or skill very quickly and then loses interest? Nah.
Complaining is a fundamental human right. It’s essentially what this country was built on.
Is Entirely Possible I’m an Idiot the title of my memoir? Now we’re talking!
Crufting?
We didn’t last a full episode.