Aired 2009-2013 (4 seasons) on HBO
Created by Ben Best, Jody Hill, and Danny McBride
Currently streaming on HBO
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The first episode of Eastbound & Down does all the things a good TV pilot should do. It begins the story (flameout ballplayer returns home), establishes the setting (small-town North Carolina), and creates the conflict that will drive the narrative throughout the series. But all of that is secondary to its main goal: Giving us a grand introduction to the star of the show, Kenny Fucking Powers. Danny McBride's portrayal of Kenny is an homage to the real-life excess of controversial sports stars like John Rocker with everything (most notably the hair) turned up a notch. He's brash, arrogant, and so full of himself that he listens to his own audiobook on repeat. His self-confidence borders on delusional but his charisma and magnetism are still readily apparent. He feels entitled to whatever he wants and gets violent and angry when people push back. Thirty minutes into the series it's clear that Kenny Powers is American id personified, and we're all along for the ride.
Contrast this with the premiere of the fourth (and final) season, which is a re-introduction of sorts. Definitively done with his major league aspirations, Kenny is now a family man with a normal job. In spite of his wildly changed situation, he is still fundamentally the Kenny we already know. What makes this interesting then is how his specific pathologies manifest in different but telling ways. Take the moment midway through the episode when Kenny, dressed in almost foreign-seeming button down shirt and khaki shorts, attends a small function in honor of his wife, April. She accepts an award and gives a speech about her accomplishments. But then she turns the focus of her gratitude towards Kenny. "Thank you for standing right behind me" she says as her co-workers applaud Kenny for his support. She's clearly not lying - Kenny has been supportive of his family which has allowed them to thrive. But the dissonance of this moment - balancing a supporting role in his own life against the self-image he has constructed - is too much. In true Kenny Powers fashion he runs off to the parking lot to smash things in anger.
A series that can establish a worthwhile premise is usually good. A series that keeps tweaking and reinventing that premise to speak to deeper themes is usually great. Eastbound & Down is one of the very best comedy series of the decade because it goes a half-step beyond this, telling the same fundamental story each season and adding layers and layers to its message without ever becoming stale or purposeless. In between the two episodes I described above, Kenny continuously learns the folly of his ways and then seemingly forgets those lessons almost immediately. He wanders to Mexico to pass the time and find his father and then ends up in Myrtle Beach trying desperately to salvage his career. And after achieving his dreams of returning to the big leagues he gives it all up and fakes his death to be with April. And sure, all this could be waved away as just the necessary shuffling required to maintain an ongoing television series. After all, the show (and the story) must go on.
But on the contrary, Kenny's constant reinvention reveals the true genius of the show. A lesser series might use Kenny's story as a parable about the righteous downfall of an entitled white man, but McBride and company never let things be that one-dimensional. Others still would paint this as a straightforward redemption arc, but Eastbound & Down resists the simplicity of such an approach. Kenny Powers may be a cartoon of a man and the arc of his story may bend towards his better angels, but both him and his journey are more complex than their premise may lead you to believe. Only through repeatedly painful lessons, meticulous self-discovery, and incremental change is Kenny able to become the man we see in the finale. All of this gives us a lot to digest about what it really means to be Kenny Fucking Powers.
The Protagonist of The Story
The common tenet of the Hill/McBride creative universe, from the film Observe and Report to the currently-airing series The Righteous Gemstones, is that the central characters view themselves by default as the sole protagonist of their worlds. This tendency is most obvious in Eastbound & Down as Kenny is literally narrating his life story throughout the series (more on this later). The show clearly takes him to task for this extreme myopia as the conclusion of each seasons' second act leaves him abandoned and alone (take for example his sparsely-attended July 4th party in Myrtle Beach).
To its credit, Eastbound & Down digs deeper and avoids relatively simplistic moralizing. Rather, the show demonstrates how this narrow worldview limits Kenny's own personal growth, irrespective of his relationship with others. When Kenny first faces adversity in the first season, he knows nothing other than trying to be the greatest ("I had no choice when it came to being great, I just am great"). So his only available response to hardship is to do the opposite of what he was doing, which means he shuns his idea of greatness and (temporarily) quits baseball. Later, when Kenny reconnects with his father (played with the appropriate amount of sleaze by Don Johnson) he is unable to comprehend that his failures are the necessary result of living a life with no regrets. "It's time I take my dad's advice," Kenny says with almost no self-awareness "stop thinking about other people and start thinking about me for once." When Kenny returns to the states and faces a challenge for playing time in Myrtle Beach, he confesses that his "whole reign of power is being challenged," and that he's "never been nervous before." And when he's separated from his family near the end of the series he justifies his choices by ignoring the past entirely. "A real man knows there's only one way to face, and that's forward."
What this conveys is that for all his considerable strengths, Kenny has the emotional cognizance of a child. This comes not from any functional deficiency but from a moral imagination so limited as to be inhibiting. And so Kenny repeatedly finds himself isolated not simply because he's an asshole but because his own image and self-worth are inexorably tied to a mindset that isn't compatible with real human connection. Through this lens Kenny is an almost tragic figure; an Alexander constantly conquering but feeling nothing.
Winning is Everything
"They say greatness comes at a cost. If you want to achieve legendary status, you must make certain sacrifices. The demands of others often conflict with the demands of an exceptional life. Is it even possible to reconcile the needs of others with the need to win, when winning often means defeating your rivals at any cost? Suppose it remains to be seen, but there is one simple truth you can always rely on in this fucked-up world: Victory is its own reward."
This portrayal of Kenny's self-centeredness comes with a good deal of nuance. His obsession with himself is routinely conveyed in obvious manners and yet it rarely causes problems in and of itself. This allows us to enjoy some guilt-free laughs, but it also helps to show that the harm Kenny heaps on others comes from something a little different: His need to defeat those in his way in order to achieve happiness. And while this zero-sum mentality is clearly not unique to Kenny, the series makes it clear that the main contributor to this is his life as a ballplayer, where the black and white truth of winning and losing papers over shades of grey.
As you might guess, this attitude is reflected throughout the series. When he enjoys success on his Mexican team he uses it to justify his mistakes. "Did this tale end the way I thought it would? Probably not, but as long as I win who gives a shit" he says ignorant of the friends and family he left behind. When he needs inspiration he often turns to Stevie who uses the same motif for inspiration. Kenny "always emerges victorious" and so he should continue on. "They say to the victor goes the spoils," Stevie continues in the final season, "we conquered the universe so where are our spoils?" And in the final season this is made most explicit as he has to drive several co-stars from the Guy Young show (including eventually, Guy Young himself) in order to achieve his goals. Throughout this all, the drive to win is used to paper over other concerns and calcify Kenny's resolve against his better angels. In this light, his selfishness can actually be seen as a by-product of the inherent need to emerge victorious against your foes, whether they be real or imagined.
The show refutes this ethos subtly but powerfully. Take the monologue at the start of this section, which ends with the visual of Kenny on a lake, hovering above it with his new water-jet-pack. It's an exorbitant marker of status symbolizing his ascension to fame and fortune. But whereas past escapades on the lake found Kenny celebrating with others, he's now alone and sullen. As usual he's won but at the cost of ever being able to enjoy that victory. And so when he says "victory is its own reward" he's clearly lying to himself because it's the only thing he can say to justify what he's done. This can't be the victory Kenny is looking for. For that, he'll have to look outward.
Heaven is Other People
Because Kenny is necessarily the center of the story, the other characters in Eastbound & Down are not so much their own distinct entities as they are people sucked into Kenny's orbit. Of course, not everyone's gravitational pull is the same. For the people that Kenny treats as lesser than him, he exhibits little respect. He routinely abuses his brother's hospitality. He spends all of Stevie's money and subjects him to near-ritual abuse. And he so often gives the finger (literally and figuratively) to the fans that it is literally his trademark.
At the same time, Kenny is dependent on these same people to provide him with the validation he requires to perform. When the fans of his Mexican team are initially lukewarm to his antics, he explains away his under-performance by saying "if I don't have the love I don't have shit." Similarly, he doesn't get his pitch back in the first season until April shows up to cheer him on. He later sloppily tries to recreate the same dynamic with his college-aged girlfriend in Myrtle Beach to much less avail. The recurrence of this theme betrays that Kenny knows deep down that he needs others to be his best self, but his masculine pride and self-image interfere with any self-actualization.
A similar irony defines Kenny's interactions with the powerful, albeit with a predictably reversed dynamic. When his goals are aligned with the people pulling the strings (think Will Ferrell as the dealership tyrant Ashley Schaffer or Michael Peña as the owner of Kenny's Mexican team), everyone is happy. But when their demands don't align with Kenny's self-image, he's more than likely to blow everything up. When Kenny doesn't want to throw pitches as part of a promotion for Ashley the stated reason is his lack of confidence but he later justifies it by saying "I made a promise to myself and I'm not going to break it for capitalism." This same story plays out in the final season when he happily joins Guy Young's TV show when it suits him and then eventually works to defeat Guy once he challenges Kenny's desire to conquer.
What all this dissonance helps to establish is that Kenny is not some unthinking monster. Instead, he has developed an inherent understanding of power dynamics that he uses to further his cause, for better or worse. In spite of his boorishness and his cavalier attitude towards the needs of others, Kenny can still comprehend the meaning and importance of his relationship with others. And thus his character development in each season isn't simply him learning about this co-dependency. Instead it's that he grows by making the conscious decision to forsake his previous ways, abandon his power, and be supportive of those in his life.
The Story You Tell Yourself
For as consistently good as the series is, its ending is probably the best part. That this is true in spite of an odd closing that is more disorienting and confusing than anything is even more remarkable. Like many series, Eastbound & Down flashes forward to see how future events play out. Or at least it appears to do that. Among other things, April's tragic death and Kenny's new life in Africa (?) give the feel of an escalating tall tale that's too much for even this show, and indeed that is the case. After the fantasy concludes we zip back to reality where Kenny is putting the finishing touches on his life story, projecting out the future with a flair for the dramatic. He's been writing his autobiography since before we even met him but in this moment it feels like he's finally done, content with his life and the choices he's made.
The way the ending of Kenny's story differs from his prior versions reflects precisely how he's changed. The stories from the first season and from Mexico clearly reflect dominion over others as his solitary goal. After settling down as a family man, his rough draft at the start of the final season reads "In the end Kenny Powers didn't get what he wanted, but he got what needed. He didn't win baseball but he won life." These words show progress in that they evoke a sense of contentedness, but it still rings hollow. It's centered on Kenny's wants and needs and still uses the language of winning and losing. This is the old Kenny that was short on wisdom and was barely masking his seething rage. The Kenny of the finale has moved past that, largely by looking outside himself and focusing on the future. He begins his closing thoughts with "If you don't have a dream the soul begins to die. So if you've accomplished your dreams the best thing to do is to come up with new dreams" and then ends his story with fulfillment at the thought of the "seeds" he's put out into world. Kenny has not only accepted his life as a family man but has embraced it, and as such he orients the tale of the rest of his life around this new conception of himself.
But even though the changes in Kenny's story accurately reflect his personal development, what's most revealing is that he's telling his own story in the first place. The entire motif of Kenny's narration throughout the series stealthily serves as the show's central parable about the true power a man wields over his life. Yes, Kenny becomes wizened enough to understand that only through growth and change will be gain the fulfillment he's been searching for, but it's only because he can tell himself an all-encompassing and self-affirming story about it that he's able to follow through. Shaping these truths that appear self-evident to the viewer through his own personal narrative is how Kenny reckons with his life. And even though we may think of ourselves as morally superior to Kenny, it's only through this story that we fully gain understanding of his character. And so we circle back to the show's rejection of its seemingly simple premise, which we now understand to be the whole point. Eastbound & Down is both Kenny's gift to himself and to us.
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