In the fall of 2017, a question was on the lips of every Netflix subscriber: “Who’s got dicks?”
A work of fiction about a high school student who spray-painted 27 crystals on a car in the faculty parking lot, American saboteur Season 1 became an instant craze. Not only are there endless possibilities, but they’ve sold a series of fun teen movies, or even Jimmy Tatro’s sublime performance as a stopper. That’s the direct conviction of both the cast and the script — a quality that lasts through American saboteur Season 2 and now continues with the new collaboration of co-creators Dan Perrault and Tony Yacenda, the eSports fantasy series Player.
While the worlds of competitive esports and League of Legends tournaments may seem a bit niche, Perrault and Yacenda’s approach to this 10-episode series is rooted in a surprisingly complex humanity. their nature (albeit often rebellious).
Premieres Thursday on Paramount+, Player introduces us to a weary and vibrant twerp e-sports icon called “Creamcheese” —née “Nutmilk”—their teams are on the verge of disbandment. Further threatening Creamcheese’s fragile ego? His manager has just added a new player to the roster – a 17-year-old whose legacy threatens to overshadow his own.
Player share a fair amount of DNA with American Destroyer one and two; all three seasons offer face-to-face, nuanced explorations of completely absurd topics. First Banksy in the parking lot, then Turd Burglar, and now we have Creamcheese — John McEnroe of freemium, whose gaming team, Fugitive, is starting to think they’d be better off without him. ta.
As Creamcheese, Misha Brooks becomes the perfect toxic bookworm. A master of the quiet seethe, every secret glance and twitch of his finger radiated quiet fury. Da’Jour Jones, meanwhile, makes the perfect stoic, youthful shield for that messy energy. At one point, he unleashes every hit of a game that feels almost anime-like at stoic intensity — like L squared with Light in Book Death.
Alike American saboteur Season 2, Player never quite matched the original glory of graffiti artist Dylan Maxwell. Even at 10 half-hour episodes, the Paramount+ series started to thin out as the episodes started to blend together. However, the program causes an itch similar to Silicon Valley—Another series that only knows how to skewer some kind of tech character.
The laughs on this show aren’t exclusive to those of us with our own Twitch channels. (Are they called channels? Consider my endorsement of this proof that even the newest noobs will find something to appreciate.) Player find a new side of this culture for skewering — like the guy on the internet that said hot sauce photography was somehow a symbol of toughness. Obviously these guys aren’t Frank’s job; they only consume extreme sauces because they are serious about their masculinity.
And yes, before you ask — there To be one South Park-like a sequence in which the player becomes so engrossed in his game that he starts urinating in the jar.
“And yes, before you ask — there’s a point like South Park, where a player becomes so engrossed in his game that he starts peeing in a jar.”
For years, League of Legends tournaments were Creamcheese’s paradise. But Organim’s arrival on the team — and his threat that Creamcheese would forever be remembered as “the one who trained me” — plunged the insecure veteran into a special kind of solipsistic suffering. At one point, we witness him trying to light the fire pit at the Fugitive hype house so he can burn his team’s t-shirt.
To be fair, Creamcheese’s emotional spiral is deeper than just an ego ride—at least a little bit. After all, he started this team as a teenager getting kicked out by his parents because they didn’t knowledge his desire to play esports professionally. Its name, “Fugitive”, comes from his parents’ decision to call the police on him after he broke into their home to get his keyboard back. As silly as it might be (it seems), the Fugitives are Creamcheese’s family – a fact that makes their business conflicts all the more dysfunctional.
In spite of Player never quite matches the “who broke” possibility, it is packed with lines that appear to have been engineered in a lab to break ribs. I dare you: Try not to laugh when Creamcheese inadvertently shouts witty statements like “I’ve been building this team since I was Nutmilk!” His character doesn’t have Dylan Maxwell, but I’ll give Misha Brooks this: Just because Thomas Middleditch’s Richard Hendricks has a TV junkie is this despicable.
