After watching Righteous Gemstones and Vice Principals, I obviously had to go back and finally watch the original Danny McBride HBO show. Here is how I rank the seasons.
4. Season 3: Single Father
Once again, the show did not allow itself to be stale. This season’s new direction was that Kenny got stuck being a single father this season while being back in the minor leagues for Major League Baseball. While the show was missing the feeling of innovation from the first two seasons and the shock of the tone of those two seasons, they overall managed to produce enough hilarity in fresh situations to make the whole thing work.
3. Season 1: Gym Teacher
I am not sure if I knew exactly what to expect from Eastbound. I had watched most of Gemstones and all of Vice Principals first so I felt pretty oriented to what McBride et co. brought to the table. I am delighted to report that after finally starting this show I discovered that it was far more “raw” than the follow-up shows. On one hand, that means it is less polished and less well-crafted and visually less impressive. But in far more important ways, this first season felt like it captured McBride’s tone in the most unfiltered manner possible. This is Danny McBride in your face and pushing boundaries and developing his onscreen persona. It is both hilarious and fascinating to watch unfold.
2. Season 2: Mexico
The most important aspect of this season is that Danny McBride et co. did not settle for merely rehashing virtually anything from the first season. They did not settle for just running it back but instead going off in a new direction. After season 1 ended with Kenny Powers running away from his responsibilities, season 2 literally see him spend the entire season in Mexico determined to avoid reverting back to the status quo. So many times a cliffhanger like season 1 ended on would have led to a brief sojourn at the start of the following season, but this show challenged itself to come up with new adventures and directions for Powers. The DNA of the show never changed, but its willingness to try new things within that tone is what kept it fresh. By successfully pulling this season off, Eastbound ensured it would always stay interesting throughout its run.
1. Season 4: “Felina”
In a show whose ethos was to never settle for easy choices, Eastbound lived up to that in their final season by essentially going full Breaking Bad mode. That is rather remarkable given that this final season was released only shortly after that show’s final season. But after season 3 ends on the heartwarming (at first glance) note of Kenny Powers finally eschewing fame and fortune for a family life with April and their kid(s), this final season had Kenny Powers become his worst and most unredeemable version of his self. The clue that things would not end happily ever after was in the season 3 finale when April pointed out in passing she and their son could have just joined Kenny in Texas as he continued his baseball career.
This sequence left Kenny briefly stunned in a blink-and-you-miss-it moment let the audience know this would all end in disaster for Kenny et co. And that is exactly what season 4 was until the “Felina”-style finale where the anti-hero protagonist goes full redemption mode to try to repair everything the best he can. Overall, it still makes for the best season of the show. It was a show that always pushed the limits of what could be acceptable for an awful human protagonist could do while still being positioned as the “hero” of the show. And no season did that as well as this final season. What a great show.
The Reel World 