An Emotional Players Finale Solidified It as One of the Year’s Most Surprising Series
The show made me care deeply about fictional kids playing a game I had no context for.
Photo Courtesy of Paramount+
Players might be the most surprising series of the year. Armed with only a vague knowledge that esports exist and having never played League of Legends, I started watching the Paramount+ series (which comes from American Vandal’s Dan Perrault and Tony Yacenda) after reading Shane Ryan’s effusive review. What I expected was a tongue-in-cheek mockumentary. What I got was a truly captivating and heartfelt sports story.
The show’s 10-episode season initially concluded where we expected it would, with Team Fugitive completing their run for the national championship after an early setback threatened to derail them. And that’s all I really asked of it, to finish out this story of Creamcheese learning to be support, not the hero, and for Organizm to embrace working with a team instead of seeking solo glory. Some of that came to pass, but what happened after was completely unexpected.
One of the things that surprised me from the start about Players was how genuinely earnest it was. Perrault and Yacenda weren’t making fun of this fandom or the extreme players who devote their lives to gaming. It was a loving exploration of a massively successful franchise that has spawned world events and legions of devotees. Even though I knew there was another level to the show that I wasn’t able to understand having never played League, Players was always accessible (and funny) in the way it drew these familiar sports doc personalities together and put them in a less familiar setting (for most of us): esports. It took me seven episodes to realize that “bot lane” meant “bottom lane,” and I still have absolutely no idea what a wombo combo is. But after the finale, I think Yuumi might also be one of my favorite cat stories.
The heart embedded in Players is what really made it stand apart and be so incredibly compelling. So much TV in this era of endless content just washes over you. But here I was reacting physically to the episodes. Nervous over the way Fugitive was playing. Reviled by Guru and NeverLost. Excited when Creamcheese and Organizm found their groove. Near tears when Creamcheese had his breakdown. Literally fist-pumping when he later made Foresite his bitch.
It would be easy to mine humor from these young, obnoxious personalities in gaming whose voices are augmented by even younger fans who mistakenly see them and their fame as a path to emulate. It’s much harder to find the pathos. But that’s what Players did. Nightfall, Bap, Braxton, Amy, and (the oft-forgot) Tyrant are all easy to like and root for. Creamcheese and Organizm are not. And yet, at each turn when either could have been painted as a villain or left to simply be a common douchebag, we saw something deeper, something true within them. It never absolved them or made excuses for how they acted, it just gave them wonderful, surprising dimension. And I wanted them to win.
I had predicted that, in the finale, it would be Organizm, finally embracing the team, who helped coax Cheese back on stage. It wasn’t, it was Braxton—which was also fitting. But the triumph of Fugitive’s LCS win and Creamcheese’s acceptance of his support role was short-lived. Not because they got routed at Worlds (which, I’ve learned, is not surprising), but because Organizm didn’t change. It would have been a cuddly ending to be sure, something expected of a sports doc that ends with the win after charting the struggle, showing how these disparate personalities came together to overcome their personal issues to succeed as a team.