We're All Fruits!
A review of Amazon Prime's 'A League of Their Own'
The Yearning Rating: ✰✰✰½
Remember that “patented” rating system we told you about? Well, here she is for the first time in all her glory:
Romance ✰✰✰
Sex ✰✰½
Storytelling ✰✰✰✰
Performance ✰✰✰
Yearning ✰✰✰✰✰
This review contains spoilers. You can watch ALOTO here if you haven’t already (not judgy).
Written by Ali Romig
In the midst of a summer that saw a record-breaking1 number of sapphic shows cancelled, the gay gods and butch angels smiled down on us with the mid-August premier of Amazon Prime’s A League of Their Own. Not only was ALOTO–helmed by Broad City alum (and my own personal dream girl) Abbi Jacobson and Will Graham–gay enough to single-handedly save the summer, it is also one of the top-to-bottom queerest pieces of television I’ve seen.
When I say that, I don’t just mean that there’s a lot of furtive kissing and clandestine hand-holding (although there is plenty of that), but that the central storylines in this show–even the ones unrelated to romance–feel undeniably queer. An entire queer ecosystem lives here–the queer love stories are thoughtfully rendered, with just as much care given to queer friendships, relationships between queer family members, and–maybe most refreshingly–the often restorative relationship a queer person has with themself.
Set in 1943, ALOTO follows two women with dreams of playing professional baseball, Jacobson’s Carson and Max (Chanté Adams), who’s stories unfurl beside each other but intersect sparingly. I’ve seen some reviewers lamenting the show’s bifurcated style, saying it made the narrative disjointed and overly-long, but I personally felt it was appropriate. Max, the only daughter of a god-fearing, Black female entrepreneur, and Carson, a white woman with a baby-faced husband stationed overseas, don’t experience the world in the same way. I appreciate that the writers didn’t choose to do what so many other period pieces have done: force the two worlds together so that the main message becomes “looking across the aisle.” I, for one, don't need to see Carson gatecrash Max’s world, or Max be forced to acquiesce to Carson’s to gain access to a whitewashed version of what it is she really wants–not that they’d give it to her anyway.
Instead of perpetuating a certain brand of misguided nostalgia, the show gives each character a full, lived-in world to occupy, making sure that neither is viewed from the perspective of the other. Both stories have room to breathe–and both stories are extremely gay.
Carson and Max’s queer journeys closely mirror their own respective experiences with baseball. Here, I have to pause and say that while I did find the repeated metaphor of baseball-as-queer-idenity a bit heavy-handed, it never hindered my enjoyment of the show as a whole. Outside of a few eye-rolls, my gaze remained firmly on the screen.
Carson’s journey is one of discovery–equal parts enthusiasm and self-doubt. Up until this point, she’d accepted the life she was taught to want, living, not unhappily, with her childhood-best-friend-turned-husband, Charlie. I really love this detail, that Carson does deeply love her husband, even if not romantically, and that he is essentially decent. Too often we are fed stories of women who find themselves in the arms of other women because they are trying to escape a vile or neglectful man, as if the only reason to seek out a sapphic relationship is as an antidote to toxic masculinity. But as we watch Carson run to catch the train to the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League tryouts in the pilot, we understand she is not running away from something, she is eagerly–desperately–running towards something.
Jacobson as Carson wears an expression of equal parts wide-eyed wonder and alarm as she realizes for the first time that there are other ways of living. When she walks onto the baseball field for tryouts, an airy medley plays behind her, giving the effect of having stepped into a dream. “I didn’t know this many girls played ball,” Carson says to Greta (portrayed by the absolutely divine D’Arcy Carden). “How could ya,” Greta answers knowingly, the personification of a wink. It isn’t long before Carson is wearing the same awe-struck expression into her first gay bar.
As a player for the Rockford Peaches, and later as a coach, Carson struggles to find her footing, oscillating between worrying she’s not good enough and leading with overzealous authority–even steamrolling the momentum of other would-be leaders, like pitcher Lupe (a smooth Roberta Colindrez). Similarly, as she embarks on a secret romance with Greta, she ping-pongs between giving into her internalized fear and wanting too much from the other woman, too fast. I don’t believe in a universal queer experience, but watching Carson navigate things with Greta felt like being shown a picture of myself from middle school–recognition, then embarrassment. Like Carson, I remember my first queer relationship as a time of hiccup-inducing giddiness and debilitating insecurity (sprinkled in with a lot of making out in inappropriate places). But through it all, I felt so much more myself–like I was ripping away the parts of me that were really other people, collected over the years, and finally, deliciously, discovering what was underneath.
When we see Carson running to catch the train, jumping over fences and ruining her dress, we understand that she’s determined, at least in this moment, to change her life. We’ve so internalized the idea of queerness as affliction that the thought of someone actively choosing it–seeing it as a positive choice, even–still feels like a revelation. I revel in watching someone’s awakening portrayed this way, with so much reckless joy—and not the kind of rainbows-and-sunshine joy that glosses over anything complicated. But an authentic joy that acknowledges the messiness and says, “I would still pick this, every time.” It harkens back to the ending of But I’m a Cheerleader, which might not be a coincidence–the first three episodes were directed by Jamie Babbitt, who made her directorial debut with that film. At the end of the pilot, Carson admits she feels like she’s blowing up her entire life, but that it feels good. To me, that sounds like the musings of many-a baby gay.
Max, on the other hand, doesn’t hem and haw about blowing up her entire life. She’s looking for dynamite. The problem is, no one will give it to her.
An undeniably skilled pitcher, she desperately tries to find a baseball team to accept her, but she is turned away at every step–for being Black, for being a girl, or for both. She knows she’s a great baseball player, but no one cares. She also knows she loves women. And we, the audience, know it too. We see it plain as day as she carries on a hot affair with a married woman, ignores the advances of pretty much any man who looks at her (oof, Gary), and confidently flirts with women at secret gay living room dance parties.
For Max, the question of what she wants is never a question. Baseball and women. Once again I found myself refreshed, watching a queer story that moves beyond discovering queerness. Her journey isn’t so much about discovery as it is about holding on to her hard-won sense of self in a world that isn’t just discouraging but downright inhospitable.
Max is surrounded by people who love her, but who don’t really know her. Her mother Toni, the iron-fisted owner of a hair salon, is adamant that Max will inherit the business someday. She showers Max in pressure as if it were love, desperate for her to be the daughter she’s imagined for herself. Even Max’s nerdy, comic-loving best friend, Clance (the absolutely brilliant Gbemisola Ikumelo), despite being supportive of her baseball dreams, can’t understand why Max doesn’t also dream of getting married and having children. Max and Clance’s friendship is one of the most lived-in relationships on the show–they have jokes, an obviously shared history, and grounded, dedicated love for one another. Which makes the fact that Clance almost gets it even more heartbreaking. When the person who is supposed to know you best can’t see you in your entirety, you start to wonder if you’re the one who’s wrong.
Max’s isolation has made her fierce, but underneath that fierceness is exasperation. Adams often portrays Max with raised shoulders–the tension between the life she’s living and the life she wants evident in even her posture. The only time we see her relaxed in the first half of the season is when she’s about to wind-up for a pitch. Perhaps that is why it is so rewarding for the viewer when she finally meets her Uncle Bertie (an impeccably dressed Lea Robinson), Toni’s estranged sibling who’s living his best gender nonconforming life. In Bertie, Max doesn’t find a mirror, but she does find a pair of eyes willing to see her for who she is. Someone who finally gives her the strength to demand others see it too.
There are a million differences between Carson and Max’s journeys, but one important through line is their desire to exist outside of other people’s expectations. Both inside and outside of their queer communities, molds are being cast upon them. Whether or not it’s to do with expressed femininity or the typical butch and femme queer relational roleplaying of the time, they are both striving to carve out their own me-shaped spaces. It's a testament to the writing of ALOTO that we get not just queer representation but thoughtful, thorough representation of individuality within queerness. This viewer found relief in the reminder that queerness can be boiled down to this one pursuit: do what you want.
Small, stolen moments between Max and Carson are really the only instances where the two narratives converge, especially in the second half of the season. When they do meet up, it’s on an empty practice field at night, or in an empty locker room. Having their interactions occur in liminal spaces like this is certainly intentional–in order for their connection to feel genuine, it has to be nurtured in a place where they are able to show up as equals.
The show’s anachronistic approach may seem risky given the content, but on the whole I was impressed with the way it manages to be (one more time!) so gay2 and not feel overly rose-colored in its storytelling. Certain things are definitely played off for humor, like Shirley’s homophobia. But honestly, it was refreshing to see the one aggressively straight character be the butt of the jokes, when in the past that’s oft been the Token Gay’s role. (Shirley, it must be said, is played by the undeniable Kate Berlant. I could dedicate an entire post to her faultless line readings.)
The show strikes this delicate balance by keeping the emphasis on community. We know that, for as long as we’ve had the ability to communicate our desires, queer people have been finding and protecting each other–this isn’t the first piece of media to reflect that reality, but it does it so well. Modern jokes and music allow us into this community, so that when they win, we see our own triumph, and when they fall, we recognize our own hurt. In one particularly beautiful sequence from episode six, “Stealing Home,” shots of Carson and Greta dancing at an underground bar are interspersed with shots of Max dancing with a new crush in her Uncle’s living room. Both pairs have eyes for only each other, the music swells–when suddenly Carson’s safe haven is infiltrated by a raid. Meanwhile, Max continues dancing, laughing, kissing. Gay pain and joy are given the space to co-exist on screen, intertwining in ways both poignant and uncomfortable.
Okay, here, buried in the second to last paragraph of my review, I must make a confession. This may disqualify me as a reviewer of queer media, but I have never seen Penny Marshall’s original 1992 film (gay gasp!). But ultimately I speak my truth so that you know I’ve been reviewing this iteration not as a reboot or remake, but as a piece of art in and of itself. And I do believe it stands completely on its own.
When A League of Their Own came out this summer, it felt like the answer to our prayers, the sapphic show to break the streak of cancellations. But that was over a month ago, and as of my writing this, its fate has yet to be revealed. At the end of the pilot, a voice comes over the loudspeaker to kick off the Peaches’ first game: “Women are swinging the bat in the All-American girl’s league, but the question remains, will anyone come to watch?”
We’re watching, but is that enough?
A Nod to Our Fallen Mothers
Sapphic shows cancelled in 2022
Batwoman (2019-2022)
First Kill (2022)
Gentleman Jack (2019-2022)
The Wilds (2020-2022)
Work in Progress (2019-2022)
Legacies (2018-2022)
Paper Girls (2022)
If you enjoyed this review, have thoughts, or would like to join us in eulogizing any queer shows (sapphic or otherwise) that have been put to rest, please feel free to do so in the comments.
Next week on The Yearning, Meg & Ali will tag team the movie that’s (finally) brought Sarah Michelle Gellar back onto our screens, Netflix’s Do Revenge.
I have absolutely no evidence to support my use of the word “record-breaking,” BUT many of the shows that were nixed were personally important to me, making their cancellations catastrophic.
I mean seriously. At one point, Jess, a Peach, posits that the league is probably 35% queer–but based on this show, I’d say that number lowballs it by about 64%.
this review (and show) made me love my queerness more <3 requesting a d'arcy and kate fan page
hot show hot review !!!