Shorts Review: Sports Friends ‘Team Richie’

Spoilers Below

Today I’d like to talk to you all about bullying. As you may have heard, bullying is an epidemic that is sweeping the nation, according to a plethora of sensationalist news pieces that are published and aired on a daily basis. Like teen pregnancies, kidnapping, and mass shootings, most people believe bullying is on the rise – despite statistics that claim incidences of all these events are, in fact, falling. Of course these mistaken beliefs are actually due to the expansion of media reach and coverage over the last few decades, as well as the ever-increasing blurring of the line between information and entertainment. As the old adage says: “World in Danger!” sells newspapers, but “World A-OK!” does not. And as newer generations’ attention spans continue to dwindle, the need to create shocking headlines that grab audiences has unfortunately become more and more necessary in the opinion of networks. We can’t all just write about cartoons.

Though hard stats on the occurrence of bullying are difficult to formulate, the fact of the matter is that adults – in their constant quest to protect today’s children – are simply more afraid of bullies today than when they were kids. With all that fancy social media, kids can now be bullied around the clock, they claim. Of course, back before your iPhones and your MySpaceBook, youngsters were actually interacting in-person a hell of a lot more than they currently are, rendering the argument quite moot. Also, for some reason, today’s Americans hold a constant need to be victimized or offended in some way; so why miss out on this whole “children being bullied” fad just because you’re now middle-aged?

In the end, almost everyone was bullied in some way (as a young metalhead, I was frequently asked if I sacrificed animals, worshiped Satan, smoked crack, or cut myself) but almost everyone gets past it all. In reality, the problem is just that it seems so much worse when you’re grown-up and worrying about the little ones, as opposed to experiencing it first hand.

The solution to all this is not to create new laws against bullying (since it is already illegal to intimidate, threaten, or physically harm someone) but to teach kids that the opinions and words of complete morons should hold no weight at all in their minds. Because although “It gets better,” is a nice motto, bullies never actually go away – they just grow up and become reclassified as what we adults call “dicks” and “assholes.”

Sorry about that little rant. What was I going to talk about? Oh yeah: Sports Friends. This episode featured Mike Pouncey and Tyson Clabo (of the Miami Dolphins) sitting behind a table in their team’s clubhouse and trying to get their teammates to join “Team Richie” in support of Richie Incognito. The joke, if you’re familiar with the drama in Miami this year, is that Incognito was actually the aggressor in the bullying allegations, as illustrated by his indefinite suspension from the team.

This plotline is plausibly funny, but only with the right writing. In this case, the dialogue didn’t manage to save the episode, which fell flat – especially in comparison to some of the other recent Sports Friends episodes. It might be because threatening to physically harm a teammate and/or his family, and making racist remarks (which is what Incognito allegedly did) isn’t just bullying – it’s harassment, and just not that ripe for satire. Again, the right jokes could still make it work – as is the case with almost every subject – but that didn’t happen this time.