Eastbound & Down: The Complete First Season

Stepping up to the plate in this six-episode HBO series from 2009, comedy's newest It Boy, Danny McBride (The Foot Fist Way, Pineapple Express, Tropic Thunder, Land of the Lost), stars as Kenny Powers, a former baseball phenom who, after spending his millions and burning all bridges, returns to his hometown middle school to teach physical education. The delusional Powers insists that he will return to the majors, but meanwhile makes a play for his former high school flame (Katy Mixon), now an art teacher engaged to the boring, by-the-book principal (Andrew Daly). Powers runs roughshod over his brother and his disapproving sister-in-law (John Hawkes and Jennifer Irwin), who allow him to live with them and their children, and he lures the nerdy band teacher who idolizes him to the dark side. Eastbound & Down has an extremely vulgar sense of humor—the foul-mouthed, substance-abusing Powers makes Billy Bob Thornton's Bad Santa look like Edmund Gwenn in Miracle on 34th Street. When one of his students repeats his father's claim that Powers ruined baseball, Powers tells the class, “Anybody want to pick on anybody in class, aim for him, because I ain't watching.” Eastbound & Down benefits from some big-league talent: Will Ferrell, who helped get The Foot Fist Way into theaters, appears as a car salesman who wants to exploit Powers' celebrity—what's left of it—with predictably disastrous results. Also, various episodes are directed by Jody Hill (Observe and Report), David Gordon Green (Pineapple Express), and Adam McKay (Talladega Nights, Anchorman). While there have been other obnoxious characters on television, Kenny Powers is in a league of his own, but McBride imbues his unsympathetic loser with an uncompromised integrity that is oddly admirable. DVD extras include audio commentary, a “making-of” featurette, deleted scenes, and outtakes. Optional. (D. Liebenson)