Succession Meets Ted Lasso in Netflix’s Extremely Fun Basketball Comedy Running Point

“Gordons don’t lose.” This is the motto of the dysfunctional family at the center of the new Netflix comedy Running Point. The Gordons own an iconic Los Angeles NBA team—fictionalized as the Waves but inspired by the Lakers and their owner, Jeanie Buss—that was helmed for decades by a ruthless patriarch. Now that he’s dead, his four adult children, who all work for the franchise, must decide whether his old-school way of running the business needs a more humane update. That dilemma intensifies when eldest boy and franchise president Cam (Justin Theroux) gets in a drug-fueled car crash and hands over his office to his chronically marginalized and underestimated sister, Isla, played by the charming Kate Hudson.

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It sounds like Succession but for pro sports, and in some ways it is. Riddled with affluenza and competitive to a fault, the Gordons, like the Roys, were formatively deprived of that all-important kiss from Daddy. But, unlike too many recent family dramas, Running Point is not trying to be Succession. It’s a true comedy, from a team of executive producers that includes Mindy Kaling, her Mindy Project co-star Ike Barinholtz, and Buss. And it shares just as much DNA with Ted Lasso, if that fish-out-of-water sports sitcom had spotlighted Hannah Waddingham’s green AFC Richmond owner instead of Jason Sudeikis’ folksy coach. The juxtaposition of damaged characters and lighthearted tone works surprisingly well, saving the show from erring into either self-importance or saccharine—and yielding Kaling’s first consistently good series for adults.

Running Point starts with one of the streaming era’s strongest comedy casts. Hudson is never less than lovable as a woman who has always adored and understood basketball but whose interest in the Waves was ignored by her sexist dad. After a very public rough patch that included her brief marriage to 90210 alum Brian Austin Green, Cam hired Isla to oversee the team’s community outreach. The gig saved her from a downward spiral but also relegated her to the shadows, as her brothers basked in the sunlight of their windowed top-floor offices. The eccentric athlete of the family, Ness (The Righteous Gemstones’ Scott MacArthur) is the Waves’ general manager. Serving as straight man (who happens to be gay) to this kind oddball is the siblings’ youngest half-brother Sandy (Drew Tarver from The Other Two), the all-business CFO. 

Kaling & Co. populate the Gordons’ world with an equally well-balanced cast of supporting characters. Brenda Song is a force of high-energy competence as Isla’s right-hand woman, though some independent storylines would help her escape an under-developed sidekick role should the show get a second season. A panicked rookie (Uche Agada), a loose cannon (Chet Hanks, very funny), and an aging, talented but checked-out superstar (Toby Sandeman, in a role that bears more than a passing resemblance to Brett Goldstein’s Ted Lasso character) comprise a representative sample of the players. It’s always nice to see Max Greenfield, even if he’s underused as Isla’s regular-guy pediatrician fiancé. Keeping him largely in the background does give Kaling the chance to slowly develop Hudson’s considerable chemistry with Insecure dreamboat Jay Ellis, who plays the Waves’ recently divorced, Buddhism-practicing coach.

Succession and Ted Lasso hinged on opposing worldviews that each show constantly reinforced. While the former derived its pessimism from observations about who sits atop real power hierarchies and the conviction that people can’t really change, the latter was an optimistic fantasy in which male athletes could be coached to become a supportive community because, actually, redemption is possible. Running Point is neither constrained (like Lasso) nor elevated (like Succession) by a guiding philosophy about wealth or masculinity or human nature. It’s not didactic. It won’t plunge you into a well of dark-comic angst. Nor does it make a big deal about Isla sitting at the president’s desk. This is a show that understands that the girlboss moment is long past. Isla may have been shaped by a society that would prefer to keep women out of sports arenas and boardrooms, but her successes and failures say more about her own skills, experience level, and tenacity than they do about women leaders writ large. How refreshing.

Running Point, like most successful comedies, gives us characters that draw on recognizable archetypes but come across as layered people. And it develops them gradually through relationships, inserting them into novel situations in unexpected combinations and allowing them to influence one another. Sandy’s resentful attitude towards his siblings makes more sense when he explains to a colleague, midway through the season: “Isla and Ness had to fail as human beings before they got their jobs. I had to get my MBA.” Because their personalities aren’t vehicles for a larger argument, the Gordons and their associates can surprise us. The result is a rarity on TV these days: a show that’s fun, dynamic, and likely to please multiple demographics without being broad or stupid.

It’s also the best show Kaling has made about grown-ups. The Mindy Project, a workplace rom-com that cast the creator as a single ob-gyn, had some great moments but was inconsistent enough to feel as dashed-off as its placeholder title. Her Four Weddings and a Funeral update, from 2019, fell disastrously flat. Kaling seemed to have found her niche with the release of two funny, horny, spirited teen comedies, Never Have I Ever and The Sex Lives of College Girls, in the 2020s. Yet there’s nothing inherently immature about her voice. She only needed to find a story suited to her love of sly pop-cultural references and slow-burn romances and big personalities. (A basketball franchise is just better suited than Mindy’s unbelievably zany medical practice to the larger-than-life characters she likes to write.) Running Point is that story, so here’s hoping Netflix gives Kaling the chance to take this proverbial ball and run with it. 

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