Floppy-haired, broken-nosed Owen Wilson plays Pryce Cahill, a former champion golfer \u2014 a legend, even \u2014 whose life fell apart after a family tragedy and whose career dissolved after an on-course meltdown, televised live. Upselling golf clubs in a pro shop and running bar scams with his grumbling old caddy, Mitts (Marc Maron<\/a>), he lives among accumulating garbage in the house he shared with his exasperated but caring ex-wife Amber-Linn (Judy Greer) and refuses to vacate, drinking beer, smoking pot and eating Lucky Charms out of the box. (\u201cThey\u2019re his favorite,\u201d Mitts will later say, \u201cbecause he\u2019s a child.\u201d) The dented yellow sports car he drives, a remnant of his former success, is spotted with Bondo. \u201cStick\u201d is Pryce\u2019s nickname but \u201cStuck\u201d would have worked for a title as well.<\/p>\n One day, while giving a lesson on a local course, he hears a sound that makes him turn, and discovers 17-year-old Santi Wheeler (Peter Dager), driving balls with great power and accuracy, and starts asking questions. Santi takes him for a kook \u2014 \u201cAren\u2019t younger people supposed to annoy older people, not the other way around?\u201d \u2014 especially when Pryce, who sees \u201cthe chance to leave something behind other than a YouTube clip of the worst day of my life,\u201d turns up at the grocery where he works, offering to help him become great. (He is already almost supernaturally phenomenal, but raw.)<\/p>\n Though Santi likes to hit, perhaps just to blow off steam, he has become alienated from the game and resistant to advice \u2014 for reasons we will learn, besides the usual teenage anomie. But encouraged by his mother, Elena (Mariana Trevi\u00f1o, wonderful), he begins to warm to the idea, and so the stage is set for a journey that will take them through a series of tournaments on the way to the big U.S. Amateur match and Pryce\u2019s much foreshadowed reunion with his old nemesis Clark Ross (Timothy Olyphant, handsome and slick), as close as the series\u2019 comes to a villain, but, in the genial spirit of the show, not really very villainous at all.<\/p>\n Along for the ride with Santi (Peter Dager), left, are his mother Elena (Mariana Trevi\u00f1o) and Mitts (Marc Maron), Pryce\u2019s friend and former caddy.<\/p>\n (Apple)<\/p>\n After a sequence of hurdles, deals and pleas that occupy the first two of 10 episodes, Pryce, Santi, Elena (and her three small dogs) and Mitts, hit the road in Mitts\u2019 Winnebago, in which he had planned to visit all the national parks with his late wife, and about which he is emotionally particular. Soon they\u2019ll pick up a fifth companion, Zero (Lilli Kay), a young person of no fixed address or gender, whom Santi, angry with Pryce, encounters at a ripe moment, just after Zero, who styles her pronouns \u201cshe\/they,\u201d has quit her job as a clubhouse bartender. \u201cSounds like he\u2019s exploiting you,\u201d Zero says, \u201cmaking you jump through his hoops for his own ego and personal gain \u2026 It\u2019s what these capitalists do.\u201d But though she\/they begins as a caricature of knee-jerk youthful overreaction and general mistrust of the olds, Zero will join the team.<\/p>\n It is something of a generation gap comedy. (The creator, Jason Keller<\/a>, who wrote \u201cFord v. Ferrari,\u201d is 56, for what that\u2019s worth.) Young viewers, assuming they come, may find themselves poorly represented; older ones might find it speaks to their own thoughts about kids these days. But the gaps are there to be bridged, just as the walls are made to come down. There is perhaps a bit too much storming off, which I put down in part to the length of the series and the need to create and resolve crises and make feelings felt. On the other hand, \u201cStick\u201d stays more than usually focused \u2014 there are no subplots \u2014 which gives the dialogue room to breathe; we learn things incidentally rather than by having them presented as bullet points.<\/p>\n As in all good sports stories \u2014 all good stories, perhaps \u2014 the heroes are underdogs; winners only being really interesting if they were losers first, and there are elements in \u201cStick\u201d of perhaps the two greatest narrative templates of the 20th century \u2014 the most used, anyway \u2014 \u201cThe Wizard of Oz\u201d and \u201cThe Bad News Bears.\u201d (The first two episodes are directed by Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton, whose \u201cLittle Miss Sunshine\u201d<\/a> is another tale of underdogs on the road.) Because of the sort of show this is, there are a few things that are obviously going to happen \u2014 that you want to happen \u2014 although the series will keep you unsure on the way to their happening. But unpredictability is not the point. What matters is that the characters are more individuals than types, that they remain consistent, and that their reactions and interactions are, one might say, chemically valid. And \u201cStick\u201d works beautifully in that regard.<\/p>\n The series rides on a host of wonderful performances. Wilson, whom the role fits so well he might have been measured for it, has a gift for playing eccentric regular guys and adolescent adults, and mixing, almost superimposing, sadness and happiness. (\u201cI look in the mirror, I would not bet on that guy,\u201d he says, but he\u2019s an optimist despite it all.) Maron, the William Demarest<\/a> of the piece (Preston Sturges fans), gets a lot of subtlety into his grumblings; as the most open of the characters, Trevi\u00f1o does great expressive things with her hands and eyes. Dager and Kay smoothly navigate the ups and downs and sharp turns of their characters.<\/p>\n There are enough loose threads to suggest a second season was on Keller\u2019s mind from the beginning \u2014 well, that\u2019s TV, isn\u2019t it? \u2014 but should that not come to pass, the arc this season completes is perfectly satisfying; not every open question needs to be answered, and my affection for the characters is such that I fear the troubles a second season will necessarily cook up for them. I\u2019ll watch it, though!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cStick,\u201d premiering Wednesday on Apple TV+, is a sweet, lovely, funny show \u2014 a sports story, a road…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17720,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3029],"tags":[2265,7368,44,7369,3152,7374,7367,3154,7372,7366,3212,7373,6106,7371,3151,7370],"class_list":["post-17719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wilson-golf","tag-day","tag-funny-show","tag-golf","tag-mitts","tag-owen-wilson","tag-peter-dager","tag-principal-character","tag-pryce-cahill","tag-road-movie","tag-santi-wheeler","tag-series","tag-sport-story","tag-stick","tag-way","tag-wilson-golf","tag-zero"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17719\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Four](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1780910306_411_.jpeg\")
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