This is why we can’t have nice things. Ruxin stroked out. Kevin got everyone busted for redrawing the draft order, and Andre still doesn’t have an ICE. How can we save this season?
We all got a bit of a scare in the last episode. Could Ruxin be dead? Will his face really stick like that? And who takes over his team?
You’ll be delighted to know that he lived — at least long enough for Rafi to rack up several attempted murder charges.
In my view, killing Ruxin would be a step in the wrong direction, so I’m glad Rafi’s thinly veiled attempts to smother his brother-in-law were a complete failure. He probably made more progress in spitting game at the gruff nurse.
Of course, Rafi first ensured Ruxin’s legacy by procuring his sperm in the most humane way possible. That’s all a decent guy could ask, right?
While Rafi may have a special way of coping with his brother-in-law’s close encounter with death, the rest of the league is a little more level-headed. Only Taco, sensitive soul that he is, feels changed in ways he nor we fully understand by the “near-death” experience of being near Ruxin’s near-death experience.
But the rest of the league just needs to know who’s going to take over Ruxin’s team for his showdown with Pete in the Sacko Bowl. For that answer, they turn to Ruxin’s video will, carefully crafted by his own law firm. And it’s a piece fit for the message boards itself.
After dictating that his golf clubs should be sold on Craigslist or thrown away rather than given to any of his very disappointed friends, Ruxin goes on to torture them even further by confessing that he was the one to trash Pete’s favorite vinyl and that he never really understood what Kevin saw in Jenny.
One might have expected that to be the other way around. But then again, evil Ruxin has always been full of surprises.
Eventually (and maybe the stalling was all part of the game for him), Ruxin finally gets to the issue at hand. He leaves his team to Andre — a surprise option D for most odd makers — before finishing with a final, sounding “Suck It!”
So we can gather that, in the event of his death, Ruxin wanted to leave us all with a joke.
The anxiety of managing Ruxin’s team in the Sacko Bowl immediately starts to show on Andre, who tries to channel his own inner Ruxin around the gang by swilling vodka and offering to buy hotel rooms as if it will somehow empower him to run Ruxin’s team more effectively.
Couldn’t he just laugh maniacally and second-guess all his lineup decisions? Seems to work for Ruxin-everyone-calls-me-Ruxin himself.
But Andre’s job gets a little more difficult when Rafi discovers he’s been left out of the family fortune and demands they run the team together, as Rafi is the rightful next of kin. And Rafi’s knifey conversation style can be pretty convincing.
A visit to Ruxin provides them with only positive reinforcement…
But Jenny has better luck.
Knowing her husband, Kevin, is hopelessly dependent on this season counting to validate his abilities as a fantasy football addict and as a man (because of the bet Jenny and Kevin made), Jenny pays Ruxin a visit to beg him to allow this season to count.
Dressing as Sofia to bypass the nurses station (“That Puerto Rican slut is my husband’s mistress!”), Whore-Jenny meets with Ruxin and gets him to agree to allow the season to count as long as he doesn’t win the Sacko.
But the charity is not strong with the Pete one. He’s done his St. Pete duties. Now he’s just the old, mean Pete, unwilling to take a dive in the Sacko Bowl to save the season for Kevin’s championship because it would be too dangerous for him as the ruthless Sacko del Toro commissioner.
One ray of hope does emerge from this intervention with Pete in the form of Taco — who else? Finally making sense of the life-altering moment that was peeing on a post-stroke Ruxin, Taco donates his money to Matt Forte’s charity, Mercy Home for Boys and Girls. The donation warrants a visit from Forte to Ruxin’s bedside, which could motivate the fallen villain just enough to get him back on his game.
But Matt Forte’s official visit is hijacked by Andre, who’s sizing up Forte’s knee in order to properly set Ruxin’s lineup. Forte’s only real encouragement for a very excited Ruxin is a jersey and a slap of the football into Ruxin’s nuts. But I have to say Ruxin seemed to enjoy it, even through the post-stroke duckface.
As the Sacko Bowl showdown draws near, Ruxin learns how to use a mouth device to type and click the trackpad on his laptop, which allows him to make add/drops that confuse and upset both Andre and Rafi. Rafi just wants Bruce Banner on the team so The Incredible Hulk can win it all for his brother-in-law. Is that so much to ask?
It’s Shiva that finally comes to Ruxin’s rescue. While being wheeled out to see his own wife, eager to see him start walking so they can get him out of the hospital, Ruxin spots Dr. Shiva — the person, not the trophy — in the hallway.
The sight of her and the accompanying vision sends Ruxin stumbling down the hallway to exchange a sloppy, duckfaced kiss with the embodiment of the trophy he still owns, at least for now.
Much like kissing a frog, kissing Shiva cures Ruxin of all the effects of his stroke, and, instantly, he speaks clearly and walks without a limp.
Back at Kevin’s house, the Shiva Bowl is wholly uneventful. Taco blows off even watching the games because he wants Kevin to win anyway and has more important things to do, and the lackluster experience just takes the fun out of bringing home the trophy, at last, for Kevin.
What good is a trophy without a face to rub it in?
The Sacko Bowl ends up the same way. Against the combined powers of stroked Ruxin, Andre, and knifey-Rafi, Pete wins easily to doom Ruxin to a term as the Sacko and put the very legitimacy in the league in danger.
But the gig is up! It’s then that the invites to the funeral arrive.
It seems Taco, disgusted by his fantasy football league this season, has been plotting all along to put it down. So he’s prepared a viking funeral for all the league’s memorabilia, including the Sacko, the Shiva, Kegel the Elf, and Andre’s laptop (“This is where the evil all began”).
Rafi arrives in the Bobbum van just in time to deliver the dead — err, not so dead — body of Ruxin to the festivities.
But only the crazies (Do I have to say? Okay, Rafi and Taco) and Ruxin really want to see this season burn.
Kevin desperately wants the season to count so that he can finally put his name on the Shiva, but Ruxin is determined not to let that happen.
It’s at that touching moment, standing by a boat full of fantasy football memories and a torch-wielding Taco, that Jenny reveals the news: she’s pregnant. So whether or not Kevin wins the Shiva, at least he won the bet.
That seems to calm him down, but they have to fight over something, right?
Ready to do this thing, Taco and Kevin become locked in a struggle for who gets to light the funeral pyre. When Pete tries to intervene, he gets knocked to the ground right on top of the hot SACKO brand from Andre’s weekly forced steak ceremony, searing “SACKO” into Pete’s own flesh.
Appropriate for the Sacko del Toro commissioner, you might say.
While Pete’s tending to his damaged skin and pride, he distracts everyone just enough for Ruxin to light the boat on fire and Taco to kick it out into the water.
For a moment, it’s actually quite peaceful as they all watch the memories of three seasons of bickering, trash-talking and tomfoolery float away.
It was good times, wasn’t it? You were there…and you were there…
However, touching moments are for losers, not champions. Kevin can’t settle for that. So Kevin, not content to be just a father, dives in the water after his Shiva — Shiva blasting all the way.
Will he drown? Is his life in danger? And more importantly, will they recover the Shiva?!?
In any event, the credits roll, and once again, we’re without The League for a few months. I don’t always comment on the overall quality of the show as we go through it episode by episode. I prefer to keep these as recaps rather than reviews — I’m no TV critic — but I enjoyed Season 3 a bit more than I did Season 2 of The League. I think it found a bit of that spark that gave Season 1 so much hype without losing the depth and character they developed in Season 2.
I can’t wait to see what they put together next year. Oh, and yes, there will be a Season 4.
“We are thrilled to do more shows with a cast that makes us laugh hard everyday, on a network that actually lets us put those jokes on air,” the Schaffers, executive producers of ‘The League,’ said. “In the words of Taco: ‘The League’ on FX on Thursday nights is a law, like water or dinosaurs.”
Water or dinosaurs indeed.
What do you want to see out of The League in Season 4? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below.
Memorable quotes from Episode 13:
RAFI: “You had a stroke, okay? So it’s time to die…Great news! Your dick still works. I harvested a bunch of your sperm, so you’re going to live forever.”
RAFI: “It was a murder boner. What do you think it is?”
TACO: “You know what? He’s been through a lot. We should just give him the Shiva.”
KEVIN: “You shut your goddamn mouth!”
RUXIN [on video]: “Hello, I’m Rodney Ruxin, everyone-calls-me-Ruxin.”
TACO: “So you would pay to see two guys having sex?”
RAFI: “Now we’re having a conversation!”
RAFI: “I am allowed to carry a gun if I don’t tell anybody I have it. It’s called a concealed weapon!”
RAFI: “It’s fantasy football. So the Hulk should be able to be on the team.”
RUXIN: “If you screw up my team, I’ll cut your penis into thin slices of salami.”
RAFI: “You know what I like about you? You’re making me work for it.”
JENNY: “Are you trying to ‘high-na-tize’ me right now?!”
KEVIN: “Ew. Feels like I’m kissing Al Davis.”
RUXIN: “Liar.”
JENNY: “There you are!”
RUXIN: “Why are you dressed like a whore?”
JENNY: “I had to dress like your wife to get in here.”
RUXIN: “Fives.”
KEVIN: “This is the most important thing that’s ever happened to me in my life! [To Jenny] No offense.”
RUXIN: “Classic Forte burn.”
KEVIN [to Taco]: “Hey, Vincent Van Slow, what are you drawing over there?”
RAFI: “Hey, do you still have those butt plugs with Bert and Ernie’s face on them?”
KEVIN: “Those were my daughter’s tubby toys…”
RAFI: “She should not play with those. Those should be burned.”
RAFI: “Is he from Super Mario Bros.? Because, if it was on me, I would have picked up Luigi.”
RUXIN: “Andre? Oh, no, that human kumquat’s got my team.”
PETE: “…it is decided!”
PETE: “It’s an honor. It’s a Dre-peat!”
KEVIN: “Oh, where did this platypus get a boat?”
TACO: “This whole league is tarnished. We need burn it, bury it, and start clean just like Pete did with his wife.”
RAFI: “You sure it’s not my baby? I did jerk off in your underwear drawer.”
RUXIN: “You can take my draft pick…but you can never take my Shiva! This season never happened!”
KEVIN: “Any asshole can be a father. I want to be a champion!”
TACO: “My brother’s such an idiot.”
Images thanks to the wonderful work of RAFI BOMB!
