“Hoops” is Unforgivably bad, and it won’t last another season

By: Keaton Marcus

Review of Netflix’s Hoops:

Here we go again, another contrived, unfunny, gross-out and pointless adult animation series for Netflix: Hoops. Keep milking that cow, Ted Sarandos, keep shoving unnecessarily awful content into the faces of audiences.

Anyway, this show is about a struggling high school basketball coach named Ben (Jake Johnson) who is one bad move from getting fired. All things considered, he attempts to get the tallest kid in the school, Matty (A.D. Miles) on the team to potentially win a game. Not much in this thing, huh?

Well you could argue that all adult sit-coms these days don’t have a lot in the thinking tank, but at least a few have consistent humor, and strive to become an original, above-average show that can make a person laugh. Unfortunately, Hoops is a generic comedy that substitutes clever laughs for poop jokes, with insensitive, offensive humor that just won’t cut it.

In earlier seasons of shows such as South Park, Family Guy, and perhaps even the more kid-friendly The Simpsons, I let some of the deliberately insulting jokes slide because they’re so darn hilarious. Even today, when our favorite streaming platforms are filled with subpar content, we get gems like Rick & Morty. In Hoops, Netflix doesn’t have the smarts to re-create it. But hey, maybe it’ll be a big hit.

Not from what I’ve seen…Rotten Tomatoes’ critics have pulled this down to a mere 20% “Rotten”, and audiences couldn’t even get kicks out of it either, with their score landing at a lukewarm 47%. On the Netflix “Top 10” list, this thing only lasted a couple of days before it was knocked out. Seems like you’re little plan to overpopulate a streaming service with crap isn’t working out all great.

Jake Johnson, the lead of this show, is actually a pretty funny guy. He starred in Tag, which gave him a bit of comic room to shine, but he still isn’t hilarious. At least not likable enough to carry a turd like this. Considering the low viewership ratings, I don’t expect this to last for another season, but it still wasted a couple hours of my time.

Should you Binge, Browse, or Skip?

Hoops has a talented cast, but its lack of consistent laughs, a clever, original plot or even some dumb fun make it completely unwatchable. I would say…SKIP IT