Created By: Will Graham and Abbi Jacobson
First Run: 2022 (1 Season - Fuck you Amazon)
Is it possible we are still fighting for recognition and representation in 2022?
Why, yes, it is, and this gorgeous, wholesome, exciting dramedy series that highlights queer and racial themes from the past is the best possible vehicle to underscore both how far we’ve come, and how far we need to go. It’s one of the greatest queer TV shows ever, and it made it ONE season.
During WW2 entrepreneurs created a women’s professional baseball league to entertain people while the men were overseas. The All American Girls Professional Baseball League became hugely popular, but was almost erased as part of baseball history until Penny Marshall made a wonderfully entertaining (but very straight and white) film about it in 1992.
I am a huge fan of the original, but we always knew there was an undercurrent it was desperately missing. Penny nodded to it with that one black woman who threw the ball incredibly hard. We knew Doris was in love with Mae. We knew Kit Keller was a baby dyke and when she stayed in Racine after the season was over she’d have thrilling queer adventures (I want that fanfic BTW!). It all made sense in our heads.
Now, it makes sense on our screens, too. This barnstormingly great eight-part series puts out there the realities of the time. There absolutely were straight and queer girls in the league. There were black women who should have been in the league. This is a story that celebrates these women in all their glory.
ALOTO follows Carson Shaw (Abbi Jacobson), a mid-west girl who married her best friend and settled. We first see her running desperately for the train to take her to Chicago for the tryouts - adorable callout to the original film - and as soon as she arrives at the stadium her eyes light up. This is what she’s meant to do.
She also meets Greta (D’arcy Carden), a first baseman with moves, and realizes that this is also what she is meant to do - find her identity as a lesbian and fall in love, and learn leadership and the value of friendship along the way.
We also meet Max Chapman (Chantė Adams), a pitcher with a staggering arm, but even this small, brittle path forward for white women to play ball is denied her because she’s black. She gets a job at a local factory to try and get on the factory team. To the chagrin of her mother she shows no interest in hairdressing, or getting married. When she meets her aunt again after many years, we find that her aunt is now her uncle Bert, who shows Max that with courage it is possible to live the life you want.
Max and Carson form a friendship of sorts, and their parallel stories are the backbone of ALOTO. They are surrounded by a brilliant supporting cast of surreal depth. D’arcy Carden is phenomenal as Greta, who carries a secret pain from a lost love and a lust for life that’s infectious. Greta’s childhood friend Jo (Melanie Field) is a big hitter and a big hearted butch for the ages.
Almost stealing the show is the combo of Lupe Garcia (Roberta Colindrez) and Jess McCready (Kelly McCormack), a pair of queer butches who play the game hard, struggle to stick to the rules, and take every opportunity they can to milk their time in the Rockford Peaches to the hilt. Jess in particular has an irresistible swagger viewers can’t help but respond to. Their night in the queer speakeasy bar (with a wicked cameo by Rosie O’Donnell as the bar’s owner) where they explain what’s going on to Carson is an iconic queer scene.
Then there’s Max’s best friend Clance Morgan (Gbemisola Ikumelo) who is the fire and heart of the show, and who harbors dreams to be a comic book writer and artist. Her comedy and drama are heartbreaking, and I would watch a spinoff based on her alone. Every supporting character is fully realized, not one of them feels cheated. The balance is exactly right, it’s ensemble writing at its finest.
The directing talent gathered here is formidable too. It’s fabulous to see queer icons Jamie Babbit and Silas Howard on the roster. Each episode is lush, almost like a standalone film, and they give the cast room to breathe and explore their characters. We spend enough time on the baseball itself to get a feel for it, but not so much as to crowd out the human stories.
Quite simply, ALOTO takes this already-strong story and completes it. It’s everything we wanted it to be. It gives us a grand queer gesture of epic proportions. This will go go down in history as one of the most perfect one seasons of television ever. Watch it, whether you like sports or not.