Rather surprisingly, Win or Lose marks Pixar's first original series, and unsurprisingly, the animation house has created a show filled with its trademark imagination, humour and heart for all ages. With eight episodes ranging from 20 to 30 minutes a pop — the perfect amount of time to hold the attention of children and doom-scrolling adults alike — Win or Lose takes us through a week in the life of a community ahead of local team the Pickles' championship softball game, with various characters involved with the game telling their story every episode.
Critics were provided the first four episodes which take the perspective of: Laurie (voiced by Rosie Foss), the highly anxious daughter of Dan (Will Forte); Frank (Josh Thomson), a lovesick civics teacher moonlighting as an umpire; Rochelle (Milan Ray), the preteen driven to be the perfect student, catcher, daughter and sister; and Vanessa (Rosa Salazar), Rochelle's single millennial mother trying her best to provide the life to her kids she never had.
The series doesn't use the Rashomon multi-perspective device to reveal the truth of the matter; rather, Win or Lose uses the narrative technique along the lines of Rian Johnson's Knives Out or the Apple TV+ series The Afterparty to create a fulsome story. We follow the same week through the lens of each character's unique world, with a particularly cool schtick that involves each person having their own version of Linus's security blanket (Vanessa's is a cloud of pink hearts representing her social media interactions that distract and comfort her, for example).
Co-creators, writers and directors Carrie Hobson and Michael Yates use animation as a way of making the environment an active part of the storytelling. When Rochelle gets in over her head trying to earn money for next year's playing fees, everything around her quite literally starts to come away at the seams. As Frank journeys into the wild world of online dating, we're transported into a gamified landscape of ghosts and precarious conversation bubbles to hop between. Hobson, Yates and their team of animators exemplify the best of what animated works can be visually and narratively.
While this may seem to be the natural cue for DJ Khaled's "All I Do is Win," Pixar takes the L in its extracurriculars around the series. I don't normally interject politics into my movie or television viewing, but it feels remiss to not at least address the elephant in the room.
In December, The Hollywood Reporter reported that Win or Lose had removed one of its story arcs concerning a transgender character, with Disney confirming the decision stating: "When it comes to animated content for a younger audience, we recognize that many parents would prefer to discuss certain subjects with their children on their own terms and timeline."
The story arc in question concerns Kai, a member of the Pickles softball team. Deadline spoke to Chanel Stewart, a transgender aspiring actor who voiced Kai when she was 14 years old (she's now 18), who shared that Disney had informed her that while Kai would remain in the show, dialogue was removed and her character would now be shown as a straight cis girl.
According to the press notes, the penultimate Episode 7, entitled "I Got It," features Kai and her father (Lil Rel Howery) as recent newcomers into Peaks Valley, with Kai feeling right at home "for the first time in a long time" as a member of the Pickles.
Pixar (and Disney back in its pre-Pixar days) has historically positioned itself as the voice of our childhoods, attempting to embed their characters and lessons into our core memories in the hopes of us passing down this nostalgia to the next generation. Being a young person in the world today comes with far more complications than ever before, and Win or Lose does demonstrate this, at least in part. Part of the series' charm is derived from showing how, behind every smile and nervous chuckle, exists individual struggles. A show like Win or Lose has the opportunity to present viewers, especially young people, with a reflection they can connect with and hopefully feel less alone — an opportunity Disney and Pixar wilfully (and spinelessly) balked at.