Eastbound and Down: Kenny Powers se Vuelve a la Televison
The show you discovered after its first season was already over is finally back! Fortunately for anyone who didn't check it out last year, this season requires essentially no foreknowledge of the greatest f**king pitcher of all time, Kenny Powers.
Eastbound and Down: Season Dos jettisons the location, characters and much of the premise from the first season. In fact, this is the only mention of the central characters from last year: Returning fans will notice that Kenny is evidently still working on his book.
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We rejoin Kenny hiding from his problems in Copales, Mexico, having reinvented himself as "Steve the Cockfighter" and immediately falling into old habits with a new group of Mexican cronies- a large and simple one and a tiny and feisty one (played by Deep Roy, who actually couldn't be less Mexican). In a "Hey, is that who I think it is?" moment, we also get Efren Ramirez- better known as Vote For Pedro from Napoleon Dynamite—as the new Mexican surrogate for Kenny's brother.
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Of course, since this show is ultimately about Kenny's big comeback, we also have to toss some baseball in there. For this we have the truly awful Copales Charros baseball team. The Charros coach is naturally familiar with Kenny's legend, and so the seed is planted anew.
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This dovetails nicely with Kenny's new career and social circle falling apart as quickly as it began, and so we have a setup our story arc.
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Sadly, tonight's Eastbound and Down was pretty formulaic, over-narrated and light on the jokes. It didn't tell any longtime fans of the show anything they hadn't figured out from the advertisements HBO has been plastering everywhere. The producers clearly knew they'd have a lot of new eyeballs tuning in tonight and chose to spend much of their time setting up the new (and old) premise and getting their new fans used to the caustic humor of Kenny Powers before exposing them to just how outrageous and awesome he can be. Hopefully now that we're past this, episode dos can deliver some of the laughs that made this show not-to-be-missed last year.