TV Review: Pixar’s “Win or Lose” Swings Big with Heart and Perspective

It takes an average of 4 to 5 years for a Pixar film to go from idea to the big screen. It turns out the same is true for a series from the prestigious Emeryville animation studio, particularly if it’s all original. First announced in 2020, the wait for Pixar’s first original series is finally over with the Disney+ streaming debut of Win or Lose. Was it worth the wait?

The eight-part series follows residents of Everytown, U.S.A., during the week leading up to the softball team’s championship game. Each episode changes its focus to a different character, which isn’t limited to members of the softball team, but also parents and siblings of students, plus the coach and umpire. Along the way, viewers get to see some overlapping moments from a different point of view, serving as a reminder that we’re all the hero of our own stories.

Part of what has made Pixar an enduring success is the studio’s ability to make films that resonate with a wide audience, offering something for everyone. Win or Lose was undoubtedly created with this same goal in mind, offering somewhat of a hook at the top of the first episode, a promise that something wild is going to happen at the end of the championship game, and we probably won’t get to find out what that is until the finale. For the purposes of this review, I was given access to the first 5 episodes of the series.

Generally speaking, Win or Lose offers a slow-paced charm for each half-hour episode. However, with the episodic shifts in main characters, there are also tonal changes from episode-to-episode. It’s a bit of a highbrow concept for an animated series, not that Pixar fans would expect anything less. It mostly works, particularly if you view the show as less of a cohesive series and more like a series of interconnected shorts.

There is a cohesive aesthetic to the series that offers viewers of a certain age a dose of nostalgia. To me, it evokes feelings of Charles Schulz’s animated Peanuts specials paired with stop-motion TV animation. You can feel Pixar trying to celebrate the history of TV animation through the show’s visual language, while also trying to put the studio’s own stamp on the medium.

From a production standpoint, the shifting POV is also represented by changing artistic styles. These manifest in different ways, most excitedly in the fifth episode, Ira (“Steal"), which features 2D animated visions by the episode’s title character, who uses a decorated toilet paper tube to see the world more like a film director. But within the first half of the season are other examples, including Laurie’s imaginary anxiety monster made of sweat in the series premiere and Frank’s love of the fantasy genre in the second episode.

Where Win or Lose somewhat stumbles is with the disparity between its overly comedic character designs and the amount of emotional resonance the series tries to drum up. It’s not really a drama, but there are enough moments of self-pity for each character to make the overall effect feel incongruous. It’s not as extreme as The Good Dinosaur, which repurposed character designs meant for a comedy in a restructured drama about grief and loss, but it’s enough to feel a bit jarring. And since everything is fairly low stakes (this is, after all, a softball game), the dramaturg’s often feel like they’re trying to make mountains out of mole hills.

Based on visual design and premise, viewers are likely expecting something a little more lively and a lot more funny. Reset your expectations and you’re sure to find something meaningful over the course of Pixar’s eight-part saga. As the title suggests, success or failure are personal goals, their benchmarks changing from person-to-person. At the heart of Win or Lose, that seems to be the goal - a reminder to take time to evaluate what really matters. It’s about perspective, and therein lies the poetic brilliance of a show that is constantly shifting focus.

I give Win or Lose 4 out of 5 chicken mascots.

The first 2 episodes of Win or Lose are now streaming on Disney+, with 2 new episodes each Wednesday through March 12th.