In the fall of 2017, one question was on every Netflix subscriber’s lips: “Who did the dicks?”
A mockumentary about a high schooler who spray-painted 27 phalluses onto cars in the faculty parking lot, American Vandal Season 1 became an instant sensation. It wasn’t just the endless quotability that sold the delightfully juvenile series, or even Jimmy Tatro’s sublime performance as a blockhead. It was the straight-faced conviction of both cast and script—a quality that extended through American Vandal Season 2 and, now, continues in co-creators Dan Perrault and Tony Yacenda’s new collaboration, the esports mockumentary Players.
While the world of competitive esports and League of Legends tournaments might sound a bit niche, Perrault and Yacenda’s approach with this 10-episode series remains rooted in their buffoonish characters’ surprisingly complex (though often revolting) humanity.
Premiering Thursday on Paramount+, Players introduces us to a flailing twerp and languishing esports icon called “Creamcheese”—née “Nutmilk”—whose team is on the brink of falling apart. Further threatening Creamcheese’s fragile ego? His manager just brought a new player into the fold—a 17-year-old whose legacy threatens to eclipse his own.
Players shares a fair amount of DNA with American Vandals one and two; all three seasons offer straight-faced, deceptively nuanced explorations of utterly ridiculous subjects. First there was the Banksy of parking lot dicks, then there was the Turd Burglar, and now we have Creamcheese—the John McEnroe of freemium gaming, whose gaming team, Fugitive, is starting to think they’d be better off without him.
As Creamcheese, Misha Brooks makes a perfect toxic nerd. A master of the quiet seethe, his every covert glare and finger twitch radiates with quiet fury. Da’Jour Jones, meanwhile, makes a perfect young, stoic foil to that messy energy. At one point, he delivers a blow-by-blow of a game that feels almost anime-like in its stoic intensity—like L squaring off with Light in Death Note.
Like American Vandal Season 2, Players never quite lives up to alleged graffiti artist Dylan Maxwell’s original glory. Even at 10 half-hour episodes, the Paramount+ series starts to feel thin as episodes begin to blend into one another. Still, the show scratches a similar itch to Silicon Valley—another series that knows just how to skewer a certain kind of technophilic man-baby.
The laughs in this show are not exclusively reserved for those among us with our own Twitch channels. (Are they called channels? Consider my endorsement of this show proof that even the newbiest of noobs will find something to appreciate.) At every turn, Players finds a new aspect of this culture to skewer—like the extremely-online-guy idea that taking shots of hot sauce is somehow a symbol of toughness. These guys don’t do Frank’s, to be clear; they only consume the extreme sauces because they’re serious about their masculinity.
And yes, before you ask—there is a South Park-like bit in which a player becomes so engrossed in his gaming that he starts peeing in jars.
For years, League of Legends tournaments have been Creamcheese’s paradise. But Organizm’s arrival on the team—and his threat that Creamcheese will forever be remembered as “the guy who trained me”—launch the insecure veteran into a special kind of solipsistic misery. At one point, we watch as he struggles to light the fire pit at the Fugitive hype house so that he can burn his team T-shirt.
In fairness, Creamcheese’s emo spiral is deeper than just an ego trip—at least a little. After all, he started this team as a teenager whose parents kicked him out because they just didn’t understand his desire to play professional esports. Its name, “Fugitive,” comes from his parents’ decision to call the cops on him after he broke into their home to steal back his keyboard. As silly as it might (does) seem, Fugitive is family to Creamcheese—a reality that makes their business conflicts all the more dysfunctional.
Although Players never quite matches the quotability of “who did the dicks,” it’s packed with lines seemingly designed in a lab to break ribs. I dare you: Try not laughing when Creamcheese unwittingly screams out double entendres like, “I’ve been building this team since I was Nutmilk!” His character’s no Dylan Maxwell, but I’ll give Misha Brooks this: Not since Thomas Middleditch’s Richard Hendricks has a TV nerd been this addictively despicable.
