Netflix Review: Kate Hudson Anchors the Entertaining Sports Comedy ‘Running Point’

Being in charge of any organization is bound to come with its challenges, but a woman serving as president of a popular basketball team is sure to be an uphill battle. Running Point, loosely inspired by the life of Jeannie Buss, who serves as the president of the Los Angeles Lakers, features Kate Hudson as Isla Gordon, who grew up in the shadow of her father and three brothers and has to contend with many obstacles when she takes charge of the fictional Los Angeles Waves, a job she’s pretty sure she can do, even if most of the people around her doubt her.

Isla’s promotion from managing donations to being the person in charge comes when her brother Cam (Justin Theroux) is forced to reckon with his destructive drug habits. The more obvious choices – her brothers Ness (Scott MacArthur) and Sandy (Drew Tarver) – are upset that they’ve been passed over, and they’re not the only ones, like the players who refuse to take the formerly rebellious daughter of a very chauvinistic man, who made some questionable decisions earlier in life, seriously. With the help of her fiercely loyal chief of staff Ali (Brenda Song), Isla prepares to face the problems as they come with a determination to succeed and prove everyone wrong.

This comedy series comes from the minds of David Stassen, Mindy Kaling, and Ike Barinholtz. Stassen, who most recently served as showrunner for History of the World, Part II, partners with a duo who usually appear in front of the screen, as they did together in The Mindy Project, for a show that’s not necessarily all that much about sports despite featuring them as a regular part of the plotline. It’s less heavy on the athletics than Ted Lasso but fairly comparable to that show, with the world of basketball mostly relevant as the key setting for most of this show’s interactions.

This show is definitely light, rarely favoring serious plotlines and instead indulging humor from the slapstick – like Isla’s tendency to walk straight into glass doors – to the more sophisticated. Its characters do swear and sometimes get quite angry, but the four adult Gordon siblings behave much more like children than they should for all working in a professional organization together. They’re all unserious in their own ways, and while it may not be dramatically resounding, it does make for good fun, especially since the consequences for their actions are often quite public and substantial. Think Emily in Paris but with characters whose wealth and wardrobe make a bit more sense, even if their antics are similarly unfortunate and quite often preventable.

Hudson is a great fit for this lead role, bringing a need to show those around her that she can do more than they think, and it’s particularly enjoyable to see the chemistry that she has with her onscreen siblings. MacArthur is the funniest of the siblings, playing Ness as a loving idiot who never quite thinks through what he does but always means very well. Song is having a blast as a no-nonsense operator who isn’t prepared to take anything from anyone, and she’s well-paired with another one of Isla’s employees, Jackie, played by the extremely endearing Fabrizio Guido. Chet Hanks and Jay Ellis are standouts from the basketball team, as its troublemaking star player and coach, respectively, and Max Greenfield is perfectly cast as Isla’s extremely supportive long-term fiancé Lev.

The late February arrival of this ten-episode, half-hour comedy feels very welcome just ahead of the Oscars and an industry pivot to focusing on television rather than film for the next few months. While this is unlikely to pick up awards, despite Hudson’s status as a past Oscar nominee twenty-four years ago for her breakout turn in Almost Famous, it’s a fantastic instance of mindless television that can be readily digested as comfort food. Each episode contains enough material to feel satisfying on its own, though some viewers will surely choose to blaze through the entire five or so hours in one sitting. This show isn’t reinventing the wheel, but it does know how to make the most of its premise and deliver good, consistent fun.

Series Rating: 7/10