Graphic Designer
HBO’s raunchy and riotous Eastbound and Down returns for a third season as Kenny Powers (Danny McBride) continues his illustrious quest to make it back into the big leagues. This time, he’ll be pursuing it in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, as he embarks on a new venture with a minor league baseball team.
Season two showed Kenny Powers’ expedition and stay in Mexico, as he was on a quest for a fresh start. He re-invents himself by losing his infamous mullet and growing out cornrows. Soon he is discovered by the Charros, a local Mexican baseball team, and decides to play baseball for them. “La Flama Blanca,” as the Charros fans would call him, continued to demonstrate his crudely inappropriate behavior both on and off the field, providing classic Eastbound and Down humor.
After his stint in Mexico, Powers rides back to the states and pursues an opportunity to play with the Myrtle Beach Mermen, the AA affiliate of the Texas Rangers. He also rekindles old flames with the lusty April (Kathy Mixon) as the season finale ends with them walking into a restaurant together.
Season three, which is slated to premiere this Sunday at 9 p.m. on HBO, looks to incorporate a few new characters, including Powers’ new partner in crime, Shane, who is played by Saturday Night Live’s Jason Sudeikis. In addition, Matthew McConaughey, who was briefly seen in the end of season two as the scout for the Texas Rangers, will also be making more frequent appearances this season.
A number of old characters from the first season of Eastbound will also be included. Previews show scenes of Powers and April shot-gunning beers, go-karting and standing on a pier together. The awkwardly hilarious Stevie Janowksi (Steve Little) will unsurprisingly also be seen in Myrtle Beach trying to reconnect his partnership with Powers. However, much to the chagrin of Stevie, Powers will apparently have a new sidekick in Shane.
Will Ferrell, who is an executive producer of the show, also has been confirmed to reappear this season as Ashley Schaeffer, the owner of Ashley Schaeffer BMW, which was the venue of one of Kenny Power’s pitching challenges back in season one.
Although HBO has made its legacy on well-crafted and engaging dramas, Eastbound and Down is a special exception that adds some blunt humor and rowdiness to the network. Powers’s untamed and brash behavior, heavily influenced by a plethora of drugs and sexual encounters, is quite crass in nature, yet wildly entertaining.
It must be extraordinarily fun for McBride to play Kenny Powers because of how he can essentially do and say anything he wants. It’s hard not to cringe when Powers is making sexual jokes and using abrasive language in front of his family and their children, but it provides an invigorating comic landscape that only a premium network like HBO can show on television.
While Eastbound and Down may not be a show for the faint of heart, it is a tantalizing treat for those who can embrace and accept its crude humor. Season three looks to carry on this style of comedy and continue to convey Kenny Powers’s indomitable, unbearable and hyperbolized image.