The year was 1992. While I was looking forward to my 3rd birthday, I couldn’t help but to bask in what would be a phenomenal pop-cultural year. If you don’t believe me, here are just a few quotes from 1992 movies: “There’s no crying in baseball,” “schwing,” “You can’t handle the truth,” “are you gonna bark all day lil doggy, or are you gonna bite, “coffee’s for closers,” “hoo-ah,” and my personal favorite, “COWARDS!”

Not only did we have quotes that have permeated into our shared cultural lexicon, but 1992 was a bit of a cultural reset. Marisa Tomei and her Buick Skylark pronunciation stole our hearts in My Cousin Vinny, everyone was constantly asking if it really “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” Brad Pitt made fly-fishing sexy, and our favorite 4 friends on Seinfeld agreed to see who could last the longest as the master of their domain. I was putting on performances of “Achy Breaky Heart” with a majestic mullet of my own, but that didn’t stop my 2 and half year old self from realizing the greatest movie in the history of cinema was released in this glorious year…

If you thought I meant The Unforgiven you are so bad at context clues and like Clint Eastwood way too much to continue reading. Now I’m writing this while flipping back and forth between Jazz vs Grizzlies and All The President’s Men, the two sides of the full Pav experience, and I’m sure you’re either doubting my claim about this movie, or wondering what I looked like with a mullet, but I’ll explain. First The Mighty Ducks everyone loves a good underdog story, and this is a prototypical look at a rag-tag group coming together to beat the rich pampered favorites. It’s Bad News Bears on ice. Next, this movie is the genesis of a great kids playing sports movie run in the mid 90’s. Following this gem we get: The Sandlot, Rookie of the Year, The Little Giants, Heavyweights, The Big Green, and Air Bud. Last, this movie gives us the incomparable and immortal Emilio Estevez who is able to walk the fine line of playing Gordon Bombay who is simultaneously goofy, hateable, drunk, douchebag lawyer, who’s looking for redemption, teaching kids while learning about himself, and trying to hook up with your mom, WHILE STILL BEING LIKEABLE. I have no idea how Al Pacino beat him at the Oscars, we might need a recount. I love everything about this movie. I still call people “cake eaters,” I still think the flying V can work in any hockey situation, and I still wonder how Guy got Connie while wearing that hat.

When news came out Disney+ was making a Mighty Ducks series, my nostalgia meter exploded. I loved these movies as a kid, I love this movies as an immature adult, so obviously I’m going to love this show, right? Then it’s announced that Emilio Estevez is reprising his role as Gordon Bombay, and some of the Ducks would be returning too. How can this not be great? It felt as if this idea was pulled from my mind, and I needed to start looking for a producer’s credit. There’s just no way this won’t be good, right? Well…

The problems with Game Changers

Like a lot of people my age, I live in an almost perpetual state of arrested development. Not the show about the banana-grabbing Bluths, nor the group who made a rap song about Tennessee called “Tennessee,” but the idea that I’ve plateaued with a lot of my interests. Superheroes, Harry Potter, and other pieces of nerd culture, which have been deemed adolescent by some, have never waned in my regard, and The Mighty Ducks series of movies is most certainly in this group. Game Changers is making me ask myself the hardest and most introspective question I’ve ever had to ask, “am I too old for this shit?” Does my feelings towards this show signal my change Riggs to Murtaugh? Does this mean I won’t get the same excitement in watching Aang beat Ozai, or feel same heart wrenching feeling when Hermione offers to go with Harry on his walk into the woods? Am I now going to be relegated to eating oatmeal and watching CBS Sunday Morning? Is this sudden rush of maturation going to lead to me being fiscally responsible and eating more vegetables? Luckily for all of us, the answer to all of this is no, because The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers wasn’t good. Also spoilers are coming.

What’s Wrong With Emilio?

As stated earlier, Estevez killed it as Bombay in the first 3 installments of this franchise. We witnessed a fully fleshed out redemptive arc of Coach Bombay and somewhere between him walking away from the Ducks in D3 and before Game Changers this arc has been destroyed. Now this is a great potential piece of narrative for the series, but we don’t get much of it, nor do we get any explanation of why Bombay is like this. The lawyer turned coach is now a rundown owner of a derelict ice rink. Why would Bombay ever be poor? He has a law degree and coached Team USA!!! Why is he just some aloof recluse? This makes no sense to me. The actual explanation fell flatter, as he got caught up in a NCAA recruiting scandal, so he swears off hockey…and then buys the Ice Palace…a hockey rink. What are we doing here?

So the Don’t Bothers got good really fast huh?

I loved the premise of this series. The Ducks are the well established AAU hockey machine, and therefore the bad guys. The premier shows our protagonist, Evan Morrow, cut from the Ducks and being told “not to bother” to play hockey anymore. Evan then gets a rag-tag group together to play some hockey, they lose two games, skate on a frozen pond, and become state runner-ups. There was never any doubt that they would get good at hockey, but there was also never the struggle. The little moments of incremental improvement were few and far between. Basically I can’t tell if this series needed a montage of the team getting better over multiple games, or if this whole season was just one drawn out montage. Either way, it wasn’t great.

Where’s the Inner Team Conflict?

In both iterations of the Mighty Ducks we have a clear conflict between the haves and have nots. The Hawks vs the D5 ducks was supplanted by the Ducks vs the Don’t Bothers, but what made it so much more fruitful in the movies was Adam Banks. Clearly the most talented, though not the best player which is once again Guy Germaine, Banks is the pampered prodigy that played for the Hawks despite living in the Ducks’ district. As a coach who dealt with kids from his district playing for rival teams over the last 7 years, I will forever appreciate Bombay getting Banks to play for the team he belongs on, but it led to Banks struggling to find his place on the team he used to look down upon. The closest we came to this was either a deleted Tik Tok, or an extra kid invited to a sleepover. These superficial conflicts had no effect on the team, and should therefore be removed from the Duck Expanded Universe.

Final Thoughts

1. The episode where we saw the all grown up Ducks get pizza together was the oddest mixture of frustrating nostalgia in my life. We learn that Bombay has distanced himself from his former players as he’s skipped weddings, reunions, and other gatherings of that nature, which made no sense. Bombay would never turn his back on the group of kids that turned his life around.
2. I’m pretty sure this was written by people who haven’t spent too much time listening to kids talk. A lot of it reminded me of Tamara from Awkward and how she was what 30-40 somethings thought teenagers were like.
3. What was up with the Czechs just showing up? Czechs are legendary hockey players, just look at Jaromir Jagr and his glorious mullet. These guys just apparated onto the team and we never saw them play, never got any witty lost in translation moments.
4. Did we really need Lauren Graham’s work struggles? I know my Lorelei stans are going to disagree with me here, but her being more assertive at work brought the momentum of almost every episode to a halt. Sure there was a payoff in the end, kind of, but it just felt like scenes from Gilmore Girls that were left on the cutting room floor.
5. Where were the Hawks? There’s no way they fell off the map of the Minnesota peewee hockey scene. They were the original Ducks. They taught us “it’s not worth winning, if you can’t win big.” Now they’ve disappeared, and gave their color scheme to their former rivals? Weird.
6. We need more hockey. If season 2 is going to happen, I’m going to need more breakaways, more triple dekes, and at least one knuckle puck. Obviously if they make a second season I’ll watch it, but it needs to be better and have a lot more hockey action and Charlie Conway.

I mean, he always said he’d be a better coach than a player and yet he wasn’t in this series as a coach. Imagine how much better this would’ve been if Conway was the coach of the Ducks and he was the one who lost his way, needing Bombay and the Don’t Bothers to bring him back to the light. Man, get me on staff for season 2 scripts. Until then, don’t be careless but don’t be too careful, and remember when the wind blows hard and the sky is black, ducks fly together!