--- title: "Eastbound & Down" year: 2009 kind: "series" canonical: "https://film.one/tv/eastbound-and-down" fi1m_score: 78 critics_score: 75 critics_reviews: 7 published: "2026-09-17T00:59:44.837293+00:00" updated: "2026-09-17T01:00:32.720802+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Eastbound & Down (2009) Created by Danny McBride, Jody Hill, Ben Best · 30m · MPA TV-MA · Comedy, Drama **Fi1m score: 78** · Critics 75 from 7 reviews *In a sentence:* A man who thinks he is still famous, in a middle school gym, with a jet ski he cannot afford > Danny McBride, Jody Hill and Ben Best build a whole comedy around one appalling man and then, without announcing it, make you mind what happens to him. It is crude, sometimes lazily so, and Kenny Powers is the best thing McBride has done. ## Synopsis Kenny Powers (Danny McBride) was a major league pitcher with a fastball, a mullet and a mouth, and the fastball has gone. Dropped by team after team, he drives home to Shelby, North Carolina, moves into the spare room of his brother Dustin (John Hawkes) and sister-in-law Cassie (Jennifer Irwin), and takes a job as a substitute PE teacher at the middle school he once attended. The music teacher, Stevie Janowski (Steve Little), worships him. His old girlfriend April Buchanon (Katy Mixon) teaches art down the corridor and is engaged to the principal, Terrence Cutler (Andrew Daly). Kenny wants his career back and April with it, and spends his evenings listening to a motivational audiobook he recorded himself. ## Review Kenny Powers pitched in the major leagues, once, and he has not stopped talking about it. *Eastbound & Down* opens with the end of that career and drops him back into the town he left: Shelby, North Carolina, a spare bedroom at his brother’s house, and a substitute job teaching PE at the middle school he attended. Danny McBride, Jody Hill and Ben Best created and wrote it, and the idea fits on a beer mat. Take a man with no talent left and all of his arrogance intact, and watch him refuse to notice. It is funnier than that sounds, and by the end of its first six episodes it is sadder too. We recommend it, with the warning that you have to be able to stand the man. McBride is the whole show. Kenny wears his hair long at the back, keeps a jet ski he cannot afford, and speaks to twelve-year-olds as if they were reporters at a press conference. McBride plays him without a single wink; he never lets you know he is in on the joke, and that is why it works. Early on, Kenny sits alone in his brother’s spare room, listening to the motivational audiobook he recorded himself, mouthing along to his own advice. We laughed at it, and then we did not. A man cheering himself on from a tape because nobody else will is a bleak thing to look at, and the programme knows exactly how long to hold on it. David Gordon Green directs, alongside Hill and Adam McKay, and Green shoots it like one of his small dramas rather than a sitcom. The camera sits back and lets the gymnasium echo. The light is flat and Southern and does Kenny no favours. There is no laugh track and no punchline rhythm, and scenes trail off into silence after Kenny has said something unforgivable. Will Ferrell produces with McKay, and the show has some of the Ferrell habit of letting a stupid man talk for longer than is comfortable. Here the discomfort is deliberate, and Hill has the nerve to keep it there. The people around Kenny are drawn with care. Steve Little’s Stevie Janowski, the music teacher, worships him with a devotion that would be touching in a dog, and Little plays him as a man who has found his purpose and it is carrying another man’s bags. Katy Mixon’s April Buchanon, the art teacher Kenny once went out with, is the only person in the school who sees through him and still, against her own judgement, half likes him; Mixon makes that plausible. Andrew Daly’s Principal Cutler, her fiancé, is a decent man played as if decency were a character flaw. John Hawkes and Jennifer Irwin, as the brother and sister-in-law who took Kenny in, are quietly exhausted, and Ben Best’s Clegg, the old friend, gets the filthiest lines and delivers them flat. The flaws are the ones you would guess. A fair amount of the writing mistakes a swear word for a joke, and when the show is coasting it coasts on Kenny saying something appalling about women and waiting for the wince. Most critics have forgiven this; the one who did not, and called it juvenile, is not entirely wrong about the weaker episodes. The first season is six half-hours and wastes none of them. The later ones are less sure of themselves; the second, which adds Ana de la Reguera and Ike Barinholtz to the cast, has the best stretch of the run, and the third is where the formula shows. Four seasons and 29 episodes is more Kenny Powers than most households will want in one go. This is the rawest version of the thing McBride and Hill do: a man who is monstrous and pitiable at once. British viewers will recognise the type from Alan Partridge, though Kenny is louder, meaner and less likely to learn anything. Watch two episodes. If the audiobook does not make you laugh, stop there. If it does, you will finish the season by the weekend and feel slightly worse about yourself, which is the intended effect. *Fi1m score 78, published 17 September 2026.* ## What the critics say Most critics like Eastbound & Down, and nearly all of them like it for the same reason: Danny McBride. His Kenny Powers, a washed-up pitcher who cannot see how far he has fallen, is praised as clueless, profane and precisely played, and several reviews single out the performance as the thing that makes the series work. The praise extends to the writing, with the show credited for turning a crude premise into something darker, a study of a man clinging to fame that has gone, and for keeping that tone steady across later seasons. The reservations are few. Variety is the lone dissent, finding the premise tired and the comedy juvenile, leaning on crudity where it should have wit. Some of the admirers concede a related point: the humour is raw and cynical, and viewers who do not take to it early are unlikely to be won over. Beyond that, the spread is narrow, with the positive reviews clustered close together. ### Reviews we read (7) - **The AV Club**, Nathan Rabin (A-): The critic praises the HBO series as realizing the potential of McBride's earlier work, delivering a profane, gritty comedy about a washed-up, arrogant ex-pitcher reduced to substitute teaching. It highlights the strong start with David Gordon Green's involvement and the show's nasty vitality. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/eastbound-down-pilot-1798205655) - **The Hollywood Reporter**, Ray Richmond (80/100, inferred): The critic finds the series refreshingly politically incorrect and hilarious due to its protagonist's clueless arrogance and foul-mouthed rants, praising Danny McBride's performance as the standout element that could revive HBO's comedy. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/tv-review-eastbound-amp-92902/) - **Empire**, William Thomas (75/100, inferred): Praises the crude, lewd humor and accurate observation of a delusional redneck anti-hero, highlighting Danny McBride's pitch-perfect performance in this HBO comedy. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/tv/reviews/eastbound-review/) - **Variety**, Brian Lowry (30/100, inferred): The critic finds the premise tired and the show juvenile, relying on crudity rather than wit, and questions its premium cable quality. [Read](https://variety.com/2009/scene/markets-festivals/eastbound-down-1200473697/) - **Collider**, Andre Dellamorte (90/100, inferred): The critic calls the series a masterpiece, praising Danny McBride's portrayal of Kenny Powers as a delusional anti-hero and the hilarious, dark comedy that explores hubris mixed with pain across both seasons. [Read](https://collider.com/eastbound-and-down-season-one-season-two-blu-ray-review/) - **Den of Geek**, Chris Longo (4.5/5): The critic praises the episode as a strong return for Kenny Powers, noting his shift toward family life and a poignant acceptance of the end of his baseball career. It highlights the show's consistency and the character's enduring appeal despite changes. [Read](https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/eastbound-and-down-chapter-22-review/) - **/Film**, Adam Quigley (80/100, inferred): The critic notes that Jody Hill's raw, cynical comedy style rewards viewers who embrace it, elevating the show beyond dark comedy into an unsettling character study of a man's struggle with faded fame and reality. [Read](https://www.slashfilm.com/504342/this-week-in-dvd-street-fighter-12-rounds-entourage-eastbound-down-and-more/) ## Details - **Created by:** Danny McBride, Jody Hill, Ben Best - **Creator:** Danny McBride, Jody Hill, Ben Best - **Director:** David Gordon Green, Jody Hill, Adam McKay - **Writer:** Ben Best, Danny McBride, Jody Hill - **Producer:** Jody Hill, Adam McKay, Will Ferrell - **Cast:** Danny McBride as Kenny Powers; Steve Little as Stevie Janowski; Ana de la Reguera as Vida; Ben Best as Clegg; Andrew Daly as Terrence Cutler; Ike Barinholtz as Ivan Dochenko; John Hawkes as Dustin Powers; Jennifer Irwin as Cassie Powers - **Runtime:** 30m - **Certificate (MPA):** TV-MA - **Release (the US):** 15 February 2009 - **Genres:** Comedy, Drama - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADK-g921i0M ## Where to watch in the US - HBO Max: streaming - Amazon Prime Video: add-on - The Roku Channel: add-on, hd - Hulu: add-on, hd - Amazon Prime Video: rent, sd - Apple TV: buy, hd - Amazon Prime Video: buy $11.94, sd *Checked 2026-09-17.* Also available in: AR, AT, AU, BE, BG, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, CZ, DE, DK, EC, EE, ES, FI, FR, GB, HK, HR, HU, ID, IE, IL, IN, IS, IT, LT, MX, MY, NL, NO, NZ, PA, PE, PH, PL, PT, RO, RS, SE, SG, SI, TH, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## If you liked this - *The Foot Fist Way* (2006): Hill and McBride’s first go at the same man, with a taekwondo studio instead of a gym - *I'm Alan Partridge* (1997): The British original of the deluded has-been, in a travel tavern rather than a spare room - *The Righteous Gemstones* (2019): McBride, older and richer, doing the same damage with a megachurch and a family - *The Wrestler* (2008), Fi1m 85: The faded sportsman played straight, and every bit as hard to watch — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-wrestler.md) - *Kenny* (2006): An Australian portable-toilet man with all the dignity Kenny Powers lacks --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/tv/eastbound-and-down