Pixar’s Animated Softball Story on Disney+

Disney may be famous for its collection of iconic villains and legendary heroes, but both are in refreshingly short supply in their latest outing. Instead, Disney+’s Win or Lose wants to challenge its viewers to consider the way those categories and others can shift as the perspective does. The teacher you dismissed as a bully might be a softie once you get to know him; the cool kids in one person’s eyes might look like jerks from another’s.

By that standard, it succeeds beautifully. The animation by Pixar is utterly gorgeous, filled with light and texture so vivid you can practically feel it through your screen. The characters are distinctive yet relatable; your heart goes out to every one of them. The storytelling is clever, filling scenes with enough detail to lend some gravity to this world.

I would almost be tempted to call it a home run — if not for one egregious error that tinges what should be a clear win with a sense of loss.

But let’s start with the good. Each of Win or Lose‘s eight episodes centers around a different character on or related to the Pickles, an adolescent coed softball team, tracing their paths in the week leading up to the big game. Creators Carrie Hobson and Michael Yates, however, take the conceit one step further by showing us not simply what happens to each protagonist but what their subjective emotional experiences feel like.

So the insecurities weighing on 12-year-old outfielder Laurie (Rosie Foss) manifest as a heavy gray blob (Jo Firestone) hanging off her shoulders, while the daydreams of 10-year-old Ira (Dorien Watson), a teammate’s little brother, appear as superhero cartoons scribbled in childlike crayon. These are typically Pixarian flourishes (the former, in particular, evokes an all-Anxiety version of Inside Out 2), deftly scaled down to fit the half-hour run times.

Collectively, these tales form a sort of jigsaw puzzle, in which the minor character from one episode becomes the primary focus of the next or a plot-driving prop resurfaces later as background detritus. Everything seems to be leading up to some life-changing event at the big game, teased in an opening montage of screaming children and grownups soundtracked to “Ave Maria.”

Narratively, it’s a bit of a gamble — each of the five installments sent to critics ends right where you’d expect the emotional climax to go, presumably so the endings can play out together in the finale. But it’s an effective way of injecting momentum into what could’ve otherwise come off as a random assortment of vignettes.

In any case, the real trick Win or Lose pulls off is using that structure to invite us to lean in. It wants us to see that Laurie’s house is filled with moving boxes, but only for her dad, and wonder about the struggles playing out (at least for now) offscreen. It hopes you’ll notice how often Rochelle (Milan Elizabeth Ray) feels let down by her struggling single mother Vanessa (Rosa Salazar) — but then also, from Vanessa’s point of view, how hard she’s trying and how genuinely she cares. It’s waiting for you to realize how different the same pep talk by the coach (Will Forte) sounds to each person who hears it, and to reflect on what these variations tell you about the listeners.

After the first couple of chapters, you start looking for stories everywhere: Surely the arrogant pitcher or the cheery barista or even the snack-shack lockbox contain sagas of their own. It’s an approach that encourages patience and understanding, that nudges viewers young and old to dig beyond knee-jerk assumptions, that champions the value of keeping an open mind and an open heart.

Which makes it all the more disappointing that Disney has evidently decided such empathy should have its limits.

As first broken by The Hollywood Reporter late last year, the studio axed a storyline involving a trans teammate, Kai (Chanel Stewart), over the objections of many Pixar staffers — keeping the character in the show, but reimagining her as cis. Critics weren’t sent the episode centered around Kai, and she hasn’t played a significant role in the ones we have seen so far. So I can’t tell you how the last-minute rewrites play, how central her trans identity would have been to her narrative, or how erasing it changes our understanding of her.

What I do know is that a bit of compassion toward a trans child, and other people who might see themselves or their loved ones in her, would have gone a long way right now. That trans kids deserve care and understanding, as well as stories that reinforce that they deserve care and understanding. And that this series declining to take that stance contradicts the very spirit of thoughtful curiosity that it claims as its foundation.

Win or Lose is an excellent work in many ways, smart and fun and beautiful and frequently quite moving. What a shame the company putting it out could not, in the end, bring itself to live up to its own worthy message.