Pitch
“A positive step for female-led television but at the expense of other areas of inclusion.”
Title: Pitch
Episodes Reviewed: Season 1
Creators: Dan Fogelman 👨🏼 🇺🇸 and Rick Singer 👨🏼 🇺🇸
Reviewed by Li 👩🏻 🇺🇸
Technical: 3.5/5
Fox’s baseball drama Pitch features high production values, but acting feels spotty outside of Kylie Bunbury’s strong performance as star athlete Ginny Baker. And per network television, the storylines and writing is simplistic full of contrived flashbacks and rote romances. The series feels targeted towards young adults and isn’t super compelling beyond surface entertainment.
Gender: 5/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? YES
The entire premise of this show is about breaking the gender barrier in pro sports, and they nail it. Ginny Baker is nuanced, strong, and vulnerable, while other female characters each bring different aspects of womanhood for a very round picture.
Race: 4/5
Strangely, considering that the lead is a Black woman and the way several positive Black characters populate the show, Pitch actually falls a little short here. Despite being set in San Diego, where almost a third of residents identified as Hispanic on the Census, only one recurring Hispanic character exists, played by Spanish-born Mark Consuelos who has Italian and Mexican heritage.
Meanwhile, there is only one recurring Asian character in a city where Asians make up over 1 in 7 residents, and he is the weakest link in this category. Tim Jo’s character of Eliot is the ultimate Asian male stereotype: awkward, deferential, and consistently emasculated as the butt of several jokes. Female characters either ignore him or roll their eyes in nearly every scene he gets on screen.
In short, Pitch is outstanding for Black representation but other characters of color see minimal and even stereotypical representation.
LGBTQ: 2/5
No LGBTQ representation, but given the shorter runtime of just one season, I gave it an extra point for scope.
Mediaversity Grade: B- 3.63/5
Pitch demonstrates a positive step for female-led television but at the expense of other areas of inclusion.
7/1/2021: Updated language to reflect current style