Owen Wilson is TVs latest stick man

I don't think that means what I think it means

The curse of the smash hit TV series is the countless imitators that follow. And they’re almost never as good as the thing they are trying to copy.

When Friends broke big in the 90s, TV schedules were filled with shows like Can’t Hurry Love, Caroline in The City, and The Single Guy. Lost in the 00s spawned FlashForward, The Event, and The Nine.

And now with the success of Ted Lasso, we are starting to see copycats there - soon we will have Glen Powell in Chad Powers and this week there’s Owen Wilson in the Apple TV+ comedy Stick.

And Stick… it’s fine. Wilson plays a former golfer who has tanked his career and now works retail - selling high priced golf clubs to witless customers. He discovers a golf whiz-kid (Peter Dager) and takes him on the circuit, with his former caddy (Marc Maron) and the kids mother (Mariana Treviño) in tow.

The show is amiable and incredibly easy to binge-watch. But it isn’t anything special. The first episode gets weighed down a bit too much by the personal tragedy that has befallen Wilson’s character, Pryce Cahill. It’s just a bit much for a show as light as this is. And the rest of the characters just don’t really have a lot going for them.

The first three episodes are streaming now. The next seven roll out weekly on Apple TV+.