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I am a child of the 2000s (and specifically San Diego), which is to say that the work of Will Ferrell (and specifically “Anchorman”) is deeply important to me. Star vehicles like “Step Brothers” and “Talladega Nights”
— also, did I mention “Anchorman”? — epitomized the bluster and blissful ignorance of Bush-era masculinity, somehow even more so than Ferrell’s impressions of the president on “Saturday Night Live.” I have a deep and abiding love for Ferrell’s classic work, and I’ve carried that affection to more recent efforts like a bit part in “Barbie” or the delightful “Eurovision Song Contest,” a film inspired by Ferrell’s personal passion for the annual spectacle.
I hope this throat-clearing buys me some credibility when I say this: “The Hawk,” Ferrell’s first time at the top of a scripted TV comedy’s call sheet, is a major disappointment — especially to this longtime resident of a whale’s vagina.
From the start, “The Hawk” is haunted by its own potential. Set within the world of professional golf, the show’s logline instantly evokes “Talladega Nights,” another rise-and-fall-and-rise-again story of a star in a conservative-coded sport. Ferrell fans have also had years to build anticipation for this project specifically: a version of “The Hawk” was first reported in 2023 as a thinly veiled take on the ascendant, Saudi-backed LIV golf tour, a controversial rival to the PGA. Comedian Ramy Youssef boarded the show in 2024, only to exit months later over supposed “creative differences.” Perhaps relatedly, the final version of “The Hawk” only makes a cursory mention of LIV and its attendant geopolitics, focusing on Ferrell’s over-the-hill golfer Lonnie “The Hawk” Hawkins, his attempted return to the PGA tour and his relationship with his son Lance (Jimmy Tatro), now a PGA pro himself.
“The Hawk” took so long to make it to air, in fact, that it got lapped by another streaming-native, father-son golf half-hour led by a 2000s movie star. Owen Wilson’s “Stick,” which premiered last summer on Apple TV, isn’t exactly a masterpiece, but I thought of it often and fondly while making my way through 10 episodes of “The Hawk.” Maybe it’s because the two shows feature some identical iconography, like a tour bus driven by an irascible older caddy, and characters, like an archnemesis whose business savvy and composure contrast with our antihero’s mess. (Here, Luke Wilson subs in for Timothy Olyphant.) Maybe it’s because “Stick,” which has been renewed for a Season 2, is so much better about explaining the fundamentals, appeal and dynamics of professional golf to neophytes — information without which I’d be lost watching “The Hawk,” which barely bothers with such exposition. Or maybe it’s because “Stick” makes use of Wilson’s star persona, but feels so much less beholden to it at the expense of the story than “The Hawk,” which is committed to the glorification of Lonnie, and by extension Ferrell, above all else.
Lonnie is, of course, a textbook Ferrell type: selfish, shameless and oblivious to the ripple effects of these qualities on the people around him. (The Hawk’s way of clearing his mind before a swing is to picture himself shredding air guitar on a golf club to the tune of Steely Dan’s “Reelin’ in the Years.”) He’s also brought to life with the help of two longtime Ferrell associates who stepped in after Youssef’s departure: Harper Steele, “SNL” alum and co-star of the sweet road trip documentary “Will & Harper,” and Chris Henchy, who co-founded Funny Or Die with Ferrell and his former producing partner Adam McKay, a director whose interest in social issues hasn’t always served him well but is sorely missed here.
Without the rise of a disruptive force like LIV and with a creative team whose perspective is so closely wedded to Ferrell’s, “The Hawk” mostly floats along, missing both the bite of satire and the driving force of narrative momentum. To the extent “The Hawk” has an inciting incident, it’s the death of Hawk’s longtime caddy Old Henry (Keith David) and his replacement by Sam (Fortune Feimster), a drifter who knows nothing about irons or birdies but shares Hawk’s joie de vivre. (Her first purchase with tourney winnings is an all-leather tracksuit, which pairs nicely with Hawk’s loudly patterned pants. Costume designer Christie Wittenborn makes her mark!) A buddy comedy about two ne’er-do-wells shaking up the staid, starchy world of country club athletes is a fun idea, but Sam seems to kickstart Lonnie’s comeback with a single pep talk before disappearing for much of the season’s middle stretch. “The Hawk” seems wary of attributing Lonnie’s sudden renaissance to anyone but Lonnie himself, which also makes it feel somewhat random because Lonnie is also immune to introspection or change.
Once Lonnie makes it back onto the PGA circuit, he’s in direct competition with his own son, whose trauma response to his absentee father’s hedonism is rigorous, self-denying discipline that starts to evaporate under stress. Lance has a more interesting, or at least more clearly defined, arc than Hawk’s stubborn stasis that’s entertainingly acted by “American Vandal” star Tatro, though he’s surrounded by female characters who suffer from lack of dimension. Lance’s fiancée Natalie (Katelyn Taver), an “aspiring fitness influencer,” is a mostly ignored voice of reason rather than a comic creation in her own right, despite how much there is to parody about her chosen profession; Lonnie’s ex-wife and Lance’s mother Stacy is an absolutely criminal misuse of Ferrell’s frequent screen partner Molly Shannon. Stacy gets little to do besides ply a canned cocktail and scream joke-free lines about how much she hates her ex, though at least Lonnie does admiringly (and accurately) note how hot she is.
But there’s no bigger problem with “The Hawk” than Lonnie himself. The show makes him grating enough to be tiresome while stopping shy of giving the character real edge, stranding Lonnie in an uncanny valley between the two poles. When Lonnie tells Lance he wouldn’t let him play with Legos because he didn’t want his son to end up “half a fag,” I gasped at the flash of something truly ugly. (Most of Lonnie’s antics are goofball stuff like getting into a mid-course squabble with a colleague.) Minutes later, though, we’re told a traumatic memory from Lance’s childhood was an invention; he doesn’t have to forgive his father for it, because there’s nothing to forgive. Lonnie was a bad parent, we’re told, but he wasn’t that bad, because “The Hawk” can’t bear to let him be.
On the whole, Lonnie comes off like a half-baked, softened version of a Danny McBride protagonist — perhaps not a coincidence, given that McBride collaborator David Gordon Green is the producing director on “The Hawk.” McBride is arguably to Trump’s America what Ferrell was to Bush’s: a performer in possession of a fine-tuned ear for the messages a messed-up culture sends to men in search of identity, with results that only get more unpleasant over time as the underlying illness goes untreated. But “The Hawk” doesn’t feel especially reflective of a time or place. The show’s interests are theoretically in a nuclear family gradually coming back together, though even that theme is halfheartedly pursued. Once Lonnie’s mojo returns, he finds that legions of fans from his prime have just been waiting to watch him play once more. As a longtime Ferrell enthusiast, I can’t say “The Hawk” inspires the same emotion.
All 10 episodes of “The Hawk” are now streaming on Netflix.
