The League, FXX’s sports-comedy-that’s-not-really-about-sports, returned to TV recently for a sixth season of fantasy football and hideously inventive trash talk. The show has a beautiful knack for capturing the shared idiotic patois that can develop between long-time friends, and a big part of that is the growing list of running jokes and inside references built up over the years by the writers and actors who craft the show’s largely improvised dialogue.
That same density can also be daunting to new viewers, though they might benefit from this piece over at Esquire where the show’s cast and writers run through the in-show and real-life inspiration for many of the program’s foul and bizarre running gags—including the family-tormenting origins of the menacing figure known only as the Bobbum Man.
A lot of these, unsurprisingly, come from The League’s filthy, murderous, beautiful secret weapon: Jason Mantzoukas’ weirdly sweet id-monster Rafi, who exists in his own horrible little world, nested like a tumor within the already-pretty-awful reality inhabited by the rest of the League.