I'm Going Down

Why "Eastbound and Down" is more relevant than ever

Author

Jesse Raub
July 14, 2025

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You’re fucking out, I’m fucking in

There’s a part during the second episode of Eastbound and Down’s first season that tells you everything you need to know about the show. Kenny Powers, dressed in all black with his mullet slicked back, shows up to the elementary school dance he’s supposed to be chaperoning after a promotional appearance at Ashley Schaeffer BMW goes awry. He declares his love for April Buchanon high out of his mind, and when she’s slow to react, he clears the dance floor of children to make space for himself. “Work, drugs,” he says over his shoulder, slyly, answering a question that no one asked. He proceeds to win the crowd over with some impromptu moves set to a hip-hop remix of the already remixed “A Fifth of Beethoven” before puking all over the floor.

It’s not that the show is revealing that Kenny Powers, a washed-up former relief pitcher, would show up to a school dance gakked out of his skull—it’s everyone’s reaction to him after the fact. In the library, his fellow teachers show concern for his well-being instead of disgust at his behavior. “It was the egg rolls, not the ecstasy,” he growls. “Okay,” says Cutler, the principal. His new gym teacher, not even a week on the job, just threw up at a school dance and admitted he was on a Schedule I narcotic. “See you Monday,” he offers as Kenny Powers walks off.

Eastbound and Down is focused on answering one question: “What would happen if the biggest asshole in the world walked into a room?” We would all like to think that we’d respond strongly to a man loudly proclaiming racist and sexist comments in a room, but the show gives us a better reflection of our reality. In real life, the easiest way to deal with an asshole is to avoid confrontation. Making a stand for what’s right is brave, and if the last 15 months told us anything, it’s that most of us are cowards.

It’s an understandable reaction. Throughout the show, most characters get to live the way they want to if they just let Kenny Powers bluster his way past them. His brother, Dustin, maintains a fairly normal suburban life as a contractor with his family. His wife, Cassie, is willing to be woken up in the middle of the night to attend to eBay auctions that aren’t going Kenny’s way. Letting Kenny live with them is a burden, but the tacit understanding is that trying to oppose him would bring more conflict out of his oppositionally defiant nature. In the fourth season, when Gene, the husband of one of April’s friends, mildly stands up to Kenny, Kenny flat-out ruins Gene’s life to protect himself. Even when Kenny comes clean, admitting to Dixie that Gene didn’t have the sordid cocaine-fueled affair he described, Kenny Powers isn’t immediately cast out of everyone’s social circle for sociopathic behavior.

Eastbound and Down is a character profile more than a narrative show. Plot points come and go quickly to better stage Kenny’s reaction to them than to build a complex story. In season 3, Russian pitcher Ivan Dochenko arrives in Myrtle Beach to be Kenny Powers’ new rival. In seven episodes, however, Ivan’s screen time is limited to less than 20 minutes. He shows up, he presents a threat, he bests Kenny, Kenny reacts, and eventually, saves the day by striking out a batter when Ivan couldn’t. Even Kenny’s reunion with his deadbeat father is mostly relegated to a single episode. What showrunners Danny McBride, Jody Hill, and Ben Best want you to see on screen is the face of a man processing his ego through a never-ending, unchecked id. And then, of course, the fallout from that.

It’s odd how politically relevant Eastbound and Down has been since the start of Donald Trump’s political rise. Kenny Powers represents a version of an American who wants everything and wants to sacrifice nothing. He’s someone who understands that racism is bad, and yet, can’t stop leaning into it whenever it suits his own rise to fame. “I need to ask you a very important question, and I need you to be 100% motherfucking honest with me,” says a Tampa Bay scout. “All that racist, homophobic talk that you used to be known for—has that changed at all?” Powers’ retort starts with how he’s basically become a new man since baseball. “But yeah, that stuff is still all the same,” he finishes. It’s not his fastball that caught the eye of the majors—his ball-playing ability is just his ticket into the league so that his antics can drum up attention.

In a way, Eastbound and Down predicted a second Trump term better than any pundit paid to examine the political landscape. Americans want spectacle and a permission structure to be the worst versions of themselves. Baseball and TV audiences find that in Kenny Powers until he ultimately turns on them. We’re seeing the same shift with Trump right now. The manosphere is horrified at his draconian immigration enforcement, and his die-hard faithful are splintering over the Epstein files. You can be as self-serving as you want to be as long as you deliver what your fans are asking for. The moment you don’t, that permission structure to be selfish and petty will backfire immediately.

Kenny Powers isn’t a man of second chances. He’s a man of fourth, sixth, and eighth chances. Every season eventually comes to the same turning point: you can be the biggest asshole in the room and get away with it, but only for so long. And when that confrontation comes, like all proper assholes, Kenny will blow his entire life up, kicking and screaming to avoid reform until he finally acquiesces. The only thing is that Eastbound and Down is a redemption story, and more importantly, fiction. Kenny Powers wants redemption, and people are willing to offer it to him time and time again. The key difference between Eastbound and Down and the current political climate is the desire to do better, to be better. When the confrontation comes, he wants atonement. The same can’t be said for Trump’s cadre of goons, lackeys, and other depraved nitwits. That is to say, the confrontation needs to happen, and when it does, it needs to come with a simple declaration of the will of the people: you’re fucking out, I’m fucking in.

Read

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Watch

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Listen

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Consume

  • Chicken Sandwich

I had a great chicken sandwich yesterday.

Artwork by Ashley Elander Strandquist. You can view her illustration work here and check out her printing business here.