"The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers" is a fun series that is warmly familiar to any adult
who remembers the '90s trilogy of "Mighty Ducks" films. But callbacks to the original
movies aren't the only things the grown-ups in the audience will pick up on. These are
the details, nods, and references only adults will notice in "The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers."
In "Game On," Episode 1 of "Game Changers," we meet Alex Morrow in her workplace. A paralegal
for a corporate law firm, Alex is hurrying to get out of the office in order to get her
son Evan to practice with the Ducks. But before she can make it out the door, her boss holds
her up with one last task.
When Alex tries to suggest a female coworker take on the work instead, her boss shuts the
idea down with a dispiriting comparison. Alex gets compared to her coworker as an employee
and as a hockey mom, and in both instances, she's implied to be found wanting.
"Can we put a pin in this? I've got to go. Maybe Stephanie could take a look at it?"
"No, no, Stephanie's long gone. She had to take her kids to hockey practice. You know
she never misses it. She's a great mom."
Kids will be amused at work not going Alex's way, but only adults will pick up on just
how real Alex's predicament is. Alex, a working single mom, is expected to perform above and
beyond at work, but she's also expected to be a "great mom" who never misses a hockey
practice. If she tries to do one, she can't have the other, and if she tries to do both
things, she'll come up short on both of them. She can't quite have it all, but it's clear
that she's expected to. It's an impossible standard that working women everywhere will
find all too familiar.
"This one works so hard — and such a great attitude."
Scenes of the parents at the hockey rink won't connect with kids, beyond the obvious fact
of the parents pushing their progeny way too hard on the ice. But any parent who has had
a kid compete in organized group sports will find these scenes unsettlingly familiar.
Most parents know there are two types of adults who get involved in youth athletics: The ones
whose kids are participating for fun, and the ones who are in it to win it.
The parents in "Game Changers" are definitely a little exaggerated — most parents have
probably not already consulted a college counselor for their 11-year-olds. Still, adults watching
the show are likely to either relate to Alex's laid-back approach to her kid's hockey career,
or the deeply invested hockey parents who sign their kids up for $1,000 clinics and
crack-of-dawn practices with private trainers.
"Oh, I'm not a trainer. I'm a pediatric sports psychologist." "Ugh — does no one see the
insanity but me?"
While "Game Changers" definitely feels more sympathetic to Alex's point of view, both
types of parents are vividly portrayed. Moreover, both types are completely real. "Game Changers"
is facing reality head-on in this detail, in a way grown-up viewers appreciate.
On the hunt for new team members, Evan and Nick seek out someone who keeps beating them
in an online hockey game. From his username, "Koob13," they determine that he must be 13
years old, and manage to sleuth out his home address. They proceed to invite themselves
over to his house and make their pitch for him to join the team. Thus, Jaden Koobler
becomes their goalie.
Kids will likely accept this plotline at face value, but adults may be horrified at the
implications.
"Username 'Koob13.'"
"Jaden Koobler. Our age. Played this game for 10,000 hours. Where are his parents?"
First of all, there's the fact that these kids assume that someone who has played over
10,000 hours of an online game is their age, based solely on the number in his name. For
all they know, Koob could be a grown adult whose morals are completely unknown. He might
not even be any good at real life hockey! But the thought that it may be dangerous to
go to a stranger's house without telling anyone where they're going doesn't seem to occur
to Evan or Nick.
Then there's the fact that they go from looking him up on their phones to knowing his home
address. Even putting aside the extreme coincidence that he happens to attend their school and
live within walking distance of their houses, it's troubling that two 12-year-olds can find
the home address of another kid with nothing but his first name and an internet search
engine.
When Alex stumbles across the Ice Palace, she crosses paths with Gordon Bombay, star
of the first two "Mighty Ducks" movies. But when she asks to use his space for hockey
practice, he refuses with a line that people who saw all three original movies may find
surprising.
"Here's the long and short of it: I hate hockey, and I don't like kids."
This line will be familiar to fans of the films — it's the same thing he says in the
first "Mighty Ducks" movie when meeting his team for the first time.
"Now here's the long and the short of it: I hate hockey, and I don't like kids."
While kids may pick up on the obvious callback if they've seen the first film, they'll likely
miss what this suggests about Gordon himself.
Last we saw him in "D3: The Mighty Ducks," he was leaving to be Director of Player Personnel
for the Junior Goodwill Games Committee, putting him in charge of their international junior
hockey program. Later, he returns with his lawyer hat on, arguing for the scholarships
of his former players. He leaves with a smile on his face after witnessing their victory
in the final game.
So what happened between "D3" and "Game Changers" to make Gordon so bitter again? Gordon was
last seen accepting a dream job to help kids around the world play hockey. Now he hates
both kids and hockey again? Adults will quickly realize something significant and depressing
must have happened to undo his character development from the first three films.
Adults may also notice that the show having Coach Bombay take a page out of the Johnny
Lawrence playbook could be an effort to grab a little bit more of that "Cobra Kai" magic.
"And as always, every customer leaves with their very own bonsai tree."
Much like the helicopter parents of Episode 1 aren't as far off from reality as kids might
think, neither is Alex's chipper, trust-fall approach to coaching. While Alex is one of
the protagonists of "Game Changers," she also represents the other side of the coin, with
regards to parenting — and "Game Changers" makes it clear that different doesn't necessarily
mean better. Episode 2, "Dusters," especially drives home how neither approach is much fun
for the kids.
"Parents trying to engineer their kids' entire lives."
"Yes! I'm trying to pull him away from those freaks."
"You're just as bad as they are."
Just as the Ducks' win-at-all-costs approach robs the sport of joy, so too does Alex's
carefree, "who-cares-if-we're-any-good" attitude. As Evan points out at the end of the episode,
"We're just here to have fun" doesn't hold much water if no one is having any fun because
they're getting completely annihilated by the other team.
"Wow. Ooookay."
Kids will relate to Evan and the team's frustrations with Alex, but may not notice that the episode
serves as a critique of winning-is-nothing parenting just as much as the previous episode
is a critique of winning-is-everything parenting. While both sides are a bit exaggerated for
the show's purposes, they are very much based on real parental approaches to kids' sports.
"Game Changers" argues that while winning definitely isn't everything, it's still important
to at least try — and that behaving otherwise isn't beneficial for kids.
Most people are probably not watching the "Mighty Ducks" films or shows out of a deep
investment in Gordon Bombay's love life, but that hasn't kept it from being a recurring
theme in the franchise. In the first film, he strikes up a romance with Casey Conway,
Charlie Conway's single mom, while acting as the team's coach. They break up before
the second film, but that apparently doesn't dissuade Gordon from falling for other parents
of his players.
It's obvious from their first interaction in "The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers" that
there's a spark between Gordon and Alex. Granted, in the beginning, that spark is closer to
being one of annoyance. But it grows quickly into affection, and before long, it's clear
that Gordon has a bit of a crush.
Alex spends most of the season pretending she doesn't notice his growing interest in
her, but it's hard to miss, even for young viewers. However, kids are a lot less likely
to pick up on the fact that this whole "hitting on the parents" thing is becoming a pattern
for Gordon. For someone who claims to be no fan of kids, he sure does seem to have a thing
for single moms.
Coach T gets pretty shady in "Game Changers" episode 6. After arranging a secret meeting
with Evan, he tries to convince the 12-year-old to return to the Ducks, even giving him tips
about how to manipulate his mother into supporting the decision. Creepy? Definitely! And that's
not all he does.
He also tries to rewrite history in an attempt to make Evan doubt his own memory. When Evan
pushes back on Coach T's "once a Duck, always a Duck" rhetoric, reminding his former coach
that he's the one who cut Evan from the team, Coach T attempts to spin a new narrative.
"Once a Duck, always a Duck."
"Well, kinda. Was a Duck, and then you cut me."
"No! I challenged you. And you've risen to that challenge!"
Of course, while Evan can't rewind his memories to remind himself what really happened, viewers
can. It's obvious in Episode 1 that Coach T's version of events is altering some key
details. Cutting Evan is absolutely not meant as a "challenge" — Coach T cuts him because
he doesn't think he's good enough to remain on the team, end of story.
"Look, you work hard, you're good, but you're not good enough."
Adults will recognize this tactic as an abusive method of psychological manipulation known
as gaslighting, which involves a person making someone else question their own memories or
perception of reality, sparking confusion, anxiety, and doubt. Kids won't miss that something
is weird in how Coach T is suddenly treating Evan differently, but only adults will be
able to pinpoint just how messed up his tactics are.
Throughout "Game Changers," we get a glimpse of how the Mighty Ducks hockey program works,
and it's honestly a little strange. Sofi mentions she first started playing when she was five
years old, and it's clear in Episode 1 that Evan has been playing on the Ducks for at
least a few years in the 9-11 age bracket. Yet the Ducks are clearly a robust program
with many state championships. There must be an older bracket beyond the 12-14 one that
these players eventually graduate to, as well as brackets of younger players working their
way up.
So, where are all these other teams? At the Spirit of the Ducks gala, there's no indication
of any other players outside the 12-14 team. The only parents on the Ducks board are the
parents of the 12-14 players, and they've all been part of the board for years, indicating
that members don't have to be parents of players within a certain bracket.
So do the Ducks just spin up a new team once a decade with whatever five-year-olds happen
to be interested in hockey at the time? That doesn't seem practical or sustainable, and
certainly wouldn't earn them as many championship banners as we see displayed around their home
rink. An adult viewer can't help but wonder where all the other Ducks are, and why we
don't ever hear about them.
When the power goes out at the Ice Palace in Episode 7, "Pond Hockey," Gordon's solution
is to take the Don't Bothers to a nearby pond to practice on the frozen ice. He pulls out
his odd sixth sense from the first movie of knowing how much weight naturally frozen ice
can support, and assures a doubtful Alex that the kids will be safe skating on the pond.
Somehow, that's enough to convince her. Sure enough, the ice holds firm, and the kids come
together as a team in the great outdoors.
However, while Gordon manages to convince Alex to let her kid on the ice, they never
run this plan by any of the other Don't Bothers parents.
"This doesn't make me nervous at all. You're totally not going to fall through the ice."
Moreover, it's highly unlikely that those permission forms they signed consented to
Alex taking their kids out onto the questionable surface of a naturally frozen pond. Luckily,
nothing bad happens on the pond, but still, Alex risks parents pulling kids from the team.
As a person in the legal profession, Alex really should consider more angles beyond
Gordon's Spidey-sense before agreeing to his plan.
In "Head Games," the Don't Bothers are nearly sidelined when Gordon admits to Coach T that
he received an NCAA suspension a decade earlier, and Coach T reports him to the tournament
board. Since the State Tournament is an NCAA certified event, all coaches are required
to be NCAA approved in order for their teams to compete. However, Alex successfully argues
that the Don't Bothers should be exempt from this rule, since their team was never scouted,
and Gordon is allowed to continue coaching.
It's a victorious moment, but adults may be left wondering what the Don't Bothers would
have done if a scout ever had shown up at one of their games, since it seems highly
unlikely that Alex is an NCAA approved coach either. After all, she volunteers to coach
solely because no one else is willing to do it. She knows nothing about hockey, and spends
the whole season flying by the seat of her pants. That means that if the Don't Bothers
coaches hadn't been saved on a lucky technicality, they would've been disqualified from States
before even stepping foot on the ice.
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