Netflix's Hoops, a raunchy cartoon released on August 21, is definitely for adults. Just as this series isn’t for kids, neither is its main character, Ben Hopkins (Jake Johnson, New Girl), who coaches the Lenwood High School basketball team.
Ben is an inappropriate and immature character, who often says “fuck.” He also has bizarre fascinations he makes known to all, such as with the film Little Man Tate, and a dream of getting his “multiple dicks sucked.”
In the opening of the pilot, Ben’s team of misfit basketball players loses terribly, yet he puts his two cents in, yelling:
It's not my fault a hamster that you tied to a string and shoved up your ass chewed off the string and now you’re standing there, with a piece of string, but the hamster’s eating away at the inside of your asshole.” ...
Oh fuckin, my fucking life! We’re getting pounded inside the way your momma pounds your fucking sister.”
Such behavior is nothing new, apparently. Ben’s boss, Principal Opal Lowry (Cleo King), just rolls her eyes.
In the locker room, Ben is no more qualified to be around minors:
Ben: We’re the shortest team in the league. But you can’t teach size. I can’t teach size! My problem is I care too much. I love this game. I love basketball, and I love this team, right here. I love you guys. I love coaching you guys.
DJ: You’re missing the point, coach.
Ben: Oh, and what’s the point, DJ?
DJ: Coach, you said if we won the game, you’d give us your Bang Bus password.
Ben: Well, we lost.
DJ: Well, we want it anyway.
Ben: No! I’m sick of always bein’ a pushover. Not anymore! I’m sticking to my guts this time.
Time Bomb: Come on, coach, I wanna see some banging on some buses!
Ben: Fine. Username: BOOBIES. Password: LOVETOLICKEM. Both case-sensitive, all caps. And make sure you spell “boobies” with ten “O’s.” “BOOOOOOOOOOBIES.”
Time Bomb: What about Scott?
Scott: Yeah, what about me?
Ben: What, the Bang Bus doesn’t pick up gay guys?
Scott: No!
Ben: Look, I don’t have any of the memberships to the gay sites!
DJ: That’s not fair! Right guys?
Team: Bullshit! Bullshit! Bullshit!
Ben: All right! All right! Shut up! Jesus! I wish you guys were this unified on the fucking court. [Hands laptop to Scott]. Here’s my credit card, go buy yourself something handsome.
That he “care[s] too much” is surely his problem.
Beyond enticing minors with pornography, Ben tries to better his team by scouting 16-year-old Matty (A.D. Miles). Ben is so desperate to have an unenthusiastic Matty play that he makes him an offer. “Look, if you penetrate a woman before Saturday, will you play in the game?” Ben asks, taking Matty’s non answer as a yes.
Ultimately, Ben decides to seek out the services of Connie (Mary Holland), a friend of his who is a washed out prostitute. As Connie explains her price point, Ben vocally disagrees:
Connie: So you pay me to fuck this kid and you get an infinity pool? Ben, I’m a hooker, not an idiot.
Ben: Essentially yes. You’re skipping the part about all my dicks being sucked, but you seem to have a handle on it, Connie.
Connie: OK. Anyway, it’s $500 for penetration, but I can give him a blower for $250.
Ben: You’re telling me that fucking is twice as much as a blow job? Fucking? Most of the time, with fucking, you just gotta lay there. It’s the blow job you do all your heavy lifting. If I’m you, I combine the two things. Fucking is twice as much as a blow job! Connie, I say this as one of your oldest friends, that doesn’t make any sense. And also, from the guy’s point of view, fucking isn’t twice as good as a blow job. Me, personally, I don’t like fucking. It’s exhausting. A blow job? Sure. But fucking? No way! This whole pricing system is a goddamn mess. You’re sittin’ there, you’re sucking all those fucking dicks, fucking these guys. You gotta suck four dicks, for two fucks. Honey, your numbers don’t add up. Your neck is gonna fall off from sucking all those dicks.
Connie: My mouth and cooter are like CarMax: ‘No negotiation and close to the airport.’
Ben: Listen, let’s cut the shit. I got $85 to my name. To my name, Connie.
Connie: Eighty-five bucks gets you a knee job. That’s over the pants, I just kind of rub my knee around on it.
Ben: I promised this kid insertion.
Connie: Insertion for $85? [Laughs] I wouldn’t let him insert a tampon for $85.
Ben may not know yet how to come up with the money, but he tells Connie to “put a squirt emoji in your iCal, you’re having sex with a teenager.”
When other options fall through, Ben takes money from his players, including piggy bank savings, stipends for Weight Watchers, and Bar Mitzvah money. Viewers later learn that this has happened before.
Inevitably, Ben and Connie are arrested once the police show up to Matty’s house. Though she ought to fire Ben, Opal decides against it, as Matty decided to play after all.
Minors are placed in inappropriate situations around adults throughout the season including:
- Ben joking to his players about drug use and bestiality in the episode “Ethics.”
- In that same episode, Ben uses his team in his attempt to entrap the Ethics teacher into passing Matty so that the star player can maintain his GPA.
- In “Matty Gets a Girlfriend,” the boys steal a truck and turn it into a “Boyfriend Bus,” a play off of the “Bang Bus.”
- Once he finds out Matty is dating Wendy, in order to break them up, Ben lies to Wendy’s mom about how Matty calls Ben Cosby “boyfriend goals.”
- That same episode, Opal explains what “a bush” is to Matty, who is then accidentally shown a sex tape of Ben and his ex.
- In “The Strike,” Ben takes a preoccupation with drawing penises in front of the boys in the locker room.
The show is rated MA, rightfully so. Yet Hoops features impressionable minors being taken advantage of by adults. Many of these young men, especially Matty, seem to be lacking a positive role model in their life, which otherwise ought to be Ben, as their coach.
Hoops might be horrifying on its own, but it is far from the only Netflix show sexualizing minors:
- When it comes to animation, Big Mouth sexualizes middle schoolers while F Is for Family sexualized young children.
- You may have heard the outcry surrounding Cuties, a film premiering on Netflix which features scantily clad twerking preteens.
- Netflix canceled their series involving drag queen RuPaul and a 10-year old. It was only for one season, but shouldn’t have been on at all.
- Nostalgia be damned, Netflix’s television adaptation of The Babysitters Club engaged in child abuse by featuring a trans child.
- From the very first scene, Netflix let viewers know that Teenage Bounty Hunters was going to be a problem, as a 16-year-old seduces her boyfriend with Bible verses.
- There’s plenty to Netflix’s Sex Education series. Its first season featured an abortion, while its second season opened with trans teens, masturbation, and the Morning After pill.
Any one of these shows would be a problem, but that there appears to be a pattern is particularly disturbing.
Contact Netflix on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, their website, or call 844-505-2993 to express your outrage.
