Hank Azaria’s Baseball Comedy BROCKMIRE Takes ‘A Big Swing’ in Fourth and Final Season

By BILL HARRIS Special to The Lede Millions of fans are missing sports in these turbulent times of coronavirus. In normal circumstances, baseball season – always a sure sign of spring – would be fast approaching. Well, Hank Azaria’s comedy series BROCKMIRE, set in the world of baseball, can at least provide some big laughs. The fourth and final season of BROCKMIRE debuts Thursday, only on Crave, with new episodes weekly (the first three seasons are available in their entirety on Crave). Azaria plays Jim Brockmire, a disgraced baseball announcer who has been trying to rebuild his life and career in the minor leagues. It all started with Azaria having perfected that classic “baseball announcer voice,” which he has been doing since he was a teenager. “That’s what got me into it in the first place – why do these guys speak like this? Do they always talk like this?” Azaria said. “I didn’t initially see the depth in all this, or the narrative, that (head writer and executive producer) Joel Church-Cooper did. I saw what was funny about this essentially as a sketch in a pretty sophomoric way. But it feels very satisfying to end it the way we have, and tell the full story. I’m glad we did it that way.” The general premise of the fourth and final season of BROCKMIRE has been spoken about openly by everyone associated with the show, but we’ll issue a SPOILER ALERT here, in case viewers don’t want to hear it. The new season leaps forward in time, and begins in the year 2030. Society has endured some significant worst-case scenarios, and against all odds, Jim Brockmire has become the commissioner of baseball. “Our fearless head writer Joel really loves social satire, and so he’s always looking for ways to be meta, and make larger societal statements,” Azaria explained. “My idea for Season 4 was, hey, let’s go backwards in time and fill in the lost BROCKMIRE years and just have a big, silly, drunken, drug-fueled romp. But Joel really had this vision of, no, I want to project – I want to see where baseball and society is in 10, 15 years. And I couldn’t talk him down off of that.” Azaria acknowledged, though, that it’s a bold move, and he had some reservations. “It did seem like – pardon the pun – a big swing to me,” Azaria said. “BROCKMIRE is only funny if it’s happening in the real world, I think, so Joel had to find some way to get us there, given where society is, from Point A to Point B to Point C. The last episode of Season 3 kind of departed and was a real societal statement. I had raised my eyebrows a little at that script – I was like, well, let’s see how we do. But that episode came out great, which I thought bode – boded, is boded the past tense of bode? – boded well for this season.” Notably, Amanda Peet’s character Jules James is back for Season 4. “I was really excited to play a middle-aged woman who’s not interested in being a mother and not interested in being someone’s wife,” said Peet, referring to her initial involvement with the show. “I was just really excited to play such a nutty character. I think everybody wanted to explore some other avenues with BROCKMIRE, but I always hoped that I would come back, and that Jules and Jim would resume their love affair, and we would end on this note.” Azaria still can’t quite believe the path that BROCKMIRE has taken, from fine-tuning a voice over decades just for fun, to making an online short, to a possible movie that actually went into pre-production, to eventually landing as a TV show that has endured for four seasons. “Isn’t it kind of a crazy journey?” Azaria said. “But I’ll still do the voice. I’ve been doing it since I was 15 years old, so I’m not going to stop now.” billharristv@gmail.com @billharris_tv