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A core concept for making fiction funny is to inflict pain on your characters—put them in the toughest situations imaginable. This comes to mind when watching Ballers Episode 9: “Head-On.” In this penultimate episode of Season One, story lines are being wrapped up and the core conflicts are moving towards their climactic resolutions. Given that the series is a comedy, even though not a traditional multi-camera sit-com, it is worth a look at how the writers and production team of Ballers create their own comedic payoffs.

Throughout the season, the writers have been inflicting pain on Spencer Strasmore (Dwayne Johnson). Most of the time, though, this pain fails to play for comic effect. His storylines remained some of the more serious in this less-than-serious show. In this episode, perhaps the most serious and pervasive conflict for Spencer, his head injury/flashbacks/lingering guilt over ending another player’s career, comes front and center. The writers sacrificed dramatic tension for comedic payoff and let Spencer off easy. His (second) brain scan is clear. The player whose career he ended (Michael Cudlitz) just happens to live there in Miami and run a collision repair shop. (So literal it’s not even funny.) Spencer happens to have Marlins’ tickets and Collision Dan’s kid is a huge Marlins fan. There is a moment of awkwardness between the two men when Spencer wants to talk out their issues, but this is quickly swept away. Dan suffered no ill effects from Spencer’s mega-hit and actually thanks Spencer for ending his less than stellar career. “It was a mercy kill,” he tells Spencer. So, in one fail swoop, the writers have wiped away the complicated, scary backstory that Spencer wrestled with the first eight episodes, all without hardly any trace of comedy or irony.

Thankfully, the other leads don’t get this kid-glove treatment. Charles is poised for his big comeback, but his first drills with the GM of the Dolphins do not go well, particularly when the GM keeps calling him “sugar tits.” Charles falls on his ass, literally and figuratively. Vernon, who has been anticipating his new contract with Dallas all season, goes missing-in-action when the call finally does come.

Ricky has consistently been one of the most interesting, dynamic, and entertaining characters. It is with Ricky that the writers have continually inflicted pain for comedic effect. In “Head-On” he is still trying to figure out a way to make Annabella forgive him and reconcile. In this episode, he hangs a painting that was a gift from her, trying to demonstrate to her that he is done with “low hanging fruit,” but to no avail. He’s pulling out the stops, but still can’t fully commit to reforming his “bad boy” ways. His fun house is still in play.

With Spencer’s most difficult conflicts resolved ahead of the finale, this makes room for the ensemble conflicts to take center stage in the last episode. In That’s Funny But Why: Alan Alda on the Science of Humor, on Bloomberg.com, Alda says that funny is found at the intersection of things that are “both inevitable and surprising.” The Season One finale should payoff in both of these ways.