Stick Season 1, Episode 7, “Dreams Never Remembered,” plays with time and tropes to bring the sports comedy’s found family back together. This episode, written by Jason Keller & Bryan Johnson and directed by M.J. Delaney, bends its 29-minute runtime to its will. This episode pulls off a lot, and never once does “Dreams Never Remembered” feel bloated. If anything, it adequately highlights what the show could do more. “Dreams Never Remembered” shifts Stick’s road trip into an exciting new gear as its debut season enters its final act. With new stakes on the picnic table, Stick’s detour may make the season stronger.
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An Unexplored Friendship
One of the reasons “Dreams Never Remembered” is exciting is that it works with one of the show’s most unexplored dynamics – Mitts and Zero. It’s unfortunate that this development comes seven episodes into the season and in only one scene. The silver lining is that there aren’t that many scenes in this episode. Much of “Dreams Never Remembered” is extended sequences that pull back the characters’ layers. Compared to nearly all the other dynamics on Stick, the scene at the bus station has a lot of heavy lifting to do for Mitts and Zero.
Sometimes, it buckles under that pressure – Mitts calling him and Zero friends is a bit odd. Stick makes Mitts more vocal about his distrust of Zero than his friendship with them. Presumably, the two built this rapport during that montage in “The Birdie Machine.” So, it’s a letdown that Stick doesn’t explore Mitts and Zero’s friendship beyond that until now. Still, their conversation goes to interesting places. The dialogue focuses slightly more on Mitts helping Zero see Santi’s perspective than on Mitts’ understanding of Zero’s.
If Stick wants to establish these characters as friends, Mitts being even slightly more receptive to Zero’s point of view would help. Maybe “Dreams Never Remembered” is the beginning of that process, and the show will feature this dynamic more prominently in the remainder of the season. Time will only tell, but Mitts giving Zero money for food is a friendly gesture that also tells a lot.
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Repeating Mistakes or Breaking Patterns?
While there’s still plenty to see from Mitts and Zero, Elena and Santi’s mother/son relationship remains one of Stick’s best and well-established dynamics. Mariana Treviño and Peter Dager do wonderful, vulnerable work together in “Dreams Never Remembered.” Their chemistry and the strength of what’s on the page make it so their characters’ relationship feel believable and lived-in from the first episode. Therefore, it works when Stick brings Elena and Santi to emotionally raw places, like those in “Dreams Never Remembered.”
This episode can make it so the memories – and the weight of them – of Santi’s father don’t just loom over Santi and the narrative; they feel present. That tension starts to feel like another character at the diner with Elena and Santi. All of which contributes to the tightrope Elena walks in trying to preserve some optimistic portrait of his father in Santi’s eyes. It’s compelling to see how that conflicts with Elena’s protectiveness of her son. Therefore, Stick earns Elena’s relief when Santi agrees to turn the page, as well as her hesitancy when he wants to return to the game and, more importantly, Pryce.
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The Team’s New Challenge and Hustle
It’s great that “Dreams Never Remembered” literally gives Pryce the time to get back to Santi. The end of “RV Shangri-La” naturally leads into this episode’s interconnected doors, where memories meld with imagination. Delaney’s direction is key to making this sequence dream-like, disorienting, and also something in between. It’s clever for the warmth of a real memory to pull Pryce – and the audience – into this hopeful spiral. The same is true for those words Pryce never got to say to Jett, gradually set to a cooler-toned background, to be the glue between the scenes. They also signal that something is amiss.
Even so, it’s painful to pull out of that alternate reality with Pryce, and a lot of that is because Owen Wilson navigates it all with Pryce’s heart on his sleeve. Stick helps bring that emotional resonance in how those scenes, though short, almost linger into the next. It plays with time so that even though a significant portion of this episode takes place in that space, it never feels wasteful.
It’s effective in understanding Pryce, his grief, and his next steps in apologizing to Santi. Hopefully, there is more reconciliation, particularly between Santi and Zero, coming. Regardless, “Dreams Never Remembered” more than succeeds at reuniting these characters in a common goal – pulling a hustle on Timothy Olyphant’s Clark Ross.
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What did you think of Stick Season 1, Episode 7, “Dreams Never Remembered?” Let us know in the comments below!
New episodes of Stick stream on Wednesdays on Apple TV+.
