Lights Out: The Shot

Things keep getting worse for the Leary family. While Lights is busy doing anything he can to keep his family afloat, Pops and Johnny are busy screwing things up. Pops is only trying to help, as he jumps at the opportunity to get Omar Assarian—Leary’s Gym’s next and maybe last hope—a title fight after another boxer drops out. Johnny’s also trying to get Omar that same fight, but you get the impression there’s no limit to how low Johnny will go for a couple of bucks. Sure, he’s also trying to help, but he’s going to screw things up big time for all of them.

Johnny’s actually a perfect foil for Lights. They’ll both do whatever it takes to get their families back on stable financial ground, but Lights wants to dig everyone out of a hole while Johnny seems perfectly willing throw everyone back in it. At the very least, Johnny’s ignorant to the fact that he’s making the hole deeper. He’s also kind of a schleazeball. As soon as he talks to Barry K. Word’s receptionist, you know he’s going to be using her to get an upper hand over the other managers trying to get Omar’s fight.

Even though this episode had a ton of Rocky elements in it, like Lights taking Omar under his wing and training the young fighter to reach his untapped potential, the closing sequence provided a nice ending to the episode. The two main running storylines revolve around Lights’s wife and kids planning something special for his 40th birthday and getting Omar that title bout. In the final minutes, we see simultaneously the life Lights built around boxing and, through Omar’s fight, his realization that everything he built is about to fall. When Omar hits the mat, Lights falls back into his couch, and that’s the image we’re left with: Lights hitting his sofa cushions feeling every bit of the knockout as Omar.

Sidenote: Reg E. Cathey as Barry K. Word needs to be involved way more as the show progresses. His smooth talking boxing promoter seems to be a cross between a bald Don King and a bald version of his character, Norman Wilson, from The Wire. He’s fifteen steps ahead of everyone and can smooth talk his way through anything. I’m sure we’ll see him in the future, when Lights and “Death Row” Reynolds finally have their rematch. Hopefully, that’s not the only time we see Barry Word.

Other sidenote: Who was Lights sending money to? I couldn’t read the envelope. Was it the child support Johnny should’ve been paying? Why was he sealing the envelope at the mailbox? Who does that? Also, why did the handwriting look so childish? Lights can write, can’t he?

Last sidenote: “Death Row” Reynolds buying Lights’s gloves on QVC and giving them back was pretty badass. I believe Lights owes Mr. Reynolds 25 grand after that.