Lights Out: The Comeback

Last night’s episode of Lights Out was all family drama, which sounds lame but isn’t. The family dynamic—complete with money problems, deception, and shattered dreams—is what makes the show interesting. Lights Out obviously aspires to be about a normal American family fallen victim to the current financial crisis. The first 30 minutes of “The Comeback” is a whole lot of Patrick arguing with his wife and daughters. While that’s not terribly entertaining, it’s terribly honest. All of their conversations also seem to be burdened by the Leary financial planner telling Theresa straight up that the dream she’s finally pursuing just isn’t good enough. I imagine more than a few Americans can relate to that (though maybe the show’s ratings prove me wrong). In other family news, Patrick finally fires Johnny as his manager and primary money handler once he finds out Johnny has already sold Patrick’s next fight to the awesomely evil Barry K. Word.

Barry essentially owns Patrick’s future now. He’s like Don King, in that he’s a boxing promoter who will do anything for a dollar (like destroy Joe-Joe’s “glass” hands). He also steals the show in this episode. Unlike Hal Brennan, Word is completely open with his cruelty, and when Patrick walks out on him, he knows as well as we do that he should not be effing around with Word. The good news (for us) is Patrick doesn’t have a choice. 

Now Patrick has to take on something (someone?) much larger than he is. Well, I suppose we’ve known that all along, but Patrick has confronted one of the forces working against him. He’s also unwittingly allied himself with another one of those forces in Hal Brennan. All this in the name of fighting back against his own family’s economic crisis. Unfortunately, he’ll have to do it without Theresa. I get the feeling that she’s much smarter than Patrick, and she’s not willing to give her whole family to Mr. Word. 

Random note: I’m glad Patrick finally yelled at his daughter Daniella. Not only was she starting to annoy me a little bit, but I’ve been waiting to see him lose his patience with someone in his family. Patrick bottles things up hoping they’ll go away. It’s probably why he boxes. It’s also why he has outbursts like yelling at his daughter, throwing Word’s table, and trashing Johnny’s office (earlier this season). What he actually said to Daniella was some of the better dialogue in the episode.

Other random note: I mentioned before that Patrick’s relationship with his father is stuck somewhere in the teen years. I kind of like it. There was a lot of “Aw, but why, Dad?” moments in this episode that made me chuckle.

Last random note: Pops also had one of the best lines. When Theresa asked how he felt about her making Patrick quit boxing, Pops responded: “I’m not gonna lie. It pissed me off.”