Lights Out: Bolo Punch

After last week’s episode, Rachel (TNIB editor and girlfriend extraordinaire) said that it’s hard to watch a show where only bad things happen. This fourth episode of Lights Out sure had its share of terrible things, as it brought the Leary family even farther down the toilet. Johnny gets into more trouble, has the butts beaten out of him, and forces Patrick to save his arse yet again. While saving his brother’s arse, Patrick gets beat down by some hired muscle/MMA fighter. The other bad things: Theresa makes a $50,000 donation pledge to help rebuild a clinic in Haiti because she doesn’t realize they don’t have any money, Theresa’s credit cards get declined and confiscated in front of the Leary daughters and their friends, Omar pulls a gun on the Leary boys and, later, quits boxing.

The list goes on, but there’s good news in all of this as well. Patrick finally had to tell Theresa they’ve lost their entire fortune, so there’s no more secrets between the two (besides his pugilist’s dementia). The timing was perfect, as I just started to think he wasn’t a good enough liar to keep hiding something of such large magnitude from his wife. It also allowed a better part of Theresa’s character to finally be revealed.

I never got the feeling that she loved Lights for his money, but seeing her packing up her jewelry to sell off for a quick buck confirms what she says about sticking with Patrick “for richer or poorer.” The mention of “apology rings” is a nice little detail that implies she’s stuck with Patrick through some other troubling incidents. I like seeing her with more dimension than the nagging wife who forced Patrick out of boxing. Also, the Leary daughters know about the money problems. Now that everyone knows, we can get past Patrick hiding things from everyone and move forward into everyone trying to make things better.

Speaking of people trying to make things better. Johnny’s a real eff-up. We can assume he bet on Omar’s fight because the huge payoff would help him fix a number of the problems he’s created. Of course he loses, because Johnny loses at everything. He’s always getting things his way in the short term (setting up risky fights/investments, hooking up with receptionists) only to fail down the line (losing money, breaking the copier with the receptionist/losing even more money). At some point, Patrick will have to lose faith in Johnny. Theresa’s already tried to tell him to cut Johnny loose, and, as loyal as he is to family, Patrick should be feeling it, too. When Lights wins his underground MMA fight and looks out at Johnny, I got the sense that Lights doesn’t want Johnny dragging him into more effed up situations like that. Meanwhile, Johnny gives a sigh of relief that immediately disappears into an expression of opportunity: he realizes Lights can still fight, which is bad for Lights, but good for the show. 

Sidenote: A good portion of the show revolved around Patrick and his father. Patrick chased his father around town, worrying that Omar had done something bad to Pops. Anytime Patrick looks uncomfortable in his own skin is good television, and their relationship seems to make Patrick very uncomfortable. Their relationship seems to have paused in Patrick’s teenage years. He gives Pops a lot of half-answers, knowing Pops doesn’t really want to know the whole truth, and he’s right. “I got this covered,” Lights tells his Dad in a dark alley in front of a bunch of scary looking dudes. Pops leaves without saying anything. Of course he knows there’s trouble, but not the whole story. 

Other sidenote: This episode provided a glimpse into the decaying world of boxing and the rising world of MMA. Since the pilot episode, I’ve been wondering how the show would deal with a sport so steadily on the decline. Patrick hints that big-name prize fights can still land a huge purse, which I suppose is still true today. 

Picked Off: The NHL All-Star Draft

As I was driving around Boston earlier this week listening to the 98.5 (THE SPORTS HUUUBB!) I heard a commercial for the NHL All-Star game being played this Sunday. With only two Bruins in the game and Sidney Crosby boycotting like a child due to concussions despite sharing a locker room with the disgraceful Matt Cooke, I hadn’t been paying much attention. Then the final line of the commercial caught my attention: the teams this year would not be East vs. West, or even North America vs. The World (which I kind of liked) but picked by two captains (hometown rep Eric Staal and Niklas Lidstrom) like they were back in the schoolyard at recess. 

I went from a 1 to Girl Scout Cookie Delivery Day on the scale of excitedness. Not only were they picking teams (meaning someone has to be picked last) but they were televising the draft on Versus Friday night. Despite the fact that hockey players are generally an unsmiling, humorless bunch, this promised to be entertaining television.

The first thing I noticed is just that: captains, the already-picked, the waiting-to-be-picked —nobody looks like they want to be there. It’s as if Gary Bettman sat them down and said, “Look, our ratings suck, sure it’s gimmicky, but we need to try something, so get up there and dance for the cameras.” However, a moment later there is a sound bite of one Team Lidstrom’s players (already-picked) talking about Shea Weber’s slapshot, “He once took a clapper from between the dots…so fast…almost took my head off…I’m glad it didn’t take his head off.”

Maybe it really is just a lack of personality.

However, just as I think that, St. Louis Blues forward David Backes is interviewed and promises that if picked last, “whoever doesn’t take me is getting hit Sunday.” Like I said, this is the best idea the NHL has had since eliminating ties. There were also some amusing asides like Lidstrom deciding to pick stud Brad Richards because he texted him between rounds asking if he’d be OK playing wing instead of center, and Richards gave him the thumbs up; Flyer teammates Claude Giroux and Danny Briere betting who would be getting picked first (hopefully they wagered Sean Avery and Dion Phaneuf’s resident puck bunny Elisha Cuthbert); and a nervous Matt Duchene making an awkward “did we get voted off the island?” joke not once but twice as the remaining players available dwindled down to five. 

The part of the draft that delivered best, however, is the fact that Eric Staal, in front of his hometown fans, actually picked his team as if it was a middle school kickball game while Lidstrom gladly plucked up the more talented roster. Being a Hurricanes forward, Staal, with the first pick overall, goes with Cam Ward, the Hurricanes goalie AKA the mediocre best friend that gets picked way too early because the captain doesn’t want to hurt feelings.

Meanwhile, Lidstrom waited until the fifth round to select Bruins goalie and current league leader in GAA (Goals Against Average) Tim Thomas. He then went on to select Marc Andre-Fleury (fifth in GAA) and Jonas Hiller (league leader in wins). Where does top pick Ward stack up against these guys? Twenty-eighth in GAA! Twelfth in save percentage! Seventh in wins (behind all three Lidstrom goalies)! And while Staal was picking his buddy, Lidstrom used his first pick on Steve Stamkos, who only leads the league in both goals and points.

Staal (who afterward admitted to leaning towards the “hometown boys”) also picked teammate Jeff Skinner, who at 18 is the youngest all-star ever in the history of the four major sports, AKA the kid brother who mom (the Raleigh fans) made him take. Despite having a solid season with 40 points, he has been outscored by all but one forward Lidstrom selected after Skinner was taken, including Anze Kopitar and Loui Eriksson (both with 49 points), Matt Duchene (45) and Martin Havlat (43). To put some salt in the wound, while watching Skinner approach the stage, Lidstrom mused to alternate captain Patrick Kane that he has a kid the same age.

Lidstrom also somehow managed to take the far tougher team with defensemen Duncan Keith, Weber (who fired a puck through the net at the Olympics), Keith Yandle, Brent Burns, and versatile bruiser Dustin Byfuglien. Keep in mind that Lidstrom himself will be playing for them. The only defenseman Staal took in the first six rounds is Zdeno Chara, who, while large, is not a terribly physical player considering his size. Even the rookies knew better: when given the option of representing Team Staal or Team Lidstrom during the Rookie Skill Challenge, Taylor Hall didn’t hesitate to choose Lidstrom while an unimpressed Staal looked on quietly. Hopefully this leads to Hall getting put over the boards on his next trip to Raleigh.

A perfect cap to the evening was Mr. Irrelevant, former Bruin (and reason that Tyler Seguin and next year’s Toronto lottery pick will end up in Boston) Phil Kessel, walking on stage in a dopey daze, ignoring the announcer’s pleas to join him at center stage until he’s already sitting down with the team, then randomly being presented with a new car for being picked last while the rest of the players, Daniel Sedin specifically, stare in disbelief (mind you these are hockey players who make like 1/10th of what NBA or MLB players do).

Overall, just a satisfying hour and a half of television. Hopefully the game this Sunday lives up to the draft.

*Image courtesy of Library and Archives Canada/Jules-Ernest Livernois collection/PA-024066 via Wikimedia Commons

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.

Lights Out: Cakewalk

Just as I thought, Lights Out slows down a bit after the pilot episode and lets the plot, characters, and themes develop a little more deliberately. Cliffs have been hung, and moments that seem small for now will surely come back in a big way later (e.g. the earring in the locker room). Lights Out now resembles the serialized TV show we’re all used to seeing. The show’s writers also introduced Hal Brennan (played by Bill Irwin), the mysterious stranger who moves in darkness and will, from this point forward, be Lights Leary’s puppet master. 

Brennan’s presence is necessary, as every other character seems equally as lost as Lights. Just as the unseen Brennan pressed Lights to rough up “the dentist” in the pilot episode, he’s the character who pushes Lights into action, sending him on a number of shady errands throughout the episode. But since Lights appears to be a good guy doing bad things for his family’s well-being, he’s new to the world of (semi?)organized crime, leaving trails of his involvement everywhere. Brennan likely knows what he’s doing, which means he’s gathering evidence against Lights for his own profit. My guess is he’s the one who eventually forces Lights into the rematch (that everyone knows is going to happen) against “Death Row” Reynolds.

Which reminds me: I can’t be the only one who thinks it’s a bad thing that the only black character with a name happens to be called “Death Row,” am I?

Part of what makes Lights Out entertaining is watching Lights lie his way through every scene. He does it so easily, even though he doesn’t really want to. It makes the few honest moments even better, like when he tells his daughter Daniella about his pugilistic dementia. Now she’s been let in on one of the secrets viewers are already aware of. How they work together will surely be a nice addition to the story. How much is he going to make Daniella lie to the rest of the Leary family?

I was pleased to see Daniella utilized more in this episode than the oldest daughter Ava. Even though Daniella is still another teenage stereotype (so far), we found her doing real teenager stuff like snooping through her dad’s computer and “researching” on Wikipedia. 

“Cakewalk” also showed us some actual boxing. I’m happy it was a fairly short scene because boxing (and all other sports) shows or movies aren’t really about the sport. Lights is out of fighting shape, but we saw what he’ll be able to do when he gets himself conditioned. Pops, by choosing to chastise Lights after the sparring, revealed that he doesn’t expect much from his son anymore. While Lights tries to stay afloat, Pops has moved on to his next great hope. 

Lights Out: Pilot Episode

FX’s new show Lights Out premiered last night. I’ll be doing weekly recaps of it here at TNIB as long as it stays on the air. 

Pilot episodes are weird by nature. They have to somehow balance out convincing the network to buy the show while making viewers actually want to watch it. In the name of speedy exposition, pilot episodes usually introduce every character without saying enough about them and often include some stilted dialogue. I’m happy to say that Lights Out didn’t really suffer from these symptoms, even though there was a lot going on in a short amount of time. In fact, I was actually impressed with one bit of dialogue near the end of the episode that started off a little cheesy. Lights was having a Full House moment with his daughter, telling her about why liars lie to people, but the scene was rescued by the fact that Lights was obviously talking about himself. That we can’t be sure if he knew that or not only made the scene better. For the most part, I’ll keep in line with the show and just introduce the characters. 

Patrick “Lights” Leary: Played by Holt McCallany, Lights is the title character who claims to have been robbed by fight judges in his last fight, a title bout that took place five years prior to the show’s current setting. He clearly dwells on the fight, understandably, as the loss and consequent retirement establishes the Lights character viewers see. McCallany does a good job as Lights, even if, at times, it wasn’t easy for me to get past the thought that he was playing the same role he had in Fight Club, in which he was little more than an extra. (That the parking lot fight closely resembled almost every fight scene in Fight Club didn’t help.) Lights is three-dimensional, though. He’s a good father, husband, son, and brother, having thrown all of his money into helping everyone he knows become whatever they want to be. This creates the strange problem of Lights being too comfortable in every situation he finds himself in despite finding himself broke and unable to generate income. I trust that, as the show progresses, he’ll find himself in more uncomfortable and vulnerable situations. 

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There’s No Such Thing as a “Fun Run”

This Saturday, my friends and I will celebrate our fourth annual holiday party. A relatively small group of us gather at a house where four of my high school friends live together outside of Boston and hold a potluck dinner. We get dressed up, take pictures, have a gift exchange, and play drinking games. It’s the one time all year that we’re all in the same place at the same time.

My friend Dan, who is enrolled in med school in Ft. Lauderdale, recently flew back up for winter break, and one of the first topics that came up was how excited we were for the holiday party. We discussed the custom photo cake that I ordered, amusing stories from past parties, and how amped we were to watch Ohio face off against Troy in the R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl (wake me when it’s New Year’s Day).

Then he hits me with this: “I don’t know how much I can drink, though. I’m running a 5K the next morning.”

As it turns out, at least four or five of my friends are voluntarily getting up early on the Sunday morning after the holiday party to go run around the city streets. Did I mention it’s December in Boston? This got us on the topic of 5Ks and running for sport in general, something that I admit I will never understand. Every time I’ve gone running in my life has been either to train for an actual sport or I was playing said sport. Running is just as tiring as playing a sport, yet there is no winner or score or dynamic aspect to it beyond the moment you realize “crap, I have to turn around and do that whole distance again to get home,” and it motivates people to wear bizarre, otherwise socially unacceptable clothing.

That’s not to say I can’t admire people that do enjoy running. I know some people that train for and run marathons. I think these people are certifiably insane, but, damn, they are impressive too. I look at them the same way I look at snake handlers, sword swallowers, and guys who can pull tractors with their teeth—that is amazing that you can do that, but I have no interest in joining you. But a 5K is not a marathon. I asked my friend Greg, another 5K-er, how long this race on Sunday actually is.

“A 5K is 3.5 miles,” he said.

“That’s it?” I replied. “I could run that.”

“Yeah. Anyone can do it. That’s the point.”

If anyone can do it, then where is the sense of accomplishment that would come with a marathon or even a half-marathon? If it’s something that you can roll out of bed hungover and do, why bother?

Now, it can be worth doing something that we wouldn’t usually do or might be outside our comfort zone if it raises money for a good cause. So I asked Dan if he was raising money for a foundation and he said that the race costs around $25 to run.

“What does that go to?” I asked.

“No, that’s just how much it costs to participate.”

So, wait. Not only are they getting up bright and early to run a moderate distance in the cold, but they’re paying someone to do it? And that person isn’t a charity? Why wouldn’t you just walk down to the local basketball courts, play a game of pickup ball, and drop off a donation of blankets to the Salvation Army on your way home? That sounds like a far more productive morning to me than this adventure into the land of hypothermia, dry heaves, and leg cramps.

Knowing how skeptical I was of the situation, Greg, Dan, and their cohorts tried to use the one angle that they thought would convince me this was a good idea.

“Usually the 5K ends near a local bar where everyone gets together and drinks afterword,” they said.

Well, that sounds a bit more enticing, adding a social aspect to the event, but after thinking about it for a moment, I asked, “Couldn’t I just sleep in and meet you all at the bar instead of running there?”

“Yeah, you could.”

“Better yet, I could eat and drink with my friends the night before at a holiday party rather than
pant heavily into a pint surrounded by sweaty strangers.”

I suppose I can see some of the upside of running. You can do it by yourself wherever and whenever. It builds up your cardiovascular system and maybe in other people it promotes the endorphins I get from doing sports (or as I call it, running with a purpose). The summer after I finished college, I lived by the boardwalk in Long Beach, New York, one of the most beautiful places to go running that I know of, and from time to time I would jog to one end of the boardwalk and back if I didn’t have the opportunity to work out any other way. But I just can’t abide paying a stranger twenty-five bucks for the privilege of waking up early on a Sunday to run a few miles in the dead winter.

Especially if it might lead to a subdued holiday party the night before.

*Photo Courtesy of Slightly North via Creative Commons License

A Moment for Andy Irons

“I surf because I’m always a better person when I come in.”

Surfing holds a special place in my heart, even though I am terrible at it. As Andy Irons says in the above video, I always feel like a better person after getting out of the water. To be completely honest, I haven’t thought about Andy Irons for years. That changed last night, as news of his death spread beyond surfers and surfing fans. He had withdrawn from a contest in Puerto Rico and was on his way back to Kauai, which included the layover in Dallas, where he was found in his hotel room after not responding to a wake-up call. Right now, the assumed cause of death is a virus transmitted by mosquitoes called Dengue fever, although the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reports, “The medical examiner’s office said it is investigating his death as a possible overdose of methadone.” That’s pretty much all the details that have been released about the situation, and the lack of details surrounding his death only makes it more shocking. Even though people around him knew Irons was suffering from Dengue fever, no one is ever prepared for the death of a 32-year-old world class athlete.

I don’t have a great deal to add to the mounting number of blog posts and news stories, mainly because I am left as stunned as everyone else. This is one of those deaths that lingers and has me asking myself unanswerable questions. At the very least, Irons’s death reminds me of the very first sports rivalry I ever witnessed; I watched from the beach in 2003 as Irons beat Kelly Slater in the Pipeline Masters to win ASP World Tour, a victory that proved that finally, someone had arrived to challenge Slater’s supremacy as the tour’s best surfer. On a higher level, his death is simply shocking, sad, and the unfortunate loss of a great surfer and a good person who embraced his status as a role model to his community.