Last Chance U

I’ve heard Coach K can make a sailor blush.

Different strokes for different folks.

I would rather hear a coach say “mother fucker” and “play like fuck” 500 times than hear “you stunk” or “I can’t stand you” once.

 

Problem is, this coach does both.

 

I think Malik Henry suffers from being a turd more than depression. Put him and John Franklin III in a barrel and roll it down a hill and there'll always be an asshole on top.

 

Douchebag may or may not be his default, but he should at the very least be a high-functioning douchebag.

The extreme mood swings, the apathy and lack of energy, he had bags under his eyes a lot, the way he picked at his food. There were a lot of signs of depression. Bipolar is way over diagnosed, but that wouldn't surprise me in his case.

Think about this too: his dad isn't in his life for years then not only shows back up when he looks like a meal ticket, he takes control of his life. Malik doesn't even like football that much anyway and fancies himself a baseball player.

The kid should be in therapy.

 

I'm convinced Brittany and the DL coach from Season 2 had a few encounters in private. They both looked like they needed to lean on each other just to survive living in such shitty boring town.

 

If so, Davern definitely outkicked his coverage.

 

Finished the Independence season last night. I'll say this, you come to like Brown a little more by the end.

I'm thinking once the clips of him cursing out his players started hitting the Internet midway through the season (as detailed in Episode 5), he intentionally dialed it back a notch.

 

Watched ep. 2 and 3 last night. The back-and-forth between the coaches was great stuff. I wish they had fought during the coin flip. BTW, why do the coaches do the coin flip instead of the captains?

Spoiler

I cannot believe that Indy beat Garden City when all of the critical decisions Brown made were wrong/stupid.

 

I thought Brown came off as someone who was just as damaged as many of his players. It somehow made him more relateable than Buddy Stephens, who, to borrow a term from Brown, is the epitome of a fuck stick.

 

Yeah, I see Brown as flawed, but much more genuine and self aware than Stephens.

I think it would have been interesting if they had been able to do a season in Kansas before they eliminated the out-of-state roster limit.

When they were limited to 20 out of state guys it was always interesting to see how those teams meshed because you usually had 20-30 inner city kids who were super talented but needed to fix their grades or something mixed with 50 rural and suburban kids who maybe didn't get D-I offers because they needed to get bigger or didn't play against great competition in high school.

Sometimes the way they came together was a really beautiful thing. Sometimes it was...not.

 

Finished the season and I think it’s my favorite even though it probably included the least drama. Something I noticed was the depth of the visual storytelling more so than in previous seasons. I’m thinking the way they framed how Coach Brown always had a drink in his recliner and at the bar, which subtly tied to his father’s alcoholism; the way Malik Henry was filmed in the restaurant scene as his dad and personal coach teased him in the finale episode (heartbreaking scene).

Latonya Pinkard was a find to add some depth to campus and the academic side. We got very little sense of ICC’s culture as compared to EMCC. A lot more emphasis on the community (Optimist Club!) instead.

Finally, the EMCC retrospective reminds me how hard it is to watch interrogation video. Isaac hurt himself by using deductive reasoning, it seems. ALWAYS ASK FOR A LAWYER!

 

I really Pinkard, but I found her constantly rotating hairstyle to be distracting --- from teased out Afro to black Farrah Fawcett to purple-tinted wig all in one episode.