Clipped Review: A Compelling Take on the Infamous Basketball Scandal’s Ugly Details
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The post Clipped Review: A Compelling Take on the Infamous Basketball Scandal’s Ugly Details appeared first on Consequence.
The Pitch: In the spring of 2014, the Los Angeles Clippers (known to most Angelenos as “oh right, there are two NBA teams in L.A.”) were on a bit of an upswing, thanks to new coach Doc Rivers (Laurence Fishburne) and star players like Blake Griffin (Austin Scott) and Chris Paul (J. Alphonse Nicholson). In fact, for the first time in the franchise’s history they stood a real chance of winning the championship.
Until, that is, the leaking of an audio recording, in which Clippers owner Donald Sterling (Ed O’Neill) said some not-great things about Black people to his assistant/mistress V. Stiviano (Cleopatra Coleman). As the world reacts to Sterling’s comments, the team tries to figure out how to move forward — or if it should even keep playing at all. Meanwhile, the question emerges: Will a rich white man, in 21st-century America, actually experience consequences for his actions?
Full Court Press: There’s some real ugliness at the core of FX’s Clipped, executive produced by Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson, who also EPed similar based-on-true-events limited series like the American Crime Story franchise. That ugliness is not a criticism, but rather praise, as the limited series doesn’t flinch in exploring the toxicity that contributed to the events chronicled.
Clipped is almost as detail-obsessed as HBO’s late lamented Winning Time, when it comes to chronicling the inner workings of a professional basketball team. However, Clipped has at least two advantages over the recently canceled Lakers drama: A much narrower focus, and much less interest in mythologizing the participants in this story. Also, because the infamous recording gets leaked relatively early in the series, creator Gina Welch and lead director Kevin Bray are able to delve into the full ramifications of its impact, on a cultural and legal level.
More Relatable Than You’d Think: There are two major threads running through Clipped that have much more universal appeal than you’d anticipate from a limited series about a professional basketball scandal. The first is about what it’s like to have a bad boss. Not a demanding boss or an absent boss, but a bad boss. The kind of boss who doesn’t know how to listen to his employees. Who actively ignores them, especially when they beg him to not do something that might hurt the company. The kind of boss that employees learn to work around, crossing their fingers that said boss won’t still find a way to keep them from getting their jobs done.
In Clipped, Ed O’Neill’s Donald Sterling is one of those bosses, in scenes that will prove triggering if you’ve ever had someone similar signing your paychecks. There’s a scene in which Doc Rivers, while meeting with some other colleagues, literally has Sterling on muted speakerphone rambling in the background, only occasionally unmuting the call to give the owner the impression that anyone’s listening to his bigoted tirade. From the verbal abuse and racism to Sterling’s awe-inspiring entitlement (including eating the food off other people’s plates without their permission), it’s a portrait of a human nightmare, one who believes he truly owns the people who work for him. It’s a meaty role for O’Neill, though at times it’s almost hard to watch him in action.
Clipped (FX)
LeVar Gets It: The other, equally compelling thread of Clipped is how it spotlights the players’ point-of-view in the wake of the audio being released, just as the team heads into a promising playoff season. Should they walk off the court in protest of their own owner’s racism? Or wait until they’ve won big before taking a stand? The nuance that the series gives this topic is impressive, capturing a moral dilemma that comes up an awful lot these days — when is sacrificing your own personal goals necessary, for the moral good? And what does it feel like, to choose compromise?
Clipped doesn’t offer any easy answers, but it doesn’t flinch from digging into the topic, often in two-hander scenes between Doc and LeVar Burton — playing himself in a performance that goes well beyond his light cameos in shows like Community and The Big Bang Theory. Burton’s presence begins as a chance meeting in a steam room, but soon he and Doc are confidantes who share a unique place in the world, as successful Black men struggling with the pressures that come with their status — and their scenes together are some of the show’s most fascinating.
The Starting Line-Up: While technically sporting a large ensemble, there are four central performances really driving Clipped, with Fishburne and O’Neill’s work standing out as the most prominent. (Fishburne sometimes sounds a little forced in trying to capture Doc Rivers’ gravelly tones, but it doesn’t hold back him too much.)
That said, Jacki Weaver is a force as Shelly Sterling, the aggrieved wife of Donald: Her performance highlights not just the deeply buried wounds of a woman who’s known for decades about her husband’s indiscretions, but the complexity of her potential complicity. Money and power are seductive things, and we get to see how far Shelly will go, to hold onto them.
Meanwhile, Cleopatra Coleman’s resemblance to the real V. Stiviano is remarkable, and the Last Man on Earth actress often finds dimension to the character beyond her wannabe-Kardashian exterior. All the wildest elements of her story are present, from the tabloid-baiting mask and roller skates to the true fact that during this period of time, she was trying to adopt two foster children. Yet by the end of the story she almost feels like an afterthought — a sadly fitting fact, given that of all the players in this story, she’s the one who, as of today, is no longer in the public eye.
The Verdict: There are sections of Clipped that feel a little rushed, and some that feel like they play out a little too long, such as one entire episode that’s largely devoted to flashbacks spotlighting past milestones for the major characters (and a few supporting ones). While some fresh revelations come out of those scenes, there are other beats in the narrative that could have used that real estate.
Yet even with that caveat, the series brings just enough gossipy verve to the facts to keep the viewer hooked, with those four key performances ensuring that the humanity of these people (for better and for worse) makes it to the screen. A great basketball game packs in plenty of drama. But there are actually very few scenes of basketball being played in Clipped, because the action off the court is far more compelling.
Where to Watch: The first two episodes of Clipped premiere June 4th on Hulu. Subsequent episodes debut Tuesdays.
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Clipped Review: A Compelling Take on the Infamous Basketball Scandal’s Ugly Details
Liz Shannon Miller
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