You want to bum a kid out?
Make them play football.
The season follows a Kansas Junior College team, the Independence Community College Pirates.
Credit: Alan Markfield/Netflix
If youve ever read or seen any version ofFriday Night Lights, you know the format.
The eight episodes chronologically track the football season, each hour building to a game.
The sport itself is presented with quick-hit thrills, dangerous touchdowns.
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Only the good stuff, likeNFLRedZonewith more catharsis.
But dont call it escapism.Last Chance Uis brutally honest about its young players prospects.
Everybody doesnt make it to the NFL, says English teacher LaTonya Pinkard.
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Thats a false hope.
Its also theonlyhope these young players allow themselves.
Many of them come from difficult circumstances.
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Pinkard seems like a great teacher.
Onscreen, shes been reality-cast as the skeptical everyperson.
She worries for her students, has a knack for mapping out the impossibility of their circumstances.
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Football, she explains, is like their main chick.
The teachers, the school, everything on thestudentside ofstudent-athlete?Thats the side chick.
Shes talking to football players, and they dont disagree.
For some of the Pirates, the dream already seems halfway moved on.
Still, the college part of college sports is an issue for the players.
These players want to play well enough so they can play somewhere better.
Most of them have never been to Kansas before.
Still, they have to go to class.
Ignorance is life fing threatening, man, Brown tells his team.
89% of the NFL and NBA players are broke three years after they fing retire.
What a speech for a football coach!
Dont mistake this for a speech about the importance of education, though.
Browns a magnetic reality TV personality, with a sharp sense of humor.
He knows how easy it is to hate him.
Director Greg Whiteley films those interviews like youre having a drink with Brown.
You start to worry that Browns only drinking buddy is a camera crew.
Some of them are extremely talkative.
(They look pretty stoked to be on Netflix.)
A couple are painfully recessive.
Linebacker Bobby Bruce slouches through the classroom, sometimes looks like a man trying to hide behind himself.
Henry is a fascinatingly prickly presence.
As a high school star, he achieved national fame.
(Truly the blind leading the blind; turns out I have no clue how overtime works.)
We both loved the season.
The games are tremendously exciting.
You couldnt callLast Chance Us portrayal of football inspiring.
Whitelys adept at capturing the nigh-dystopian surrealities of the American football system.
The business and profession of college football, Brown tells us, is a meat market.
Scouts arrive from four-year schools for some surreal interactions, proudly chest-beating about the size of their Jumbotron.
Whiteleys patient camera lets you notice the underlying dynamics of the trade.
The scouts are mostly white, while the players mostly black.
And theres an equivalent divide between the Pirates and the town theyre playing for.
Theres a deeper story bubbling throughLast Chance U, a portrait of college football thats swooning but quite sobering.
Im not down for the way the NCAA treats us, Henry says at one point.
Damn near like slaves, with the workload and the class schedule and football on top of that.
You wonder if theres more story there.
Whiteley keeps one eye on game day at all times.
His style glossy and a bit passive.
You wonder sometimes if hes putting entertainment ahead of information.
At one point, the sweetly ineffective QB coach shows us his living quarters.
It looks like a barely-lived-in motel room; the coach admits his salary is zero.
Is the whole staff unsalaried?
The old men of Independence are excited by the prospect of a successful football team.
Do they care about the men on the team?
Or are they just interchangeable numbers?
Am I making this sound like a bummer?
Its a rollicking entertainment.
There are ticking-clock countdowns to big games, on-the-field implosions, a devotional rap video, a grudge match.
Its stunningly well-made, but you wonder if some people onscreen are playing to the camera.
(Look them up, theyre all on social media!)
Pinkard has a meeting with him at one point.
She asks, straightforwardly: Are you okay?
Not really, says Henry.
Its an awkward giggle, like he cant believe anyone needs to ask.
Something (or some number of things) is bothering him.
You wonder if he just doesnt want to share that with the public.
But thats the way the game is played.
OnLast Chance U, the football games are thrilling, and nobody is okay.A
