![]() Jerry Buss, the team’s owner, “was forty-six but looked thirty-five.” He did not. I’d like to clarify that I like “Winning Time.” I mean, it’s fun! Only I have questions, primary among them: Why make a show about a historical moment on which you have not only no new perspective but no apparent perspective, period? (I could ask the same of Jeff Pearlman, author of the book on which the series was based, who lost me when he claimed Dr. If the images (basketball, ballet, crack cocaine!) flash by too quickly to communicate much more than themselves and, together, the idea that, gosh, Los Angeles sure was wild in the ’80s, well, it’s a credit sequence you don’t expect it to. There are Laker girl butts (covered) and one skater boy butt (nude). But the credit sequence is “Winning Time” as its truest self 2 : all rapid cuts, throbbing music (The Coup’s “ My Favorite Mutiny ”), grainy film stock. The best part of any given episode is the acting, is one of any number of honest moments between remarkable performers doing careful, subtle work. “Winning Time” peaks early, with a slick, saucy credit sequence. ![]() Not the ’80s as they were but as they are now remembered the ’80s as they appeared in ads. None of it tethered to anything stronger than a sweet vibe. The polyester, the Aqua Net, the mustard yellow the 16mm look, the 8mm look, the VHS look. ![]() Disappointed that, for all the trouble the production team went to, “Winning Time” is fundamentally vapid, an aesthetic in search of an idea. This is my way of explaining why I may sound, from time to time, salty. This is me, turning on “Winning Time,” a happy sucker, the show’s would-be mark. This is the NBA of Magic Johnson and his rival Larry Bird the NBA on the cusp of Michael Jordan. There’s only one and it’s a dead end.“Winning Time” finds the Association at a crucial moment: post- ABA merger, post-seventies doldrums, post-introduction of the three point line, the game as we know it today struggling to be born. But the murder of the mob boss and his family aren’t the only people the killer intends to have killed that night. When the killer seeks Nate’s help in eliminating the man who murdered his parents, Nate agrees to help him out of loyalty. Slowly Nate’s morals and principles are compromised and what would have been unthinkable, just weeks before, is now embraced as the ends justify the means. Believing he has no choice Nate goes along with the amoral killer and soon discovers how the rich actually live and likes it. The killer views this as a gesture of friendship and promptly frames Nate for the murders of his soon to be ex and her lover, then he offers to help him change his identity and his life. A psychopathic killer, who believes he’s on a mission from God to rid the world of self centered evil people, intends to make Nate’s soon to be ex-wife, his next victim. What would you do if a psychopathic serial killer decided to make you his new best friend? A man who is unemployed, bankrupt and about to be divorced by an unfaithful wife, is about to find out.
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