Prior to the premiere of HBO’s Ballers last Sunday, the new show was
being touted everywhere as “Entourage
with football players” instead of movie stars. And there certainly are superficial
similarities: superstars and their hangers-on, glamorous clubs, and an easy abundance
of babes, money, and drugs – not to mention the same team of producers and
filmmakers (Mark Wahlberg and Stephen Levinson) behind both series. But on a
more substantial level, the two shows are in stark contrast to one another.
While Entourage
features an ensemble of leads, Ballers
centers on big-screen action star Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as Spencer Strasmore,
a former pro football “Golden Boy” whose promising career was sidelined early
by an injury that shattered not just his knees but his dream of sports glory.
Now munching painkillers like Tic Tacs, Spence is trying to move forward with
his life as an investment counselor, working for a very unsentimental boss
played by the scenery-chewing Rob Corddry, who is constantly pressuring Spence
to “monetize his friendships.”
In Entourage,
Vince and his boys are living the dream – or at least, working toward it. In Ballers, Spence’s dream is already over.
In the pilot’s opening scene, for example, Spence literally dreams that he’s back on the field, the roar of the crowd
in his ears – and then his eyes snap open to hard reality.
That reality requires him, as an investment
counselor, to try to knock some maturity into other players who are still living
the dream but are too shortsighted and immature to grasp that one day – any day – theirs too will be over, leaving
them forgotten, unemployed, and without any job skills. Much of the tension in
the show stems from Spence’s efforts to instill in these players the need to
live with more thrift, common sense, and thoughtfulness about their futures.
The half-hour pilot is loaded with examples
of such players with too much money and too little sense. An NFL superstar
crashes his Maserati with his mistress inside, killing them both and leaving
none of his assets to his wife. A rookie player has already spent his $12
million signing bonus and needs to borrow three hundred grand from Spence to
keep his hangers-on – some of whom he doesn’t even know – afloat. One former
player whose life no longer has any purpose is reduced to applying for work at
a car dealership, where he isn’t even remembered as a player. Hot shot wide
receiver Ricky, played by Denzel Washington’s son John David, is an impulsive bad
boy whose behavior is ruining his all-star career. All in all, a rather
unsettling premiere for a show ostensibly categorized as a comedy in the vein
of the lighthearted Entourage.
In a quiet monologue that shows the
charismatic Johnson has real acting chops and is more than just a
million-dollar smile, Spence tells the arrogant young Ricky,
You better wise the f*ck up, ‘cause you got
one contract left and when it’s done you’ll be out on the streets with the rest
of us. You keep f*cking up like this, you keep acting like a little kid, when
it’s done – and you’re done – you’re
gonna be broke and miserable.
“And you wanna know what the worst part about
it is?” Spence continues. “Nobody will give a f*ck about you. I been there.” He
pauses and sighs, and you do indeed believe that Spence has been there. “You
need to grow up.” The twist is – minor spoiler alert – Spence himself is still
learning that lesson. The $300,000 he loans to the rookie he wants to sign as a
client leaves Spence himself broke.
In future episodes things may change,
including the tone, which is only occasionally and mildly humorous. But so far Ballers is getting mixed reviews because
it isn’t quite the amusing, hedonistic joyride fans of Entourage were expecting. In fact, Ballers is the anti-Entourage.
It’s not about living the dream; it’s about waking up and growing up before the
dream becomes a nightmare of purposelessness and wasted lives. And in that
important respect, Ballers may surprise
its critics with real depth, and may disappoint those looking only for an Entourage-style fantasy.
That’s a good thing.
(This article originally appeared here on Acculturated, 6/25/15)
