For the last BingeCast before Christmas, Moreno, Ammon, and Law get super drunk and never stop talking. Seriously, we have so much to discuss in this episode that we recorded another show after we pressed stop and will release it later in the week titled The AfterCast. As for this show, things kick off with the Sony hack and our dream that it’s all an elaborate marketing ploy. We also come up with a trendy “Watergate” type name for the whole fiasco. It’s amazing. Then Google Voice brings the goods with three quality voicemails. We can tell they’re getting tired of translating The Babadiiiiick.
Everybody says goodbye to Serial as we review the last episode of the first season and wonder about what the future of the show will bring.
TV Round-Up visits Homeland and sees Ammon catch up with Black Mirror. Speaking of which, Law and Moreno discuss the Black Mirror Christmas special, White Christmas, and continue to love everything about the show.
Moreno hosts the best ever version of Stupid Comments and stumps Law and Ammon with two impossible questions.
What Did You Watch has words about THE SKELETON TWINS, THE U: PART 2, and more talk about NIGHTCRAWLER and THE EQUALIZER. All reviews lead to more arguments about BOYHOOD.
Finally, Ammon brings back Literally Literary by reviewing Inherent Vice.
Stay tuned this week for The Binge Aftertaste with AMERICAN PSYCHO writer, Guinevere Turner, and the aforementioned AfterCast with a bunch of drunk idiots.
Working the Weekend with Luke meets Binge Sports today for this December 14th edition. It’s already been a big day for Binge Sports as I wrote a piece this morning on the continuing story of the courageous and inspiring Lauren Hill.
If you haven’t gotten a chance to read it yet, you can do so by clicking HERE. And in pretty damn cool news for me, Law and Moreno received an email a little while ago from a talent coordinator at freaking ESPN saying they had read the article and were looking for a way to contact Lauren through us. Now, I obviously don’t know how to get a hold of her and I really hope she’s at home resting today, but it’s pretty cool to know that the machine in Bristol is checking out Binge Media.
And before I got word of any of this, I already knew what I was going to write about today. So I’ll go ahead with the week’s best segue……….
And speaking of ESPN (oh yeah, that was good), the amazing documentary series 30 For 30 continued last night with the premiere of The U Part 2.
Picking up where the 2009 film The U left off, this documentary continues the story of the rise, fall, rise, fall, and so on and so forth, of the University of Miami football program. While I did enjoy it, like most sequels, it just couldn’t quite live up to the original. Granted, I did remember more of what was talked about in this film as opposed to the original as I grew up watching a lot of these Hurricane teams and players, some of whom are still playing in the NFL today.
The first half of the film is simply fantastic, mostly focusing on the hiring of Butch Davis and his plans to resurrect the program after sanctions were put on them by the NCAA including the loss of a ton of scholarships. It showed how he would scour the country for walk-ons and get creative, like how Santana Moss came in on a track scholarship and was “shared” with the football team. The really great stuff comes in the coverage from 1998 to 2003, starting with the game played at the end of that ’98 season against UCLA, which would really kick off the turnaround.
The 2000 season was brilliantly done as well, culminating in the ‘Canes being ranked third in the BCS behind Oklahoma and Florida State, despite having beaten the Seminoles earlier in the year.
And of course, there was a lot of attention paid to the 2001 squad, coached by Larry Coker after Davis left for the NFL, that pulverized Nebraska in the Rose Bowl to complete a 12-0 season and win Miami’s fifth national championship.
One of my favorite segments, which I don’t have a video for, was the one that covered the national title game versus Ohio State following the 2002 season. I think I had forgotten how badly Miami had gotten screwed on that final call and how big the celebration had already gotten as time expired in regulation. The film gives you many different angles of that final play and the call is just absolutely atrocious.
Oddly enough, however, this isn’t just where the program starts to take a turn for the worse, but the documentary itself loses a little bit as well. As it moves into the middle of the decade, with the “7th Floor Crew” rap group taking center stage for a few minutes, the film just loses a little bit of steam. Don’t get me wrong, it’s funny to hear Greg Olsen rap, but that seemed to get just about as much time as the murder of Bryan Pata, which just didn’t seem right to me. It’s around this time that Randy Phillips starts getting a lot of air time as well, which just ends up being more annoying than anything else.
The Nevin Shapiro scandal gets about twenty minutes of attention as the film starts to wrap up and we are given a bit more insight into how all of this played out and how close he really was to some of these players. I did like how it came off that while this kind of thing happens at other universities, something of this magnitude could really only happen at the University of Miami. And the fact that Shapiro is now serving hard time in a federal prison only adds to the story.
As I said before, I really did enjoy the documentary. If I had to put a number on it, I’d probably go 7.5 on 10, due mainly to the fact that just because of how extraordinary the original was, it just couldn’t match up. And some of the stars just aren’t as big as the names we had in the first. Greg Olsen just isn’t Michael Irvin, you know. Randy Phillips isn’t Warren Sapp. So while the direction was good and I was happy that there was once again no narration, it didn’t crack the top ten in this amazing documentary series. But hey, they say that any press is good press, and with yet another movie dedicated to them I guess it is still “all about the U”.
Did you watch last night? Share your thoughts with us below or hit me up @THElukenorrisor @BingeSports, where we’ve always got all the balls.