Last Chance U

After 83 weeks of lockdown, I’ve been finding myself on a roller coaster of emotions.  This hasn’t been due to any real pandemic-related stressors.  I’m grateful to be able to say that my new isolation life is only mildly irritating in the following ways: I miss the gym, I need a haircut, queuing for the supermarket is time-consuming but I always have a good podcast, I have the third biggest spot of my life at a time when I constantly have to look at my own face on endless Microsoft Teams calls.  It could always be worse – I’m lucky to be able to work from home.  Let’s be honest, I wouldn’t mind seeing friends and family, or being able to plan a trip in the future, but for now I’ll take the small comforts.  And one of those comforts is finding something to watch that gives you boundless entertainment and diversion.  This week, I will be talking about Last Chance U for this very reason.  But I will warn you now, the show combines enough of the world of documentary storytelling and the world of competitive sport to break your heart at the same time as making it race uncontrollably with dramatic tension.  If you can handle that emotional roller coaster, all while staying in, then this is one for you.

It's about American football

I’ve never seen a full match of American football, yet I find drama based around this sport incredibly compelling.  My earlier post on Friday Night Lights touched on this, but Last Chance U takes that drama and multiplies it by an emotional factor of 20 billion.  As a Brit, everything in the US is a bit more showbiz to me, and sport is no exception.  The structure of the game, with swaps between defence and offence, the battle to cover yards en route to your opponent’s end, the snaps that lead to touchdowns, lends itself almost too well to cinematic climaxes.  I still don’t think I know the rules, but I’ve gleaned the majority of it.  Each episode of Last Chance U ends in a crucial game for the team in question.  You care about each character individually (more on this later) so you’re truly invested in the game.  Your job, with each point, is to remember who’s in what uniform, keep an eye on the ball and, before long, you’re basically a sports fan spectating American Football (albeit matches that took place years ago and whose results you can look up online).  Live in the moment, act like it’s real and you could find yourself in the same position as me: leaping out of your sofa in excitement at a dreamlike touchdown or a heart-stopping fumble.

It's about junior college

So that’s the end of each episode covered.  We can now look at the rest, which follows the stories of staff and students at two different junior colleges.  The first two parts follow East Mississippi Community College and the second two focus on Independence Community College in Kansas.  If you thought American football rules were confusing, you won’t welcome a compounding of that with the addition of the structure of US higher education.  What we call university, they call college, or, in fact, school.  Either way, this is the U bit of Last Chance U.  Most universities offer four-year degrees, but a system of junior colleges handle two-year courses, with the option of transferring up to a big school at the end.  Junior colleges tend to have Community College in their names, which is a further complication still, a bit like British public schools being private schools (where private means fee-paying).  Another difference is that, while British uni students do degrees in singular subjects, the American version is to carry on taking an array of classes.  It also seems that your performance is constantly graded so you know exactly what you are passing and failing, as opposed to my educational experience of some exam results every couple of years.

It’s about last chances

And herein lies the jeopardy of the show.  High school American football stars get scholarships to study at universities.  They must maintain grades to be eligible to play.  On graduation, they can be drafted into the NFL for professional careers (picking teams on a national level), having played for free till this point as student athletes.  Imagine if Premier League footballers could only join a team and get paid after they got themselves a BA Hons in Business Management from Loughborough.  It might make for more articulate speech in post-match analysis interviews, but the boy wonders dreaming of making it professional would really need to knuckle down to their studies in order to continue playing at the highest levels.  Unthinkable to us, but it’s very much the structure in the US.

However, the stars of Last Chance U are the athletes who, for whatever reason, lose their spots on their teams and need another go to get scholarships to play football again.  This is where the heartbreak starts to set in: these young men have often had the most harrowing childhoods.  From mothers in prison and spells in the care system, to murdered relatives and drug-addicted fathers, we are filled in on the backgrounds that go some way to explaining the subsequent struggles to adjust to athletic and academic pressure.  For the most part, we are dealing with the poorest Americans here.  There almost seems to be an inverse proportion between the disadvantages of their origins and their potential on the football field.  Yet, their character shines through.  If, like me, you’re a white man from Surrey, you’ll need the subtitles to decipher some of the turns of phrases, with southern drawls compounded by African-American coinages.  My language learning as I worked through the episodes progressed to such an extent that I found myself unable to understand German anymore when friends in Europe FaceTimed me on my birthday.

Indeed, race looms heavily in all episodes.  Netflix helpfully flags the content’s potential to offend due to discrimination.  American football has long been one of the few ways for black men to improve their circumstances in the States’ poorest communities.  The alternative shown to us is a life of crime.  But, savagely, only a very small percentage ever go professional in the NFL, so we see a lot of time being spent convincing the boys to have back up plans when many see the only other options to football being death or prison.  Furthermore, the very real risk of debilitating injury underlines the precariousness of anyone’s chances of making their millions on the field.  Last Chance U even leaves you speculating that American football has almost become a form of gladiatorial combat that black men must pursue for the public’s viewing pleasure.

I want to flag, though, the academic support staff of the two junior colleges who must cajole and persuade on-field hotshots to maintain their grades, show up punctually to classes and consider their insurance options.  Brittany Wagner proves herself the goddess of EMCC in the first two parts, with Latonya Pinkard taking the baton, among others, in our ICC seasons, her passion for raising up these black men palpable in its emotional intensity.  The contrast with the coaching staff, the majority of whom are spectacularly overweight and potty-mouthed, is stark.  Head coaches seem prone to the pettiest egotism on the side lines, potentially taking their cue from certain world leaders, and the question of the example they set to their teams is artfully played out across the episodes.

When the teams win, your heart will soar.  When they are annihilated, you’ll be devastated.  When the young athletes (of whom there are too many star characters to name) get offers, you’re made up.  When their future plans don’t pan out, you are crushed.  Each series ends with a round up of what happens next, plus I recommend digging out the two where-are-they-now specials for completion, which brings with it the terrifying confrontation of dreams versus reality.

It’s taken me too long to start watching Last Chance U, but it’s highly recommended Netflix fare that guarantees gripping and thought-provoking entertainment at a time when we’re stuck home with our screens.  There’s modern ultra-Americana for those that love the cheerleading, padding-clad, budget-busting expense of the American approach to sport.  There’s tense drama in each match.  There’s emotional investment in its characters.  There’s even the chance for cynical Brits to scoff at the unrivalled value place on blind faith in Christianity.  The storytelling is artful and credible, and your feelings won’t be the same afterwards.  If there are more instalments in this roller coaster, I’ll be getting straight on.