Ed O’Neill as former LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling in Cut.
Kelsey McNeal/FX
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Kelsey McNeal/FX
It might be easy today to dismiss a limited series about the Donald Sterling scandal. Even when it first broke 10 years ago, after the gossip site TMZ published a recording of racist comments from the former Los Angeles Clippers owner, the whole thing had an unsavory tabloid feel — sparking a storm of criticism that shocked the sports world and led to a forced sale of the team.
Which makes the situation even more sordid: Sterling was recorded by a younger female companion who was not his wife, leading some to speculate that she leaked the audio in the midst of a power struggle with her husband. marry. (The woman maintained that she did not disclose the tapes herself and that she and Sterling were never romantically involved; the series suggests that was at least a strong possibility.)
But the FX Cut digs deeper as its six episodes unfold, using Sterling’s abrasive toxicity to leverage a story about wealth, power, class, race and more – asking powerful questions about what that people will accept in order to gain access to money, privileges and valuable achievements.
A team hampered by an unpredictable owner
The story opens with the arrival in Los Angeles of Coach Doc Rivers, played by Laurence Fishburne, a wise optimist, a former NBA star and renowned coach hired in Boston to build a team for which he played in the past. . When a fan asked why Rivers, as a championship coach, would join a franchise considered one of the worst in the league, he replied simply: “I like a challenge. »
Laurence Fishburne as Doc Rivers.
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But Rivers soon discovers that his biggest challenge is the team’s owner — an eccentric real estate mogul who treats players like valuable property, monopolizes meetings with long, rambling monologues, and throws in racist and sexist asides without question. worry about the consequences. Think of a more abrasive Donald Trump with even less filter.
Modern family The older Ed O’Neill inhabits Sterling as an irascible, mercurial eccentric, blithely indifferent to the havoc he creates, certain that his wealth and power insulate and justify his actions.
Based on the ESPN 30 for 30 podcast The Sterling affairs, FX Cut carefully lays out a storyline that it turns on its head later in the series, with Australian actress Jacki Weaver delivering a particularly astute performance as Sterling’s longtime wife Shelly. At first, we watch with sympathy as she watches her husband of 60 years lavish expensive clothes, housing and a Ferrari on a beautiful young assistant who everyone assumes is his girlfriend, V. Stiviano (Cleopatra Coleman).
Eventually, we’ll learn that there’s a core of hard math beneath Shelly’s good-natured veneer — and a reason why she and Donald remained married their entire lives.
Exposing Donald Sterling’s Not-So-Secret Racism
When Shelly tries to convince her husband to cut Stiviano out of their lives, gossip site TMZ posts a recording of Donald urging his assistant to stop posting photos of her on social media with famous black men like the basketball star retired Earvin “Magic” Johnson. “It really bothers me that you want to say that you associate with black people,” Sterling claims in an exchange posted on TMZ’s website.
Sterling’s questionable behavior has been a dirty secret within the NBA for years, but the leaked audio is forcing Rivers and Clippers players to decide whether they will boycott games, just as the team is winning. There is already a simmering tension in professional basketball between highly talented, well-paid, mostly black players and the white owners, staff, and fans who surround them; Sterling’s recording highlighted all of these tensions.
But what is really interesting? Cut, And so the scandal forces everyone around Sterling to confront the compromises they made to get what they have. Players must choose between taking a principled stance or playing to win a historic championship. Flashbacks show Stiviano struggling to run a failing food truck business before a friend shows him how to align himself with powerful and wealthy men to pay his bills.
Later, this same friend reminds Stiviano that she is about to get real money from Donald Sterling. “You’re 31…clotted cream,” she adds. “It’s the same as playing ball. They give you 15 years to earn and then you have to find your own source of income.
Cleopatra Coleman as V. Stiviano.
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Rivers thinks back to his time as a Clippers player in 1991, at the height of the scandal over the Los Angeles police beating of black motorist Rodney King, wondering if his decision not to speak out at the time was a mistake he repeats in urging his players not to boycott Sterling now.
The Coach’s unexpected confidant in all this: actor, director and TV host LeVar Burton, who plays himself, befriends Rivers at a steam room they both frequent. Relaxing in the living room of Rivers’ lavish apartment, the two men have a revealing conversation about feeling caught between the comfort of success in a white-dominated America and the consequences for successful black people who reveal their anger over to racial injustice.
“America first met me as (slave girl) Kunta Kinte (in the miniseries Roots)…then I read to their children and maintained the integrity of their favorite spaceship…soon people began to think of me as safe,” Burton says, adding that he paid a financial price when he took public actions considered bold or remotely confrontational.
“So I keep the chains (of Roots) on my living room wall,” he adds. “I want (the houseguests) to know that while I am definitely their friend, I am also absolutely filled with rage.”
Facing the Reality of Compromise
But even when expressed publicly, does such rage bring lasting change? CutThe ending, which I won’t detail here, seriously casts doubt on the answer.
It’s tempting to compare Cut with another prestige television show about a dysfunctional basketball team based in Los Angeles: the HBO series about the Lakers, Winning time. There is no doubt that sports fans will be able to criticize Cut for having some of the same weaknesses: changed circumstances to enhance the drama, more flattering portrayals given to someone like Rivers (who was involved in the production as a consultant), and an increased recreation of a scandal many are familiar with already better.
Always, Cut aims a little higher, revealing a story in which everyone involved is both more – and less – than they seem. Although its message about the ubiquity of compromise and the enduring power of wealth can be a little hard to swallow.
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