Minutes-long stretches of the episode are just a montage of hot people in expensive clothing enjoying carefree pleasures. Throw a little dialogue into the mix, and you can pretty much imagine what Ballers is like the rest of the time. Plot is a four-letter word separating Ballers from the things it really cares about. As with watching an actual football game, the ratio of action to advertising can prove awfully disproportionate. A show this obsessed with status signifiers has a right to drop brand names, but the direction (from the likes of Peter Berg) is at times so in service of the products on display that you’ll wonder if HBO has started airing commercials.
As testosterone-infused confectioner, Ballers makes for perfectly acceptable lifestyle porn. The actors are all very pretty, and the riches Miami has to offer are certainly enticing. The soundtrack, featuring the likes of Kendrick Lamar and The War on Drugs, is hip. And given the subject matter, it’s only natural that Ballers would throw in the occasional cameo for actual football fans. DeSean Jackson and Steven Jackson show up in the pilot, and between them score one funny joke, and a product plug.
There’d be more to talk about with regard to the show’s expectedly low opinion of women were they around in a capacity other than as doting wives, devious reporters, trouble-making seducers, or just meat. It takes less than 5 minutes before you understand the Madonna-Whore dichotomy of Ballers: a recent widow consoles Spencer at her own husband’s funeral, mere moments after another woman flashes her crotch at Spencer while he delivers the eulogy.
Ballers is a show centered around a distinctly male profession, and so it’s not surprising that its eye and interests are driven by masculine fantasy. But that it has a setting with this potential, and fails to offer anything of substance to its viewers or characters, is what’s really disappointing. When Spencer’s gang is reunited by the death of an old teammate (his sidepiece having got them both killed in a jealous rage. Women!), Spencer eulogizes the man by recalling a particular play from their past. Rather than mocking Spencer’s limited worldview, Ballers wants you to empathize with him by using the language and experience of the game that has defined these men of a certain wage.
The fourth episode shows some signs of hope, with overtures made to Spencer’s fear of being diagnosed with post-concussion syndrome. Of course, the plotline is shortly dropped for another expletive-filled contract negotiation, and another party, but it’s the closest Ballers gets to having any weight during its first four outings.
It’s also the best showcase for Johnson, an actor of seemingly limitless charisma, but only when used well. He’s a man who can make pointless movies fun, and terrible movies profitable, but as the eye of Levinson’s bacchanalian hurricane, his talents are stifled by the rigidity of his character. We shouldn’t be rooting for Spencer to fly off the handle and become self-destructive, but it’s the hints of rage and regret hiding under his professionally sculpted exterior that give Ballers flashes of something other than glitzy eye candy.
The minor disaster that was the recent Entourage movie might suggest that audiences aren’t as game to indulge someone else’s wet dreams anymore, but consuming Ballers has an attractive effortlessness that will ensure it finds a following. Really, it’s not the HBO show that’s been off the air a few years that makes Ballers look lacking, but the one that ended last Sunday; Silicon Valley offered another insider’s perspective on the ridiculous world of America’s elite, but managed to be both funny and poignant in the process. Ballers contains little in the way of actual laughs, and anyone looking for insight into the dark side of pro football would be better served watching 30 for 30’s “Broke,” or PBS’s League of Denial. Ballers will challenge you as much as the average commercial, and look as good as an above-average one while doing so. Is it too much to ask that it have something worth selling?
