WinningTime mostly works because it pushes back on the notion of a shared “official” history and digs into the messy subjectivity that gets smoothed over in the construction of a legacy. Which is why the season finale felt so inert, writes nwquah
Photo: Warrick Page/HBO You probably already knew how Winning Time’s rookie season was going to end — and even if you didn’t, a simple Google search would confirm that Jerry Buss and the Lakers won the 1979–1980 season, kicking off the franchise’s storied Showtime era and setting the foundation for Magic Johnson’s long and legendary career.
Winning Time makes the case for its existence by focusing on the subjective experience of the era. Time has a way of smoothing out the edges, as do the narratives set by the victors, who get ample opportunity to frame, refine, and soften their place in the story over the decades. One of the more compelling things about Winning Time is its commitment to going the distance on those hard edges.
These subjective character ideas are what make Winning Time worthwhile, none more so than John C. Reilly’s central performance as Jerry Buss. All chest hair and cologne, the show perceives Buss as a vibrant man-child emblematic of the era’s dynamics: an extreme beneficiary of American society’s unequal structure whose macho hyperoptimism is fueled by a history of never really failing downward.
Reilly put it best when responding to the criticism in a recent interview with my colleague Lane Brown: “I respect everyone’s right to their own story, but I don’t think that precludes others from telling public stories. And this is a public story.
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