FX’s ‘American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez’ Goes Viral For Being So Insanely Bad… It’s Good

The debut chapter in FX's American Sports Story anthology TV series is centered around the story of Aaron Hernandez. It's drawing a decent 70% score on Rotten Tomatoes. From the trailers and clips I've seen, it actually looks to be digging into the late Hernandez's personal life and psychology. Maybe it's a compelling drama in those regards if those elements are clicking. The problem? I'm probably not gonna tune in to find out, because as can often be the case with fictional sports-related TV or movies, if you can't nail the verisimilitude of the actual sport, you easily take the audience out of it. This is no shade to lead actor Josh Andrés Rivera, who's tasked with portraying Hernandez. He just doesn't look athletic whilst playing a character who's supposed to be a world-class athlete. That's putting it kindly... https://twitter.com/SavageSports_/status/1842341152785084821 https://twitter.com/PFTCommenter/status/1842331548411998581 Talk about shattering the suspension of disbelief. I'm dying. That out-and-up route? Nobody is buying that out-of-frame fake, and that speed ain't beating anyone in the NFL. And how about Cam Newton? https://twitter.com/THECHANNEL6IX/status/1842404600885731500 So many different ways to shoot these scenes that could've made for a massive improvement. Go slow motion with it. Axe those wide master shots in favor of close-ups that capture the actor's intensity and more-sudden, explosively athletic movements. Guess the director just said, "Nope! We got it! Moving on!" Thus, we get an actor with like 6.5 40 speed — again, no offense bro — running routes like he's supposed to be a matchup nightmare NFL tight end. GTFOH. But as an NFL Draft sicko , the most egregious abuse of "dramatic license" surfaced in the show's depiction of the Patriots' draft war room when they made the decision to draft Hernandez. I get why the scene is in the show. The contents of the scene logically make sense on paper. It's just that, once more, what we get execution-wise is downright baffling and hilarious. https://twitter.com/SavageSports_/status/1842341748179185867 A lot of folks are gasping for air at the reveal of owner Robert Kraft, but it's the guy playing Bill Belichick gluing this chaotic cacophony together. The actor Norbert Leo Butz has twice won a Tony Award for Best Actor in a musical. It ain't like he can't act. Perhaps his skills are just best suited for the stage in perpetuity? I don't know. Butz's Belichick has an oral fixation seemingly without anything in his mouth. He looks like he's about to break and crack up at any second. There are some flat-out bizarre facial expressions going on because of these two things. I'm weirdly kind of in awe of it... To reiterate, there's a chance this show is hitting all the right, broader dramatic beats when it comes to digging into Hernandez's inner turmoil. Whatever good the show does at that, though, the clips I shared will overshadow anything else, will be memed to death, and will be laughed at for a very long time. Unfortunately for the creative talent involved, that's how the Internet is these days. Shoot, no press is bad press, right? And if you're entertaining the audience, albeit not in the conventional/positive sense, that counts for something!