Lights Out: "Crossroads"

Once I write a open letter pleading that no future boxing movies or shows use The Heavy's “How You Like Me Now?” ever again, I'll offer up a review, after the jump....

“I just like to punch people” - Lights Leary

Tonight's title was “Crossroads” which is funny considering that no crossroads, literal or metaphorical, were ever reached. Nobody had any major decisions to make, nor did they have to stop at a stop sign. No, this episode merely furthered the plot of what we already know, essentially acting as the second part to the mini-story started last week.

In much the same way, this episode didn't really seem to take advantage of the past weeks buildup, at least not for the first half. The opening shot aside, we spent a large portion of the time watching people talk about fighting, or what fighting means to them, or how they feel about Patrick going back into the ring. Apart from being just overly obvious, it was terribly boring, and I was beginning to wonder whether or not my opinion on this show were terribly misguided.

I do acknowledge that the show filled the first half with other elements, and that they were trying to create some narrative tension. The show obviously wanted us to care about Light's declining weight, considering how many different shots we got of the numbers. Also brought back were Daniella's fears over her dad returning to the ring, and how that might exacerbate his condition. And we saw Lights still fighting his inured eye. Yet the weight issue was never given enough weight of its own, and we saw multiple times tonight all of the ways Lights manages to work around his eye injury. And Daniella's acting out – not her brattiness so much as the fact that she acted out through alcohol – was so out of character that it just took me out of the episode.

Yet the second half, when we spent time on the fight with El Diablo, was far more interesting, and it played off of everything we had seen so far in a much more subtle fashion. This was the kind of scene I expect from the show, and this one scene renewed my faith in the show. Not only did we get to see Lights fight for the first time (or I guess the first “real,” official time), and thus get to see what makes him the fighter that he is, but we also got, it a series of shots, what Lights fighting brings out in the people around him – and with out a bunch of expository monologues. Imagine that.

I admittedly still have a question about the fight scene, but I think its one that's meant to be ambiguous: Did Morales take a dive. The show made a point to show Brennan motioning something to Morales, but since we still don't know what kind of deal that he struck with Barry. But regardless of how you feel about the presence of such a cliffhanger – but what an awesome way to keep interest going, right? - there was something about the way it played into what we know that kept in grounded in reality. Beyond it's connection to Barry, what is Reynolds role in this. We know that he really wants to fight Lights – he gave Lights his personal folder on Morales – and that he is entranced by the poetry of it all, but how far is he willing to go for the sake of his art?

More over, how are Lights and everybody in his corner going to feel about this dive, if that's what it turns out to be. Everybody was so happy to have Lights back in action – and those reactions were so well done by these actors that I bought into the happy feeling, even as I felt trepidation about the possible dive – that this will obviously crush them. But will it erase all of the fixes that this “win” brought to this family's ongoing problems? Will Lights again fire Johnny? Will Teresa's new found happiness once again fade? And what about Pops? Why do I get the feeling he also sense this dive?

In the end, this hour represented the best and worst forms of storytelling that any show can provide. Lights Out can either have everybody tell us how boxing makes them feel, or it can use boxing to subtly reflect on the people surrounding the boxing world. Let's hope they stick to the latter.

What did everybody else think?


Additional Thoughts:

“You're actually cool now. We could be bigger than those Cassidy sluts.”

Okay so Teresa IS supposed to have that English inflection. Glad to have that cleared up.

Why would they let a boxer bring a machete to a weigh in?

Given that this show was made quite a while ago, do you think use of the The Heavy's “How You Like Me Now?” was stolen from The Fighter, or vice-versa? And when did this song become the catch-all for boxing stories?