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| TV Reviews | |
stick to the game TruTV's behind-the-scenes reality series is humdrum Feb 8, 2010
The first episode of this new series, airing tonight at 10 p.m. on TruTV, follows employees of the National Football League during the first weekend of the 2009-10 season as they produce a concert in Pittsburgh and then try to get good sideline footage of the game. Though the hour is visually engaging, the crises that the staffers confront in the course of the day are undramatic. Viewers will have little rooting interest, since the successful mid-career types on whom the episode focuses probably wouldn’t lose their jobs even if the worst-case scenario played out. What’s more, the behind-the-scenes revelations are trivial or unsurprising. The executive who receives the most screen time is Dan Parise, who is in charge of producing a pre-game concert starring Tim McGraw and the Black Eyed Peas. As the hour progresses, Parise has to find footballs for McGraw to throw into the audience, deal with a Tim McGraw impersonator who’s strolling the concert grounds and keep the area in front of the stage filled as people begin to file out to walk toward the stadium. The dramatic highlight for another main character, a veteran NFL Films cameraman named Bob Angelo, occurs when he learns that he may not be able to park in the stadium area and may, in fact, have to park across the street. Most of these crises resolve themselves in ways that are so banal that viewers might suspect they’re watching a parody. Still, they might have been mildly engrossing if the cameras had followed a likable junior staffer confronting this sort of problem for the first time. The overdramatic “teases” before each commercial break and the portentous soundtrack music simply underline the fact that nothing serious is really at stake. The only moment of real drama, in which the security guards learn that a little girl is missing, gets an oddly matter-of-fact treatment. The inside-baseball information conveyed by the episode is scanty. One tidbit: Those enthusiastic, attractive people in the front of the crowd at a televised concert were probably pre-selected by the show’s producers. For a show with “NFL” in its title, little of the action in the premiere is particularly specific to the league. Most of it could have happened at any large public event. Premiering the day after the Super Bowl, “NFL Full Contact” is probably meant to attract football junkies who need another fix of their favorite sport. They’ll still be jonesing after the premiere is over. Documentary fans who are looking for real-life drama or new insights into a familiar subject have plenty of other TV options.
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