'The Michael
Vick Project,' redeeming
BET reality series follows the pro football player
By Tom Conroy
Feb 2, 2010
Most celebrities starting their attempt at post-rehab or post-prison career repair have one factor in their favor: The average person can understand the impulse to, say, abuse alcohol, commit adultery, gamble or take money that’s not rightfully yours. Even O.J. Simpson could count on the fact that many divorced people have fantasized at least once about murdering their exes.
Michael Vick, the disgraced pro football star whose life is the subject of the 10-part documentary series “The Michael Vick Project,” has to explain himself to a public in which very few people think it would be fun to make dogs kill each other.
But judging the TV show and not the man, “The Michael Vick Project,” which premieres tonight at 10 p.m. on BET, is worthwhile viewing. At the end of the first episode, Vick remains a mystery, but a fascinating one.
Early in the premiere, Vick, who spent 23 months in prison after pleading guilty to being involved with a dog-fighting ring, says, “My fall from grace was tragic, but it’s all my fault.”
Nonetheless, he then goes on to list reasons that his childhood may have hardened him: chiefly that his father was largely absent and that his mother was forced to raise the family in a bad neighborhood. He says that he remembers watching older kids sic their pit bulls on cats or other dogs.
After his success in football — he left college early and was the No. 1 draft pick for the NFL in 2001 — Vick stayed in touch with neighborhood friends. As he describes the pressures of fame, the story remains familiar: He had too much money, which attracted too many dependents and parasites.
At this point in the typical celebrity-rise-and-fall narrative, we should be hearing stories of substance abuse or promiscuity, but instead Vick confesses that he and his friends had the brilliant idea of founding Bad Newz Kennels, a compound in Virginia where they would train and breed fighting dogs.
The footage of the compound is eerie — though it was shot recently, it has been darkened to give it the look of a documentary re-enactment — but the episode skips over the horrible things that reportedly went on there.
Even so, the footage contrasts jarringly with the reasonable, sensitive-sounding man who talks to the camera throughout the half hour. And that’s what may keep viewers tuning in.
The narrative in the premiere ends with Vick entering prison. Whether he indeed repented while there or simply learned how to play remorseful for the authorities — and now the cameras — is unclear.
Future episodes will follow Vick as he tries to restart his football career and to change his image. He tells the camera, “I’m on a mission to get it all back — not the money and the fame, but to restore my family’s good name.”
It’s unlikely Vick will succeed in that project. But the possibility of further understanding Vick’s personal demons — through both what he chooses to reveal and what he tries to hide — makes this series worth following.
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