“You don’t last 2 minutes in my world, bitch. Tell your daughters to pray for you.” -Javier
Clearly we as the audience care about Patrick “Lights” Leary, but do we care about what he cares about? Patrick has many battles he has to fight both literally and figuratively. Maybe I’m too impatient, but I want to see him box. I know that’s not what the show is explicitly about but Lights Out would stand to benefit from some episodic plots dealing with fighting. I don’t suggest him fighting in a match every episode until he defeats Death Row Reynolds, but we need to see him progressing physically. We need to believe that when he fights Javier, it’ll be a fair fight.
The main issue is that we just don’t care about Patrick’s wife all that much. Teresa doesn’t have a lot of friends left in the show after her visit with Patrick’s sister, Margaret. If we are to care about Patrick trying to get his wife back, we must first want them to get back together, and the only reason we want that, is because Patrick wants that. Teresa needs a big win. And soon. The fight we care about is between Patrick and Javier, not between Patrick and Teresa. Unless the family is more danger than they are, I don’t particularly care about his quest to save them. We seem to be at an impasse between Patrick and wife about him fighting and as long as he keeps training, the problem won’t go away. There are 3 realistic story telling options at this point: Patrick stops fighting (which he won’t or there’s no show), Teresa changes her convictions (which she shouldn’t since it’s the foundation of the domestic conflict), or we drop the home life angle until something upsets the balance. Obviously I’m in favor of the third option.
I am interested in Johnny’s story line. He adds a darkness to the Leary family. I enjoy seeing him simultaneously trying to curry favor with his brother Patrick, while trying to get his old job back with the fighter Lights Leary. It was particularly interesting when Johnny stood up to his dad. He reminded his father of a piece of advice he once gave to him, “You want the fight, you pay the price.” Up to this point Patrick’s dad has been altruistic and full of integrity. I wonder if there’s more to this story. Maybe Johnny learned some tricks from his dad in the boxing promoting world.
As of right now, I need more risk. Patrick took a risk taking the fight and he “lost” his family, but he’s still allowed to see them all the time and it looks like Teresa is growing sympathetic. What about the financial troubles? Are the Leary’s able to use more credit because he’s close to a million dollar purse? There’s no urgency from the show. They seem content on taking there time, but I think they need to pick up the pace. Something needs to tip the scales and upset the balance. The show can’t tread too much water or else the audience interest will start to wain.
Other thoughts:
-Not sure what to make of the newspaper writer angle. I had thought that the writer’s story will be redundant with the show. That Mike would be best served creating controversy, maybe as a mouth piece for Word. That we didn’t need him telling us what we’re already watching, but then they wrapped him up this episode. Maybe it’s just a point made on the state of affairs of newspaper writing.
-Barry Word is so excellent. The opening scene was perfect. I could listen to Reg E. Cathey talk all day.
-What happened to Brennan? You can’t just end the previous episode with an ominous handshake between Word and Brennan and then not even make mention of it? I really hope there’s more to all this.
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