So I Sat Down to Watch… The Last Dance, Episodes 3 & 4 (2020)
Yes, I did take my time with these, didn’t I?
One of the criticisms I see directed towards The Last Dance is that it pays a very positive picture of Michael Jordan, and I just can’t find myself agreeing with that. I mean, it’s obviously not going to make you hate him, but this is a documentary about the guy that’s also endorsed by said guy. Does it surprise you that it doesn’t go all out on the “MJ was a douche!” angle?
But besides that, I still believe that we get a somewhat fair look at what he was like. One thing the first four episodes have done is show his relationship to four key Bulls personnel, Krause, Pippen, Rodman and Phil Jackson, and what those people meant to MJ and the Bulls dynasty. We get to see more of him through them; we get a more objective view of MJ the person through their own eyes. Certainly, in the case of the latter three in Pippen, Rodman and Jackson we also get their point of view two decades after the fact, so whatever bad blood might have existed is no longer there after all this time. I mean, not always, but more on that a bit later.
Another criticism I see a lot of is how The Last Dance isn’t as objective as it could be as a sports documentary, and it deviates from what is considered the norm in this genre. To which I ask: who cares if it does? The non-linear narrative which usually goes like:
- Thing happening in the Bulls 1997/98 season
- Perspective from people in 2020
- Perspective of what lead the team there in the first place, going all the way back to the 1980s
- More modern day perspective
- Resolution in the 1997/98 season
This works great for me, and it makes for very good storytelling. I don’t have a good enough handle of the facts to judge whether it is “objective” or not, but from a viewer’s perspective I believe it works great. Should documentaries strive for objectivity? Of course, that goes without saying. Should they also present us with enjoyable storytelling? Absolutely.
I really do enjoy the footage from all the 1980s games. I was far too young to understand much about basketball back then, and there’s never been a lot of pre-modern NBA footage on Greek TV, so being able to see what was going on then I great. Seriously, basketball players looked like this back then:
What I thought was the greatest thing about these two episodes, however, was the insight on Dennis Rodman. When I first really noticed Rodman I was in my mid-teens, so seeing a guy who’d dye his hair a different color each game, who’d wear a wedding dress to his Las Vegas wedding, and generally someone who seemed to be “out there” was downright farcical to me, in a way that only teens can perceive adults as. He was like the joke character in a movie, not a real person. Adults aren’t allowed to act like that, after all.
Episode three, especially, really humanizes Rodman and gives us a look into who actually he is. All this, this entire “crazy” persona, the acting out, is just his way of dealing. Dealing with the bullshit of having a personal life that can no longer be personal. Dealing with execs and the press. Dealing with having to perform at your absolute best, every single time. Dealing with life.
He found what he needed to do to feel free, to feel like himself and to feel content. And he did it long before most others that were in the public eye dared stray from the norm. The bit with Phil Jackson where they bonded over their weirdness and fondness of Native American culture was especially telling. For that alone, no one should ever judge him. Aside from the North Korea shit that really is inexcusable. I mean the day-to-day stuff.
My favorite part of the fourth episode was this:
And he was the caster for Utah Jazz home games back then, who had John Stockton as one of their two star players. You can’t make this up.
Truth be told, my actually favorite bit of the fourth episode was how we got an extensive look at the way the Bulls tore down the Pistons in 1991, here The Last Dance really succeeds in showing us the Pistons as the villains of that specific arc (while also showing the Bulls playing dirty in later games, for some of that delicious irony).
Personal story time again: when I started watching the NBA in the late 1980s, I liked the Pistons. I was a kid, and they were winning. Then I started reading stories about the “Bad Boy Pistons” and how dirty they were, and this is all while becoming a Bulls fan in the early 1990s so, uh… I wasn’t as fond of them anymore. What really gets to me is the very name, “The Bad Boys”. This implies a certain light-heartedness, in a “boys will be boys!” way, as if it can’t be helped because they didn’t know any better.
They knew exactly what they were doing, and that is actually endangering the physical well-being of others. I loved how Jordan is still angry at Isiah Thomas after all this years, because even Thomas’s non-apology was weak as heck. “That’s how things were back then” he says, without even saying that, regardless of context, it was a dick move to not shake their hands after losing. And the way he brings up the Celtics whom they beat in 1988 because Kevin McHale didn’t shake Thomas’s hand until he went after him… McHale is visibly livid in that video, the way anyone would be after they lost a series to a team that likes to take cheap shots.
The “Bad Boy Pistons”? The “Detroit Assholes” seems more appropriate.
A couple of other things I liked a lot was the pixelly Bulls logo:
And this image of Charles Oakley looking at Jordan and Horace Grant picking Pippen up, with Jordan’s voice over of how they looked after each other:
You get the feeling he’s thinking “that was me, man. That could have still been me.”
Instead, he’d have to watch the Knicks get their asses kicked by his former team, Jordan’s Bulls repeatedly. Aside from that year when they were ass-kicked by Hakeem Olajuwon another Top-10 player ever.
Life’s really not fair, is it?
All in all, I am really enjoying The Last Dance. It’s simple: an interesting story that you always felt we should know more about, told in an interesting way. You don’t need more than that.
I am aware that several episodes have been leaked for a while now, but I do feel that this kind of thing is more enjoyable if you space out your views. /shrug