"I Can't" works as a tale of two young actors, and the very different ways the same script can lead to two very different outcomes with the quality of the people performing them.
There's two big stories about mothers and children here, and in each, the child has to make a big decision. For Vince, it's coming home and finding that his mom has overdosed, forcing him to call 9-1-1. Vince's speech to his mom when she's recovering at the hospital, about how he wants to know why she doesn't want to be with him, why she keeps doing this when it'll risk him having to do this all on his own, is a little over the top in terms of pure writing. But Michael B. Jordan absolutely kills it. It's not just the tears in his eyes; it's the conviction in his voice, the way he pauses and grinds his jaw and looks to all the world to be so supremely wounded by this.
Vince is written a lot like Tim Riggins -- mostly a man of few words but given a few big speeches here and there. The difference is that Michael B. Jordan thrives in either situation. He's already shown himself to be supremely skilled at conveying his character's feelings with just a look, a quick aside glance or body language that tells you all you need to know. But he's also a boon in those big emotional moments, where he can completely sell the desperation and fear and hurt of having to see his mom in a hospital bed once again. An actor that good makes the character easy to write for.
By contrast, I think the show actually writes a pretty damn good story about a teenage girl struggling with whether or not to have an abortion here. That decision too, is steeped in Becky's relationship with her own mother, who had Becky when she was sixteen, and leads Becky to feel like that magnifies the difficulty of her decision. Becky sees her mom struggle, and doesn't want that, nor does she think she can take care of a child at her age and income level, but also worries about going to hell if she has an abortion and deep down, maybe wants to keep the baby if all else were equal. The script does a good job at making this a genuine conflict, about showing us the different points pulling on Becky's conscience in either direction, not to mention similar concerns that spillover to Luke and another chance for Tami to shine when it comes to helping young people.
The difference is that Dora Madison just can't quite pull it off. Sure, she cries when she's supposed to, and she takes on that defeated worried tone, and she has all the tearful confrontations that are called for, but it never comes across as real. At most, it comes across as passable. If Vince is a character written like Riggins, Becky is a part that feels played in the same way Minka Kelly played Lyla -- given plenty to do and lots of emotional heft to be carried, but always falling into the same generic teen girl notes and never reaching that next level of believability. It hurts a well-written storyline and brings it back down into merely okay territory.
So when Vince and Becky make their ultimate decisions, only one has the real impact. When Vince returns to a life of crime so that he can pay for his mother's rehab, we buy the tragedy of it, because we buy into the character. We see him struggle and try to do right and it not be enough through forces beyond his control, and we believe the effect this has on him because of the performance. That makes us understand his choice. Despite Becky's trying conversation in the middle of the night with Tami, we, or at least I, just see an actress playing a part, not a young girl struggling with the big decision of whether or not to go through with an abortion. So when she does go through with it, despite the layer of tragedy that's supposed to come from Luke saying he'd be there for her no matter what, it doesn't really scan as true.
Other elements of the episode fit somewhere in the middle. There's another great parent-child story with Virgil seeing a lot of himself in Vince, and that drawing him back out of his football shell, offering pointers to coach about how to handle a kid like Vince, hearing his daughter out, and coming out to support his son in his pop warner game. There's a sense that Virgil's waking up a little too here, and making a big decision to come back the a game that clearly caused him pain.
We also see the Riggins boys (or "Rigoons" as Mrs. Bloom calls them) running into trouble in their chop shop side operation and finally giving it up after burying car frames turns out to be as asinine as it seems on paper. And Julie continues with mostly dull rebound boyfriend, who's not quite as bad as the Swede, but seems similarly cliche.
Still, the heart of the episode is in those two young people, Vince and Becky, having to come to terms with a big problem and finding a solution that neither of them is crazy about. For Vince's story, it comes of as the culmination of the difficulties we've seen for him from day one, and it has meaning because of how far we've seen him come. For Becky's it comes off as a development the actress isn't quite up to, which is weakened further by the character's irksome antics up until this point. It's an episode of big contrasts, and it lifts on character up and exposes the flaws in another.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParent2016-08-13T01:53:30Z
"I Can't" works as a tale of two young actors, and the very different ways the same script can lead to two very different outcomes with the quality of the people performing them.
There's two big stories about mothers and children here, and in each, the child has to make a big decision. For Vince, it's coming home and finding that his mom has overdosed, forcing him to call 9-1-1. Vince's speech to his mom when she's recovering at the hospital, about how he wants to know why she doesn't want to be with him, why she keeps doing this when it'll risk him having to do this all on his own, is a little over the top in terms of pure writing. But Michael B. Jordan absolutely kills it. It's not just the tears in his eyes; it's the conviction in his voice, the way he pauses and grinds his jaw and looks to all the world to be so supremely wounded by this.
Vince is written a lot like Tim Riggins -- mostly a man of few words but given a few big speeches here and there. The difference is that Michael B. Jordan thrives in either situation. He's already shown himself to be supremely skilled at conveying his character's feelings with just a look, a quick aside glance or body language that tells you all you need to know. But he's also a boon in those big emotional moments, where he can completely sell the desperation and fear and hurt of having to see his mom in a hospital bed once again. An actor that good makes the character easy to write for.
By contrast, I think the show actually writes a pretty damn good story about a teenage girl struggling with whether or not to have an abortion here. That decision too, is steeped in Becky's relationship with her own mother, who had Becky when she was sixteen, and leads Becky to feel like that magnifies the difficulty of her decision. Becky sees her mom struggle, and doesn't want that, nor does she think she can take care of a child at her age and income level, but also worries about going to hell if she has an abortion and deep down, maybe wants to keep the baby if all else were equal. The script does a good job at making this a genuine conflict, about showing us the different points pulling on Becky's conscience in either direction, not to mention similar concerns that spillover to Luke and another chance for Tami to shine when it comes to helping young people.
The difference is that Dora Madison just can't quite pull it off. Sure, she cries when she's supposed to, and she takes on that defeated worried tone, and she has all the tearful confrontations that are called for, but it never comes across as real. At most, it comes across as passable. If Vince is a character written like Riggins, Becky is a part that feels played in the same way Minka Kelly played Lyla -- given plenty to do and lots of emotional heft to be carried, but always falling into the same generic teen girl notes and never reaching that next level of believability. It hurts a well-written storyline and brings it back down into merely okay territory.
So when Vince and Becky make their ultimate decisions, only one has the real impact. When Vince returns to a life of crime so that he can pay for his mother's rehab, we buy the tragedy of it, because we buy into the character. We see him struggle and try to do right and it not be enough through forces beyond his control, and we believe the effect this has on him because of the performance. That makes us understand his choice. Despite Becky's trying conversation in the middle of the night with Tami, we, or at least I, just see an actress playing a part, not a young girl struggling with the big decision of whether or not to go through with an abortion. So when she does go through with it, despite the layer of tragedy that's supposed to come from Luke saying he'd be there for her no matter what, it doesn't really scan as true.
Other elements of the episode fit somewhere in the middle. There's another great parent-child story with Virgil seeing a lot of himself in Vince, and that drawing him back out of his football shell, offering pointers to coach about how to handle a kid like Vince, hearing his daughter out, and coming out to support his son in his pop warner game. There's a sense that Virgil's waking up a little too here, and making a big decision to come back the a game that clearly caused him pain.
We also see the Riggins boys (or "Rigoons" as Mrs. Bloom calls them) running into trouble in their chop shop side operation and finally giving it up after burying car frames turns out to be as asinine as it seems on paper. And Julie continues with mostly dull rebound boyfriend, who's not quite as bad as the Swede, but seems similarly cliche.
Still, the heart of the episode is in those two young people, Vince and Becky, having to come to terms with a big problem and finding a solution that neither of them is crazy about. For Vince's story, it comes of as the culmination of the difficulties we've seen for him from day one, and it has meaning because of how far we've seen him come. For Becky's it comes off as a development the actress isn't quite up to, which is weakened further by the character's irksome antics up until this point. It's an episode of big contrasts, and it lifts on character up and exposes the flaws in another.