After Further Review, All My Worst Fears for 'The Dynasty' are Being Realized
There's a phenomenon in entertainment that is commonly referred to as The Phantom Menace Syndrome. Urban Dictionary defines it as:
A delayed reaction of disappointment, potentially towards any work of art or entertainment. Having a positive appraisal of a song, or a book, or a movie or TV show (for example) that gradually decays into a negative appraisal after some casual consideration.
A common response to having high expectations that are unmet, towards an artist or intellectual property that one is subjectively fond of.
The syndrome could not have been given a better name, because it's exactly how I experienced Star Wars Episode I. When it came out in 1999, it had been 16 years since Return of the Jedi. I was hungry for new Star Wars content. I was invested in a young Obi Wan. Was impressed by the details of Baby Darth Vader's origin story. And dazzled by the next generation in CGI. It was a great time at the theaters. And it ended up being the first DVD I ever bought, so I could show it to my young son. Where, after repeated viewings, it "gradually decay(ed) into a negative appraisal," to put it mildly.
That was 25 years ago. Yet The Phantom Menace Syndrome is exactly what I'm experiencing as we're now four episodes into AppleTV's Patriots docuseries The Dynasty. The first couple of episodes were a nostalgia trip that got me right in the 'Member Berries. They dazzled with technical brilliance and never-before-seen film. The interviews were at times insightful and revealing. And I was all in:
But a couple of more episodes in, there seems to be a lot less Liam Neeson and Ewan MacGregor, and a lot more Jake Lloyd and Jar Jar.. It's all my worst fears for this show being realized before our eyes. Here's what I wrote when the trailer for The Dynasty first dropped:
[W]hat's with the dreary tone of this? How do they propose to tell the tale of an unprecedented two decades of sustained excellence, and the greatest collaboration by and owner, coach and athlete in the history of sports by making it feel like The Banshees of Inisherin? The trailer for Elvis opened with the King's car getting swarmed by a mob of crazed, adoring females, followed by him on stage launching into "Trouble" and sending them all into a sexual frenzy.
They didn't get you interested in the movie by showing Elvis dropping dead on the toilet.
Pardon me for getting you so deep into the weeds of movie metaphors, but my point is the tone this series struck in that dark, ominous trailer is what we're getting a ton of in the last couple of episodes.
The most egregious example? Bill Parcells appears to air old grievances from the mid-1990s. Specifically how Mr. Kraft vetoed him on Draft Day 1996 and decided to go with the recommendation of the player personnel department he was paying millions to for their college scouting expertise. It's well-trodden ground. It's the reason Parcells left to go run the Jets. A messy divorce ensued. Everyone knows the story.
It's also largely irrelevant to a show that is so much supposed to be about the Dynasty that they put it in the title. If anything, it's background. Maybe a little ironic foreshadowing in the way the Patriots lost Parcells to the Jets, then the Jets lost Belichick back to the Pats, and nothing more.
But nope. Not in this show. Instead we got a good 10 minutes or more about Parcells' beef and it's impact on the Super Bowl against the Packers. And more about Drew Bledsoe sucking it up throughout the run to the Super Bowl win over the Rams, being a good sport and not making waves. Sort of glossing over the facts that:
1. The better quarterback got the start.
2. Belichick made the right decision.
3. Belichick's game plan was one of most brilliant in Super Bowl history and resulted in a dramatic victory by a 14-point underdog.
And what comes next? Consecutive championships in 2003 and '04. Which get all of 10 seconds. If that. I shit you not. Vinatieri kicks the game-winner over the Panthers. Rodney Harrison intercepts Donovan McNabb to seal the deal over the Eagles. "The Patriots were officially a Dynasty." But there were storm clouds on the horizon …
I'm paraphrasing here, but that's how it plays out. The best back-to-back seasons by any franchise in NFL history, where they went 34-4, pulled off historic, unforgettable wins, including shutting down the Colts in both postseasons and beating both co-MVPs in the same playoffs is reduced to a footnote. A quick one-off mention so we can get to the controversies and nontroversies. Hell, we didn't even hear about the Lawyer Milloy saga at the start of that run and how perfectly Belichick decision to release him worked out. Why? Because we needed time to know how salty Parcells is about drafting Terry Glenn and how Bledsoe was fighting to hide his hurt feelings. It's truly a masterclass in Missing the Point.
Exactly how much does The Dynasty miss the point by? This much: Episode 4 is simply called "Spygate." An entire episode of a 10-part series devoted to the most misdemeanor of offenses to ever be treated like a capital crime. It's ludicrious.
Maybe I'm just wired differently. I seem to have a few glorious, happy memories mixed in among all the cruel, unforgiving awfulness this show is focused on. It's like getting your high school diploma and instead of it celebrating the valedictorians, class officers, prom king and queen, kids who were voted the superlatives, the sports teams, band, and clubs, it's mostly about who puked. When the puked. Where they puked. What they puked up. With photos of the custodian cleaning it up with that magic green sawdust stuff.
I'll no doubt keep watching it like it's my job. Because it pretty much is. But if I was just a casual Pats fan interested in revisting the actual history of this Dynasty, I'd watch the NFL Films Super Bowl specials, Kraft Productions shows like the Do Your Jobs and 3 Games to Glorys. Or I'd buy a book that tells the whole story. Or a shirt.
But I'd give this anti-Patriots, anti-Belichick propaganda a good leaving alone. I prefer my Dynasty without so much nasty, thanks.