Call Rise ‘Friday Night Footlights’
The Show: Rise, Season 1, Episode 2 The Moment: The disappointing footballer
“I know there’s this whole other side to who you are,” Lou (Josh Radnor, set somewhat free from How I Met Your Mother), a high school English teacher turned theatre coach, tells his football-playing son Gordy (Casey Johnson). “Your photography, your guitar playing.”
“I took that photography class because it was easy,” Gordy shoots back. “And that isn’t my arrangement of Blackbird, it’s Paul McCartney’s. I play it the same as Paul McCartney and 20 million people on YouTube. I’m not like you. I’m not like anyone in this family. I don’t wanna sing show tunes in the car. Show tunes make me puke. I know this makes me a huge disappointment to you.”
Ummm, said no football player ever. Especially in (fictional) rust-belt Stanton, Pa., where this show is set.
I grew up in (real) rust-belt Bethlehem, Pa., and I can assure you, football players and cheerleaders were the Colossi who bestrode the Earth and we nerds in the arts scurried into corners at their approach. Which makes this series the true Upside Down.
Oh, it’s lively enough — showrunner Jason Katims ( Parenthood) knows how to pluck a heartstring and set up a conflict: The school spends its meagre funds on its football program, so when gridiron star Robbie (Damon J. Gillespie) starts two-timing at the theatre, the stakes go up. It’s like Glee, but sincere.
Katims also made the great football series Friday Night Lights, so if Lou’s “We are a troupe” speech to the theatre geeks reminds you of FNL’s motto (“Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose”), well, this series is clearly Katims’ turn to dream: of a world where the arts inspire the same kind of roaring passion as sports, with selfactualization replacing concussions. Call it Friday Night Footlights.
Rise airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. on Global and NBC.