30 for 30: There’s No Place Like Home

A Kansas basketball recruiting film doubling as a crazy fan trying to bilk people out of millions of dollars for a piece of paper. They worked hard to emphasis the importance of the paper and it’s connection to the school, but it’s still a piece of paper. The bit near the end, where they point out the other items on auction are an original signed copy of the Emancipation Proclamation and a flag from Custer’s Last Stand and try to say the rules of basketball are just as big was typically delusional for most of the show. No one’s in any danger of forgetting James Naismith or the game of basketball if the original rules are sitting in someone’s attic or burned in the fireplace. It’s an insane premise.

I probably would’ve have given up on the entire thing if not for these posts, and if not that been told that it picked up in the last half hour. (I would’ve been done when Josh took off his $20 t-shirt and laid it down on James Naismith grave as a solemn tribute, if not sooner. They wanted to show dedication and respect, they instead showed their lead character was a total lunatic.)

The show did pick up when other people interceded on Josh’s help, and most of all with the long auction scene at the end. The movie did a strong enough spot where we wanted to see crazy Josh’s efforts come thru, and had absolutely no idea if they actually would. (Revealing it was a Duke person they were bidding against, as foreshadowed either, worked well.)

The auction scene was dramatic, but I wasn’t convinced it was honest. The first half hour was spent with the lead faking people that he was filming a documentary about the rules when he really had some other plan going on, and I’m not totally convinced that ended after the first half hour. I’m not totally being paranoid; the documentary led the viewer to believe they were seeing his complete trip from the announcement of the auction to the auction itself, but his highlight reel pitch package includes footage of Josh talking to ex-Kansas players (and Jay Bilas!) with no particular explanation of how it got there. That auction scene at the end is super dramatic if we don’t know how far the Booths will go to pay for the rules (and pretend Josh doesn’t know either), but maybe we only didn’t know because that part was also just not included.

This was not the worst one of the two seasons, but it’s not one I’d ever need to see again.