There's No Crying in Football

By Dustin Rowles | TV | July 22, 2009 |

By Dustin Rowles | TV | July 22, 2009 |

What a goddamn cesspool of vapidity. If you didn’t hate Terrell Owens before VH1’s “T.O.”, it’s only because you didn’t know who he was. You’d be wise to keep it that way. And if you do know who he is, the first hour of his reality show only confirms what everyone already knew: Owens is a deeply insecure narcissist who is more pathetic than he is loathsome. His only friends seem to consists of two female publicists who are paid to hang out with him, and a tubby lay-about whose sole occupation seems to consist of being T.O.’s TV watching wingman (and who may or may not be his paid bodyguard).

There’s not enough substance in the show to provide a proper review. There’s really nothing going on. It picks up in the hours after the Dallas Cowboys cut T.O. He’s depressed, despondent, and possibly spent a great deal of time weeping. So he calls his publicist to cheer him up. Two days later, he’s a Buffalo Bill and his chatty, busy-body, camera-hungry publicists have convinced him to move to L.A. for a couple of months to figure out what Owens is going to do in his post-football career and to find him a wife.

Basically, that endeavor consists of Owens going to clubs; Owens going shopping; Owens eyeballing ladies; Owens quibbling with his passive-aggressive publicists; Owens enjoying a nice quite evening at home with a real-estate agent he’s trying to bed; and Owens attempting to reconcile with an ex-girlfriend while wearing a man purse. You can track the entire show on fast forward — nobody ever says anything funny, interesting, or worthwhile. The only person on the show that doesn’t make you want to take an ice-pick to your eardrums is T.O.’s ex, who is far smarter, more sophisticated, and more poised than Owens (and probably drops fewer passes).

It’s a filler show. An hour of B-roll material spliced together with snippets of people being paid to prop up T.O.’s fractured ego. You don’t get much of an idea who the man is, although I’m not sure how many people really want to know. It’s really less obnoxious than it is relentlessly dull, a show that appeals to neither football fans or reality-show enthusiasts.