1. This picture
OK Terrell, for this one, we're going to need you to get completely naked, then get down on one knee and make some sort of weird, contemplative downcast look. Yeah . . . . yeah, just like that. Goooooood stuff.
2. The story TO told in episode one about how Jerry Jones told him he would be released from the Dallas Cowboys
You'll have to see Owens tell the story to fully appreciate it, but I'll try to recount it here the best I can. Apparently, Jerry Jones called TO and his agent, Drew Rosenhaus into a room. They all sat down at a table and Jerry began drawing on the white tablecloth. He wrote both his and Terrell's name down, then drew an arrow pointing from "TO" to "Jerry" and labeled it "100%". Then he drew an arrow pointing from "Jerry" to "TO" and labeled it "100%". Then, he paused, and drew a dark line between the two names and said, "We've gotta part ways." If this is true, it is an utterly hilarious and cryptic way to fire someone. I like how Jerry threw him a curveball with the 100% lines before drawing the third and final death line. Great stuff. Throughout all of the drawing, Terrell remained silent. After Jerry told him they would have to part ways, TO looked Jones in the eye and said the following: "T gon' land on his feet . . . . T gon' land on his feet." Then Jerry Jones left the room and Rosenhaus and Owens stuck around long enough for TO to steal the tablecloth, bring it to his friend/bodyguard Pablo, and recount the story exactly as I wrote it above. This all takes place less than five minutes into the first episode.
3. The smoking hot asian "real estate agent" that TO ostensibly sleeps with in the first episode
There is nothing you can ever say to convince me that this girl was not a paid actress.
4. The workout montages
I'm certain that when they were ironing out the deal for his show, TO demanded there be at least one (preferably two) mandatory slow motion TO workout montages per episode. Episode one found him doing some sort of cable overhead triceps extensions in three feet of water. Episode two's montage took place on a football field and ended up with him running up the stairs of a courthouse. Also, it was interspersed with images of Pablo* eating an extremely large plate of chicken wings and what looks to be melted cheese covered in either sour cream or additional melted cheese:
Pablo, you haven't even touched your side of ranch.
5. Monique's long lost sister subplot from episode two
1:04 into episode two, Mo reveals that she has a long lost sister that she's never spoken to who she just found on Facebook and is thinking about contacting. First she goes to Terrell for counsel (who advises her thusly: "I understand the nervousness of it, but it's like, reconnecting, you know?") and then her mother ("Stop yappin' and make it happen"). She eventually sets up a lunch meeting with the sister, goes to the restaurant to wait for her, and then gets stood up and leaves in tears, seemingly without paying for her iced tea. You may be asking yourself, "Who the fuck is Monique?" Glad you asked.
6. The existence of Monique and Kita
TO's publicists are the true stars of the show. In fact, a more accurate name for the show would be Two Strident, Hectoring Women Attempt to Become Famous, Starring Terrell Owens
7. The part in episode two when the mayor of Buffalo gives TO the key to the city
He couldn't stay long though, he had a 1:00 appointment to give his car keys to Donte Stallworth. #rimshotplease
8. The foreshadowing of a potential Kita/Terrell hookup
Uh oh! Only one bedroom when Kita and TO check into their bed and breakfast after their Niagra Falls pseudo date! And Kita was the one who booked the room! Luckily there are two beds. Hilarious footie pajamas and TO's intentional yet endearing fall off of his bed ensue. Kita on TO's pajamas: "You look like a big red tampon."
This is going straight to the front of Mr. Petersen's portfolio
And there's so much more that didn't even make my list. Like the episode two Drew Rosenhaus pep talk that tries unsuccessfully to make you forget for a second that Rosenhaus is one of the worst people on earth. Or when TO plays himself in chess during the show opener. It's a great show that is entertaining on so many levels because it was created with the intention of conveying multiple levels of meaning.
It is not hard for one to imagine the many and varied members of Team Owens getting together in a conference room, hatching a plan to make a show about their client in order to portray him as a kinder, genlter, realer person than the emotionally unstable locker-room cancer that everyone constantly sees on Sportscenter. Take the first episode as evidence. Kita and Mo ride together in the backseat of an SUV on their way to have their first encounter with Owens after he found out that Dallas would not be taking him back. Kita delivers the mission statement of the show when she says to Mo, "The plan is to work on the man. We're here to work on Terrell Owens the man, not the football player." Mo agrees and then they pray.
Unfortunately, TO had to be an executive producer for the show to go forward and while content to play along with the shows image-softening TV tropes, his primary mission seems entirely different from that of his publicists. TO wants to show everyone how much of a badass he is by treating his reality show like a rapper's music video. Accordingly, the viewer is given a mishmash of endearing everyman scenes crafted by the publicists (the footie pajamas at the bed and breakfast, the playful trip to Niagra Falls) and rap video scenes crafted by Owens himself (purchasing $137,000 diamond earrings, seducing the real estate agent, the workout montages). Of course all of this coalesces into nothing more than a picture of a typical modern celebrity. The publicists are unsuccessful in their mission because they are only capable of laying on some sort of external veneer that gives off a human-like sheen rather than imbuing him with any real humanity. Only TO himself can accomplish this, but he chooses not too. Instead he fails in his own goal to position himself as actually cool, managing only to protray an intense MTV Cribsian desire to appear cool. Which is the least cool thing one can do.
There is however one slightly less scripted, pathos tinged scene that comes at the beginning of the first episode that seems to get to the heart of Owens the person better than anything that comes after. A visibly distraught TO is left to his own devices after being released by Dallas. He ends up moping around his Miami home constantly watching Sportscenter's coverage of himself with only his bodyguard to comfort him. He calls his publicists in to save him and they proceed to attempt to convince him to move to LA. Perhaps to take his mind off his troubles. Perhaps to forcibly reconnect him with his ex-fiancee. Perhaps to punch up this very reality show by introducing a more exciting locale. Who knows? TO certainly doesn't, but he goes along anyway.
Terrell Owens is not an everyman. He is a blank screen onto which we can project whatever is useful to us at the time. Here he is one day being rode out of Dallas on a rail, the ultimate villain responsible for all of his teams failures and disagreements. Here he is the next day, the savior of Buffalo, being handed the keys to the city. He is nothing but a lump of muscle and athletic prowess adrift in a sea of publicists and agents and bodyguards and NFL owners. He will go where they tell him to go and say what they tell him to say. He will be passed from franchise to franchise, never in one city long enough to build a home or forge an identity.
On some level, I think he feels the emotional weight of his reality, but is simultaneously unable to register the source. He might be able to tell you that he feels a sadness and a loneliness, but I doubt he could tell you why, and this confusion leads him to act out in odd and unpredictable ways. All of this makes him the absolute perfect candidate to be a star in a reality television show. And I'll be watching.
* * *
*While technically Pablo from The TO Show is not Big Black from Rob & Big, the differences are negligible.
Bonus: Can you find the extremely obscure Simpsons reference in this blog post? I bet you can't.
Update: Shawn Butcher was the first to correctly identify the Simpsons reference @ 2:48 PM July 28th, 2009
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