Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.5

Ballers: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman January 24, 2017

Jerry Maguire kind of oddly added not one but two phrases to the public lexicon, the tearful confession by Dorothy Boyd (Renee Zellweger) that “you had me at hello,” and the ebullient if forceful “show me the money!” uttered by signing prospect Rod Tidwell (Cuba Gooding, Jr.). That second quote provided subtext for what helped to make Jerry Maguire so memorable, namely the hunt for untold riches by promising sports stars just at the beginning of their professional careers. Ballers kind of wants to evoke the same sort of excitement, but I had to wonder a bit as I watched this second season how much drama, or indeed even interest, could be generated after these sports icons had been shown the money. It’s hard to get too emotionally involved with a bunch of characters who are living the high life, or at least attempting to, with careers that, albeit fraught with a certain amount of physical danger and at times emotional intrigue, nonetheless pay outrageous sums of money and help them to maintain lifestyles that many would consider fairly lavish. Ballers coasts on the considerable charisma of star Dwayne Johnson, here playing sports financial manager Spencer Strasmore, himself a former NFL player with both physical and psychological issues emanating from his time on the gridiron. But the series repeatedly gets sacked (so to speak) by overly sudsy writing that wants to make this high stakes world the stuff of soap opera. There is consistent enjoyment in Ballers, especially for sports fans who might like to imagine what the behind the scenes story is for their favorite players, but the series takes a while to get to serious touchdown territory in this second season.

For those wanting to catch up on the story thus far, our review of the series’ first season can be accessed by clicking on the following link:

Ballers: The Complete First Season Blu-ray review

One of the things that helps Ballers get its particular ball down the field this season is the decision to further color Spencer’s character in ways that are understandable if not always completely defensible. Johnson’s inherent decency seems to help the writers elide certain moral failings, or at least shortcomings, of Spencer, though it’s to Johnson’s credit that he doesn’t want to shirk from some of the darker areas that Spencer wanders into. The season probably is a little too hyperbolic in this regard, giving Spencer plenty of trauma to deal with, whether it be continuing battles with injuries, or, more importantly in the early going at least, a couple of temper flare ups that in one case leads to an on air slugfest.

An enjoyable if kind of needlessly amped up rivalry with nemesis Andre Allen (Andy Garcia) also provides grist for the dramatic mill over the course of the season, with Spencer trying to steal all of Andre’s clients, though, again, perhaps for at least slightly honorable purposes in some cases. Playing out against these central dramas, though, are too many mini-soap operas with virtually all of the show’s rather large supporting cast. As with the first season of Ballers, the writers want to make sure the audience understands that just because some of these guys are making tens of millions a year doesn’t mean they can’t have bad days like the rest of us. While some of the situations are at least moderately interesting, again it becomes difficult to get too emotionally attached to characters with this much going for them who still want to complain about veritable hangnails.

Where Ballers does find some emotional resonance this year is in what I’d call the Concussion. As I mentioned in our Ballers: The Complete First Season Blu-ray review, some of the plot points outlined in the Will Smith film were at least tangential elements in the first year of the show, albeit never quite as overtly delineated as they were in the film. There’s still a certain kind of weird circumspection to some of Ballers’ documentation of sports injuries, but there are certainly more direct plot developments this year in terms of both Spencer’s lingering issues with pain control as well as a subplot involving Vernon Littlefield (Donovan W. Carter).

The series gives lip service to several interpersonal relationships the guys have with either girlfriends or wives, but this is more a series about male bonding and indeed male dissolution at times, and many of the females who waft through various episodes seem to be there for decorative purposes more than anything. There’s also a somewhat annoying tendency to use Rob Corddry’s character of Joe Krutel as comedy relief, something that occasionally chafes against the overheated dramatics that tend to inform some of the episodes, but the interplay between Corddry and Johnson is often fun and provides good opportunities for realistic sounding banter. I suggested that the first season found some of its most convincing content in sidebar material featuring supporting characters rather than Spencer, though I’d say the inverse is true this year, albeit fitfully so. The series is still trying to find the sweet spot between Spencer’s “arc” and the crowded field of supporting players, but this season's almost melodramatic decline for Spencer's fortunes may be setting things up for a more tragic take on content that seems glamorous to most outsiders. The second season's playbook differs subtly but markedly from the first season, and it will be interesting to see where the show passes the ball next.

Ballers: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Ballers: The Complete Second Season is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of HBO with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. The IMDb hasn't updated their data from the show's first season, and so I'm assuming this was shot with the Arri Amira, or, if not, with a similar digital capture technology. The show continues to look great when it's out and about in brightly lit environments, with the palette looking fresh and natural and detail levels remaining uniformly high. A few detours to sites like the Everglades give individual episodes a little more "local color" at times as well. As I mentioned in Ballers: The Complete First Season Blu-ray review, the tendency of some directors and/or DPs to shoot toward light sources in otherwise kind of dimly lit scenes can occasionally lead to a bit of murk and therefore less fulsome detail levels (see screenshot 18), but generally speaking this is a sharp and well detailed looking presentation that doesn't suffer from any overt compression issues and which should please the series' fans.

Ballers: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Ballers: The Complete Second Season features a winning DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track that is very much in line with what was heard on Ballers: The Complete First Season. The best immersion opportunities tend to be in elements like the big party or other gathering scenes, where crowd noises fill the side and rear channels and discrete channelization of sound effects helps to establish appropriate cacophony. There are a couple of fun moments involving cars and other vehicles (like an airboat in a swamp) that provide nice panning effects. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly and is typically well prioritized, though a few noisy crowd scenes can tend to occasionally bury parts of lines at times.

Ballers: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Disc One

• Inside the Episodes (1080p; 14:27) offers brief behind the scenes featurettes on the five episodes contained on this disc.

Disc Two

• Inside the Episodes (1080p; 15:40) offers brief behind the scenes featurettes on the five episodes contained on this disc.

Ballers: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Johnson's charisma continues to carry Ballers down the field, even when the show can tend to tackle itself with needlessly melodramatic subplots. This season builds to a rather interesting climax with regard to Spencer, who seems to be on the verge of becoming an almost classically tragic character. That will be an interesting challenge to see Johnson tackle. Technical merits are strong, and for sports fans if for no one else, Ballers comes Recommended.