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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘30 for 30: Lance’ on ESPN+, a Complicated Portrait of a Sports Pariah

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As it did for The Last Dance, ESPN bumped 30 for 30: Lance up the schedule to bolster its programming after the COVID-19 pandemic rendered all major league sports kaputskies for the indeterminate future. (Two more 30 for 30s will air in June, including Bruce Lee bio Be Water, and the story of the Mark McGwire-Sammy Sosa home run race, Long Gone Summer.) Filmmaker Marina Zenovich tackled the two-part, four-hour Armstrong bio, which seems like an unenviable task, considering how her subject polarizes people into two camps: those who think he’s merely an execrable pariah, and those who think he’s one of the biggest shitheels in sports history. So is Lance giving him a shot at redemption, or throwing more dirt on his casket? How about both?

30 FOR 30: LANCE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A basic talking-head interview shot of Armstrong: “When my life took the turn that it took, I said to myself, everywhere I go for the rest of my life, someone’s going to walk up to me and go, ‘F*ck you.’”

The Gist: So. You gonna trust what Armstrong has to say? Armstrong, the guy who lied and cheated and lied some more and exploited his cancer survival story on his way to becoming an international mega-celeb and hundred-millionaire? ESPN reporter Bonnie Ford says you probably can’t trust him and he likes to get into people’s heads. Former VeloNews editor Charles Pelkey worries this 30 for 30 is going to be “a fairly sympathetic portrayal.” Armstrong himself says, “I’m not gonna lie to you, Marina.” Then he qualifies the statement: “I’m gonna tell you my truth, and my truth is not my version. My truth is the way I remember it.” Hmm. Is he being a slippery eel here?

We then hang out with Armstrong as he discusses his recent $5 million settlement for defrauding the U.S. Postal Service, his former employer and cycling-team proprietor, who sued him for $100 million. Did he get off easy? Kind of, for a guy with plenty of dough in the bank. Then, Zenovich does what she has to do: “The first time you doped, how old were you?” she asks Armstrong and some of his former teammates. They all chuckle and shake their heads, because her leadoff interview question isn’t a floater over the plate, it’s a 105-mph fastball, to use a metaphor from a sport we know something about, instead of a cycling metaphor the likes of which you or I couldn’t concoct without consulting the internet, because we barely acknowledged the existence of the sport prior to Armstrong, and likely care even less about now in the wake of his downfall.

That covers the first eight minutes or so of Lance, which spends the next three hours or so chronicling Armstrong’s life, from childhood to now. It’s a story that’s inextricably tied to the deeply corrupt sport of cycling, which has a history of doping dating back to the 19th effing century and a Wikipedia page to rival War and Peace in its length. You see, by taking all kinds of performance-enhancing drugs, Armstrong was just upholding 100 years of tradition in a sport whose centerpiece competition, the Tour de France, might be impossible to complete without drugs. And he was just doing what every other professional competitor in the sport was doing, an argument that’s not entirely unconvincing, especially when you consider he was winning Tours de France against a whole bunch of guys who were shooting up too. But maybe that’s moving the goal posts a bit?

Anyway, Armstrong is quite candid in his commentary, dropping F-bombs everywhere, saying he needed a “nuclear meltdown” to stop his raging river of lies, admitting to abusing his power and stature, bluntly discussing his reprehensible treatment of some people, etc. The film covers his astonishing, nigh-unbelievable cancer-recovery story, as it must, and all the good that came out of his advocacy for openness and ongoing research. It also gets into how he fended off critics accusing him of doping during his too-good-to-be-true seven-year run as Tour de France champ: Why would he DARE dope after going through brain surgery and chemotherapy?, he asserted. So will Lance clarify the ethical morass of Armstrong the ass, or just conclude that people are impossibly complicated and never really at the beginning or end of things?

Our Take: The latter: People are impossibly complicated and never really at the beginning or end of things. Lance isn’t hagiography for Armstrong like The Last Dance tends to be for Michael Jordan. Granted, Armstrong is more open and forthcoming in his self-analytical commentary, and faces tougher questions than Jordan, whose cooperation with The Last Dance surely hinged on it being an overall positive portrait of a superstar. It helps that Jordan’s career wasn’t torpedoed by massive scandal — this is where the twain shan’t meet. But the two series have something in common in their depiction of subjects who weren’t always the nicest guys. The two series dig into the subtextual complications of competitiveness: Armstrong and Jordan had vicious-cycle careers which led to their success, which fed their type-A-hole leader-bully personalities, which led to even more success. Of course, only Armstrong’s vicious cycle spun the eff out, tossing his reputation and most of his fortune into the sea. Jordan still holds his titles, which in many circles justifies his behavior. Armstrong does not.

Lance is the less popular, but more fascinating documentary, partly because Armstrong has no problem being abrasive, prickly and vulnerable on camera. He clearly doesn’t care how he’s perceived in the film. He has nothing to lose; public opinion of him can’t get any worse, this side of him committing murder. His raw commentary and Zenovich’s fearless probing of interviewees renders Lance a fascinating four hours — assuming you can stomach his defensive posturing and venomous tone. He lashes out at the media. He whines that he was treated excessively in comparison to other cyclists busted for doping, selectively ignoring that he was the face of the sport, the Michael Jordan of bicycling, and far richer and more famous than his peers. He says he would advise his son, a football player at Rice University, not to use performance-enhancing drugs, but it might be a different story if he makes it to the NFL. He says he doesn’t understand why his former competitors are all nice to each other now. He talks about how he’d “get his hate on” and dream up faux-rivalries in his head to fuel his competitive fire, but he still seems to be holding on to some of that hate.

So maybe Armstrong has learned something, but he hasn’t learned everything? Maybe he’s moved on, but maybe he hasn’t? Pelkey’s concerns about the film giving Armstrong a redemptive opportunity he might not deserve seems mostly unfounded, although his ethical rehabilitation sure seems like a work-in-progress. But Ford’s assertion rings true — Armstrong’s history of deception is going to color everything he says in shades of doubt, and that’s why Zenovich frontloads that meta-commentary. The good things he did as a cancer survivor will always be overshadowed by his moral corruption. Is he a different person now? For sure. But the status of the fallout from his nuclear meltdown is ongoing, probably forever. True closure is a fallacy; problems aren’t solved, just managed.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Ford perfectly teases part two by stating that, after Armstrong won his first Tour de France, his story ceased being about the sport.

Sleeper Star: You’ll be moved by the story of Lindsay Beck, the founder of Fertile Hope, an organization that partnered with Armstrong’s cancer foundation, devoted to disseminating information about cancer patients’ fertility risks. She says she was inspired by Armstrong’s willingness to destigmatize cancer diagnoses in young adults. She also sums up his fraught and complicated story perfectly: “Everyone wants to see black-and-white. The truth is, it’s gray.”

Most Pilot-y Line: “It’d be hard for me to believe that Lance wouldn’t try to shape any narrative about him, including yours,” Ford says point-blank to Zenovich.

Our Call: STREAM IT. I went into Lance indifferent to his story, and watched all four hours with fascination. (That happens often with 30 for 30 episodes.) Zenovich shows no interest in painting a simple portrait of a complex man.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream 30 for 30: Lance on ESPN+