The Revue: Sometimes things end stupidly

Sometimes, a talented person can’t get our of their own way. And sometimes, things just have dumb endings.

By Josh Matejka Nov 9, 2022, 7:30am CST

We’ve reached the point of the season where writing this is becoming slightly repetitive.

Thankfully, ref shows are good for content.

Reviewing a close loss against a division foe can be grueling work, especially when the game is a bit of a rock fight. How many times and in how many ways do you say, “they were so close?” If I had the answer, that’s what I’d be writing. But I don’t. So here I am... writing about M. Night Shyamalan movies.

Luckily, outside forces sometimes intervene... like bad referees. Ref shows are the scourge of college football fans everywhere, but they can be good for content! Everyone can rally around the malicious presence of an overconfident ref like white blood cells on an infection. They lend an air of amateurism to the proceedings, which directly contradicts the NCAA’s constant efforts to convince us, no no this is the height of the sport. It’s not. If it was, the referees would be better.

The Revue

For someone who mostly makes schlocky, mediocre genre films, I think M. Night Shyamalan gets a bad rap.

Sure, you may say, but have you seen The Last Airbender? After Earth? Lady in the Water? The Happening? Sure, I’d reply, but have you seen The Sixth Sense? Signs? The Visit? The Village? I know that last one will get me in hot water with some folk, but y’all can sod off. The Village rips.

Shyamalan is, by all accounts, a capable director with very clear blind spots and has thus far in his career been unwilling to address them… sound familiar to anyone here? He’s all style and no substance, and his better work was always lifted by a commitment to aesthetic pleasures over existential ramblings. Maybe he was never the next Spielberg… but maybe without trying he could’ve been the best version of himself.

I deeply feel a lot of these words when I think of Eli Drinkwitz, especially in the context of Nate and my recent conversation on the Dad Pod. If college football is made of two types of coaches – scheme guys and chief executives – than Drinkwitz is the latter who desperately wants to be the former. And I get it! Scheme guys are fun. They generate catchy slogans. Everyone has an opinion about them… they’re always top of mind. They always pop up on job boards when the big schools have an opening. But maybe there’s a reason they’re always on the job board and never in the actual office.

Despite my already using a Shyamalan film early this season – mostly because of the pun, to be honest – I’ve not felt such a kinship between Drinkwitz and Shyamalan as I did when watching Mizzou drop another heartbreaker to Kentucky. It was the same old, same old against a very vulnerable Wildcat team. Self-inflicted wounds on the field and on the sidelines, the way M. Night’s same old mistakes pop up in every one of his productions. Drinkwitz, like MNS, tends to overthink things, enter galaxy brain mode and do stupid stuff like call a QB sneak right into the wall of a formidable defensive line. Get a little more colorful than that, my guy.

But it wasn’t the familiar mistakes or the collective groaning I could feel from the wider fan base that connected this loss to Glass – the final part of the Unbreakable, Split, Glass trilogy – for me. No, that would be in the absurd ending. Spoiler alert, I’m about to spoil Glass. You’re welcome, by the way, because that thing is sewage.

Toward the end of Glass, there’s a moment where Bruce Willis’ character – the famously strong man who can’t get wet, I guess? – is lying face down in the concrete. Easy enough, you may suggest. Just stand up my man. But no, he never does. Because someone has the bright idea to, and I swear I’m not making this up, drown him in a puddle.

Talk about a twist. Bruce Willis, A MODERN-DAY SUPERHERO ACCORDING TO THE MYTHOLOGY OF THESE FILMS, gets murked by two inches of water. It’s the least dramatic death scene in movie history. I remember seeing this movie in theaters and hearing the theater go dead silent because of the shocking, incomprehensible stupidity of the moment. Imagine if Superman died of a spider bite. Or Batman died of a sprained ankle. Or Spider-Man because he forgot to breathe.

Such was the level of gob-smacking idiocy with which Mizzou vs. Kentucky v. 2022 ended. I don’t need to give you a play-by-play of the moment where Will Norris had the audacity to play football in a football game or the ensuing efforts by many on college football Twitter to dig up rules buried so deep in the rule book that they’re effectively fossil fuel. I don’t know if this is good process, but I think that if you must open a rule book and search for more than 60 seconds, then the rule you’re trying to find shouldn’t count. And that’s for rules whose carrying out is ironclad, not calls that require an incredibly generous read on tackle box location or the inherent obviousness of when a ball carrier becomes a kicker. Ridiculousness. Pure silly shit.

Ultimately the game isn’t determined by the one call – or the handful of others that directly impacted Mizzou’s chances of winning throughout – as the Tigers had ample opportunity to salt the game away in their home stadium. In the end, Eli Drinkwitz’s failures, along with those of his roster, are just as responsible, if not more so.

But when you walk away from a game with inane referee lunacy so fresh on the brain, it tends to color your memory. Mizzou lost for more reasons than the official’s decision to briefly suspend the rules of logic and order… but it’s hard to remember anything else. You can’t help but laugh, like I did when Bruce Willis failed to turn his head sideways in a shallow pothole.

★★★☆☆ for the game, ☆☆☆☆☆ for Glass which frankly haunts me to this day

Watchability Meter

You know what makes everything in the world more watchable? Bourbon.

I think this is a direct quote from Dive Cuts. I believe it was Season 3, Episode 7? No need to look it up, I’m 99.9 percent sure I’m correct. Myself, I’m not the bourbon connoisseur that Matt and Sam are, but I dabble here and there. And even though I could probably get a little fancier with my selection here, I feel it would be appropriate to rate this game by my old standby – Buffalo Trace.

The rule of thumb is that more bourbon is always better, so I’m going to bump the score by a half-fifth here. But to be honest, I found this game somewhat entertaining? Kentucky always plays a hard-nosed style of football that is generally mistake-free, but not so much so that Mizzou will get outstripped. The games are always close, which keeps you invested throughout. I could’ve done without Brady Cook’s butterfingers fumble and the late defensive collapse (though that feels a bit strong in the full context of the afternoon.)

But, overall, I was satisfied. I don’t hate Kentucky so much that losing to them burns my stomach lining, but there’s enough antipathy to get my blood pressure up a bit. This would generally be a two and a half as I don’t like to score losses higher but, as I mentioned above, I’ll bump the score to a full three because bourbon.

Disrespectful Play Index

Category 1: How difficult/impressive was the play? (0-20)

Category 2: How hard did the defense try? (0-20)

Category 3: How much did his teammates help? (0-5)

Category 4: What did the player do immediately afterward? (0-20)

Category 5: How did everyone not involved react? (0-15)

Category 6: Is there a backstory/context to consider? (0-20)

Category 1: How difficult/impressive was the play?

You may think this is a strange choice given how easy this play appeared at first glance. In truth, that speaks to Cook’s skills as a runner. As you’ll see below, Cook had essentially no help and was working with a tight window of space. I’ll demonstrate below.

“You spin me right ‘round, Brady, right ‘round like a record, Brady, right ‘round, ‘round, ‘round”

This last second spin move that worked like a charm. He effectively shakes the defender behind him and brushes the incoming defender like a tick on leg hair. The result of this spin leads to some hilarious screen caps, which you won’t want to miss later on.

let the bodies hit the floor, let the bodies hit the floor, let the bodies hit the floor, let the bodies hit the (ding, ding) FLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOR

It’s equally impressive how quickly Cook is able to move out of the spin and back into a full sprint. It’s not as clean as the famous Braxton Miller circle button spin, but it’s pretty damn close. Maybe we can’t go with the full 20 because of that fact, but it’s hard to dock him any more than that. This was maybe Cook’s most impressive individual play of the season. 19/20

Category 2: How hard did the defense try?

If I showed you this picture in a vacuum, what would you think happened immediately afterward?

OK, OK, pretty standard QB draw ending right about now...

Cook has a man on his legs and another bearing down from the side. J.J. Weaver’s (No. 13) angle isn’t very good, but Cook has such a thin lane of space in which to operate that you’d have to think he’s going down here right? Hell, inertia is carrying him forward, and he’d have to move laterally to get out of this situation.

That brings us to the single funniest thing you’ll see in this post, the quite unexpected result of the situation you see above.

I don’t even know where to begin here.

It could be the fact that Cook is essentially still in a full sprint. Between the last picture and this one, it looks like his trajectory didn’t even change. He just warped through the tacklers and ran, unperturbed, into pay dirt.

It could be the fact that Trevin Wallace (No. 32), one half second ago fully extended in the opposite direction, has done a full 180 and now appears to be laying himself down for a nap. Sweet dreams, buddy.

But I think it’s the fact that J.J. Weaver — remember the guy above who had Cook dead to rights? — is sliding across the surface of Faurot Field on his face like a kid on a slip-and-slide.

Maybe more appropriately, Weaver is joining the Ian Kinsler fraternity of guys that find themselves face-first in the dirt.

#TrueSon

Anyway, we’ll be launching a GoFundMe soon to pay for Weaver’s impending facial reconstruction surgery. He earned it, after all. 20/20

Category 3: How much did his teammates help?

Things aren’t looking good for our boy here. How will he get out of this pickle?

I suppose you could say that the offensive line “helped” here, but this was a designed run from the start, and Cook simply hit the right gap.

Where Cook is really going to rack up points here is the fact that there are four defenders closer to him than his closest teammate. The lineman and defender in the top center don’t have much of a shot at him, but at the very least they’re in the play. Every other Mizzou Tiger? Not even in the same zip code. They’re basically out in Centralia watching their QB go at it alone. Bad process? Yes. Good result? Also yes! Scoring on the inverse. 5/5

Category 4: What did the player do immediately afterward?

Not much to see here. We know Cook is a bit of a stoic celebrator, which can lead to some icy cold stares at opposing fans, which are quite refreshing in the moment. But at home, Cook didn’t have much disrespect to dish. He simply gave the crowd (and the turf) a hard stare before sauntering off to the sidelines. 6/20

Category 5: How did everyone not involved react?

Not much to see here, either. As I’ve noted before, the cameraman bears as much responsibility for this as anyone else, as I’m sure there’s always someone losing their mind or committing a felony in response to the most benign touchdowns. But we didn’t see any of that, so we can go very high here. Thankfully those first few scores will bring this whole thing up a notch. 5/15

Category 6: Is there a backstory/context to consider?

After last week’s solid performance against South Carolina, Brady Cook regressed a bit to the mistake-prone, jittery QB we’ve known him to be much of this season. However, this run — along with some other key plays throughout the second half — showed Cook retaining the composure he flashed against the Gamecocks. Was it his strongest game? Not at all. But he did show up in some big moments and, in this moment specifically, put his team in a position to win. 10/20

Brady Cook’s TD run was 65 percent disrespectful to Trevin Wallace, J.J. Weaver and Kentucky fans.