![]() “And this year it’s more about what these kids do once they’re in that spotlight, once they’ve dealt with it and gone through everybody caring about them and talking about them, good and bad, and now they’re here and they have to make it work.” ![]() “I think what’s interesting about this season is that some of these guys shown, they’re extremely mature and you just wonder, ‘How did this happen?’ ” said Wagner. Rivers and Carter had been kicked out of their respective schools for marijuana use Carter swears he’s using the drug as an alternative to prescriptions to treat an attention disorder that make him sluggish (and indeed he sleeps a lot). So Season 2 serves to show how difficult it can be to survive in college football even for those players who appear to have all the advantages needed to survive in college football. ![]() De’Andre Johnson, kicked out of Florida State for punching a woman at a bar, is frequently shown with his parents and has a sports psychologist. The most frustrating character of this season, Kam Carter, was raised by an uncle in a middle class D.C. Chauncey Rivers’ mother is ever-present - to the point that Stephens attempts to kick her out of a game. Whereas the one holdover from season one, Isaiah Wright, is an example of the far-too-common college player who comes from a background of poverty and neglect, many of the new stars were quite the opposite. And those kids, by nature of what they’re going through and where they’re coming from, are sure to have an intriguing backstory.” “And one thing we look for, when we pick a character, is an interesting background. “There was no doubt they had the talent to go back to Division I, so everything, for them, mattered that much more. “I think we focused on them because there was so much at stake,” Whiteley said. Players in that situation are often referred to as “drop downs.” They selected five players who’d recently arrived at East Mississippi after leaving Division I schools, usually for disciplinary reasons. By then they had interviewed coaches and others around the program to try to narrow in on which players to follow most closely. Whiteley and his veteran crew - he’s worked for years with producers Adam Leibowitz and Adam Ridley - began filming the latest season last August as the Lions trained for the upcoming season. And that’s a testament to the people we filmed, their openness and willingness to be who they are.” But a few minutes into it we were getting the authentic shots we always look for. And maybe for the first few minutes of filming this season it felt different. “The show brought new attention to everyone. “We had to take into account that everything was different,” he said. He was surprised to find that, for the most part, the people in Scooba, Miss. Season 2 is the first time he’s ever had to go back and film people after they’ve already seen how they’ll be portrayed. Whiteley has chronicled the presidential campaign (in 2014’s Mitt) and explored our education system (in 2015’s Most Likely to Succeed) but Last Chance U was his first attempt at a longform, episodic documentary series. I go to church, I hear things said up on the pulpit and think, ‘Yeah I need to follow that’ and then I struggle with it, I struggle with the same mistakes I made in my 20s. “But he does try to change, with varying degrees of success, and I think that’s compelling. “He was genuinely horrified by what he saw in Season 1, and, look, a lot of us would be if somebody filmed us living our lives everyday. “I do think when you see him saying he wants to change, it is authentic,” Whiteley said in an interview with For The Win this week. They aren’t, though, which explains why Whiteley has come to understand Stephens in a way that many - including another star of the series, academic advisor Brittany Wagner - cannot. Buddy Stephens does not ultimately find in himself the Buddy Stephens he thinks he maybe could find if only things were different. Season 2 has him embarking on a quest for an epiphany that never quite comes. In fact, Buddy Stephens does not like the Buddy Stephens he witnessed on camera. Many viewers came to the conclusion after watching the first season that they do not like the coach of the East Mississippi Community College Lions, Buddy Stephens. The closest thing we get to anything nearing editorial interpretation is when the camera lingers on a character for a few seconds longer than they expect after they have said something they possibly do not fully believe. ![]() You’ll notice this in Season 2 of Last Chance U, his Netflix series premiering Friday. Greg Whiteley says his documentary film-making is meant to leave room for viewers to form their own interpretation of the material.
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