- Network: HULU
- Series Premiere Date: Jun 4, 2024
Critic Reviews
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Forty years of playing cranks on screen has given Ed O’Neill a particular understanding for Sterling’s quirks, gripes and foibles that few others in his field can claim. Laurence Fishburne serves up a reminder of his Olivier-like range, down to the raspy voice of Doc Rivers, the Black coach who bucks up to Sterling. Double Oscar nominee Jacki Weaver delivers yet another powerhouse performance as Shelly Sterling. .... Where Coleman is truly on her game is when she’s digging into the more closely guarded textures of Stiviano’s personality
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Fitting all of these characters into one limited series means not a single second is wasted, and it’s a credit to the show’s team that this is the first six-episode series we’ve seen in a while that doesn’t feel like it should’ve been expanded to seven or eight installments.
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Explosive series, which successfully juggles numerous storylines and fills in the juicy and meaty details while constantly entertaining us.
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“Clipped” is flashy, maybe even a little messy to begin with. But if you let its soapy saga wash over you, you’ll realize that cleaning one apple at a time is no way to address a barrel filled with toxic sludge.
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The series brings just enough gossipy verve to the facts to keep the viewer hooked, with those four key performances ensuring that the humanity of these people (for better and for worse) makes it to the screen. A great basketball game packs in plenty of drama. But there are actually very few scenes of basketball being played in Clipped, because the action off the court is far more compelling.
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Even with its frequent heavy-handedness, “Clipped” is extremely entertaining, especially if you are not coming to it hoping to learn anything about race but instead, perhaps, thinking about the pitfalls of wealth, ambition, fame, and power.
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“Clipped” is smartly written and worth watching for the performers.
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In a rare victory for the Clippers over the Lakers, “Clipped” is the second recent drama series devoted to one of Los Angeles’ NBA teams but also the superior one, chronicling the spectacular fall of owner Donald Sterling. Rotating among four principal players, with Ed O’Neill as Sterling, it’s an all-star lineup covering a story filled with the kind of outlandish characters that require little embellishment.
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There is seemingly very little daylight between the real-life characters and the ones on the roster of this absorbing, irritating, heartbreaking series created by Gina Welch.
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"Clipped" succeeds as a compelling way to relive one of the biggest NBA stories of the 21st century and a bigger picture discussion about racism, capitalism, and who really "wins" in American society. It's the only basketball TV series you'll see with almost no time spent on the court. Instead, you'll see riveting meetings in hotel ballrooms.
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Clipped is a slick, well-acted dramatization that inserts moments of soul searching into the tale of headline-grabbing scandal.
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Though “Clipped” regularly exercises poetic license, it’s a spiritually accurate re-creation of one of the most tumultuous and bizarre chapters in NBA history.
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If it all sounds like a lot for a six-episode mini-series, that’s one of the reasons “Clipped” works in an era of television seasons that are almost always too long. This one is packed with memorable characters and ideas, not content to merely rehash what people remember about the Sterling drama but seeking to offer a new perspective on its players.
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The crackling interplay between these key players provides Clipped with its foundation, and it always knows just who to call off the bench when the energy threatens to dip or the tempo needs to change.
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“Clipped” does indeed have those things going for it, as well as strong, anchoring performances from Laurence Fishburne as Coach Doc Rivers, Cleopatra Coleman as V. Stiviano, Ed O’Neill as Sterling and Jacki Weaver as Shelly Sterling. .... But it can also ring a little immature, and what the show gains in aerodynamics it loses in nuance and texture. “Clipped” loves repetition and avoids subtlety.
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While Clipped lacks focus at times, the story of V. Stiviano outing Donald Sterling as a virulent racist is too well-done to not recommend the show.
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“Clipped” moves at a quick and breathless pace, channeling the feeling of a news story that spirals out of control. “Clipped” is less confident when zooming out from the beat-by-beat madness to its big picture takeaways.
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Welch has a lot on her mind but not all of it coheres. The show is strongest when it’s less focused on Stiviano’s grasping desire for fame or recreating her awkward interview with Barbara Walters (in which she clunkily described herself as Sterling’s “right hand arm man”) and more interested in longstanding issues of racism in the NBA and the tense debates Sterling’s bigotry provoked for Rivers and the players.
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A gaudy and campy docudrama sung in the key of Ryan Murphy (though Murphy isn’t involved in this production), Clipped bites off far more than it can chew. It’s part underdog sports drama, part overheated soap opera and part overly broad cultural satire… none of which are entirely successful.
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Fishburne is easily the most charismatic and empathetic of the leads, and he becomes a de facto supporting character once Sterling’s racism becomes (more) public. There’s a lot of lip service paid to how these stresses affect the Clippers and their first serious run at a championship in ages, but that material never really deepens until Rivers becomes more prominent in the final episode again.
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Despite some good performances, particularly by Laurence Fishburne as Doc Rivers, and some isolated scenes, it doesn’t offer up nearly enough that’s new to merit the dramatization. .... The storytelling itself is mostly lacking. It’s six largely by-the-numbers hours.
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