It’s clear immediately that Ryan Murphy’s “American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez” isn’t just a sports story.
The first two episodes of the FX series premiered Tuesday, and you probably noticed that the opening scene doesn’t take place on a football field or in the weight room. Instead, we’re introduced to Hernandez (played by Josh Andres Rivera) as he and his buddy, Alexander Bradley (they call him Sherrod, a nickname), are, er, enjoying themselves at a Florida strip club in 2013.
The scene is a reminder to viewers that the TV show — based on The Boston Globe’s Spotlight series and accompanying podcast, produced by the Globe and Wondery — is a drama, not a documentary; it’s a fictionalized account of the life and death of the former Patriots player. (To the handful of you who don’t know, Hernandez was drafted by the Patriots in 2010, convicted of murder in 2015, and died by suicide in prison in 2017.)
The opening sequence signals that something isn’t quite right with Hernandez ― he’s intensely paranoid, convinced that he and Bradley are being eyed by cops investigating the murders of two men in Boston the year before. (Later in the first episode, Hernandez shoots Bradley in the face because he thinks he’s betrayed him. This is a story line that will be developed in later episodes, with Bradley eventually testifying against Hernandez at his second murder trial.) Over the course of the first two episodes, “American Sports Story” sets up themes it deems important to understanding Hernandez: We see him as a teen and meet his dysfunctional family, including his domineering dad; we see Hernandez suffer a concussion on the football field; we see his struggle to suppress (and conceal) his bisexuality; and we meet Urban Meyer, the former University of Florida football coach who excused bad and, in some cases, criminal behavior by his players, including Hernandez, because he’s a win-at-all-costs kind of coach.
“Wait till you see this team,” Meyer tells the university president at one point. “They’re killers and they’re ready to show the world.”
We’re also introduced to Ernest “Hobo” Wallace and Carlos A. “Charlie Boy” Ortiz, Hernandez’s friends from his hometown of Bristol, Conn. Viewers who are familiar with the Hernandez saga know that Wallace and Ortiz will figure prominently in the crime that eventually lands the Patriots player in prison.
Mark Shanahan can be reached at mark.shanahan@globe.com. Follow him @MarkAShanahan.
