American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez Recap: Love of the Game

In a way, this is the climax the whole show has been leading up to: the murder that resulted in Aaron Hernandez’s arrest and life sentence. We are firmly in the downfall portion of this man’s story now.

I’ve had my concerns about how these events would eventually be portrayed. There are many ways to butcher a true-crime story in the adaptation process, and this show’s writing hasn’t exactly been subtle. (I still have questions about the apparent slandering of Hernandez’s late uncle.) Now that I’ve seen the events play out onscreen, though, I’m a little relieved. Setting aside the general question of how necessary this show is to begin with, nothing here comes across as particularly tasteless. “Odin” is pretty successful at what it does: presenting the intense, tragic culmination of Aaron’s escalating paranoias.

Aaron Hernandez hasn’t made much of an effort to bring more attention to the backgrounds or personalities of Hernandez’s victims, especially in the case of Daniel de Abreu and Safiro Furtado, the two men he murdered at that stoplight in Boston. For better or worse, Aaron himself is the subject of this show. But that changes a bit here, even if the episode still doesn’t spend all that much time on Odin’s life outside his short-lived friendship with the protagonist. In their scenes together, Odin is the main point of view, the audience surrogate.

When Odin first meets Aaron, he’s anxious and starstruck, like any semi-pro-football player out of Boston might be. His girlfriend Shaneah is the sister of Aaron’s fiancée Shayanna, so this might feel like a normal family get-together to Aaron — but to Odin, it’s pretty hard not to think about how crazy it is to be in this guy’s lavish home. The two become fast friends that night, playing Madden together, and you get the sense that it’s all very surreal to Odin. Even more surreal: Aaron actually shows up to one of his Bandits games, cheers for him, and goes into the locker room afterward to take pictures and celebrate. Odin doesn’t quite see the red flags yet.

That starts to change when the two go out to Rumor Nightclub after the game. Aaron might’ve seemed like a pretty carefree guy at dinner that first night, thanks to wine and weed, but at the club and afterward, he’s back to the paranoid, unstable man we’ve seen a lot of lately. He’s drinking and smoking weed as usual, but also indulging in prescription drugs and PCP, still hallucinating Sherrod. Back at his second apartment, he shows Odin his fully stocked gun cabinet and rambles incoherently, neither of which sets his new friend at ease.

Even with Odin’s new positive influence on his life, Aaron can’t stop unraveling. The news that Sherrod is filing a civil suit, while distressing, could offer a way out of this endless cycle of paranoia — but agreeing to settle doesn’t stop him from spending more time at his secret pad than with his family. Learning about Tanya’s cancer only compounds the bad feelings.

It’s significant that the most joy we see Aaron experience in this episode is through his bond with Odin. It’s not just about having a new pal; Aaron seems to see Odin as an earlier, or at least alternate, version of himself. If Aaron had been born with a bit less natural talent, would he be happy with a humble existence of working construction and paying yearly dues just to play football semi-professionally? He admires Odin’s genuine love for the game and his simple but happy life. Odin might think of Aaron’s life as aspirational, but to Aaron, the reverse is true. Maybe that’s what he struggles to articulate late that night, passing out before he can complete a thought.

For how ham-fisted this show can be, the parallels drawn between killer and victim are relatively subtle here. When Aaron does eventually murder Odin, it’s not like Hadi Nicholas Deeb’s script frames the moment as a self-hating man killing another version of himself or something cheesy like that. It’s just that Odin represents something meaningful to Aaron. Maybe the real-life Hernandez didn’t consciously look at Odin Lloyd and long for that life, but it’s pretty believable in this context.

There are some valuable insights Aaron could take from this new friendship if he were sober or more reflective. But the next day, he shoves it all out of his mind as usual, jolted back into reactive mode when Shayanna confronts him about the secret apartment. It’s Odin’s act of unintentional snitching that seals his fate; after Shayanna says she knows “everything,” Aaron becomes convinced that he may have revealed more than just the existence of another apartment. Scanning his memories, he can’t recall how much detail he used in telling Odin about Sherrod and the shooting in Boston. Is it possible Odin could even know about Chris?

The sequence of Aaron, Carlos Ortiz, and Ernest Wallace effectively kidnapping Odin and driving him to his death is as stomach-churning and dread-inducing as it must have been in real life, whether or not Lloyd knew exactly what was going to happen when he texted his girlfriend. At the industrial park, director Steven Canals moves to close-up shots, locking us in Aaron and Odin’s headspaces for their final conversation. As much as Odin insists that he didn’t tell Shaneah anything else — that there wasn’t even anything to tell — Aaron doesn’t believe him. He’s too convinced of his own rightness, too certain that his greatest fears are coming true. Being thrust into fame young can be difficult to begin with, and with secrets like these ones piling up, the exposure would be even more terrifying. The question “Why did Aaron Hernandez murder Odin Lloyd?” might not have one easy answer, but watching this, it’s not hard to believe it happened.

It won’t be long now before Aaron is arrested, having totally failed to cover his tracks in any well-considered way. But it’s not just the big climax that makes “Odin” one of the strongest episodes of Aaron Hernandez. It’s also the willingness to step outside Aaron’s perspective and spotlight the people most affected by his actions. Odin is shown as a likable, casually kind person, but the script doesn’t go overboard in portraying him as perfect or manipulating us into an emotional attachment only to lose him half an hour later. Besides, by most accounts I’ve seen, the real-life Odin Lloyd was a gentle, widely liked guy.

In the final few scenes, Shayanna comes into focus as the show’s other most complicated character — someone wrestling with a whole host of conflicting emotions. Moments after informing Aaron of the devastating news that Odin was killed, she agrees to dispose of the murder weapon for him, no questions asked. It’s vaguely sickening to watch her lie to her sister about where she’s been after arriving home.

When a detective arrives with questions for Aaron, he mumbles that he needs to talk with his attorney, instantly raising eyebrows. Back inside, he doesn’t answer Shayanna’s question, instead heading upstairs wordlessly and pretending nothing happened. But Shayanna gazing over at her sleeping sister mirrors that denial. For all the ways Aaron has hurt his fiancée, maybe they’re alike in some regards. I wouldn’t have expected the show to draw a parallel between these two, but this ending leaves me pretty curious about Shayanna’s psychological state in the last two episodes. When Aaron Hernandez gets out of its own way a little, it can be a very different experience.

The End Zone

• Both Josh Andrés Rivera and J. Alex Brinson do great work throughout this episode. The murder scene is an obvious highlight, but I was particularly impressed by Rivera’s performance when Aaron was super high earlier in the episode. You can track the general direction of his thoughts and feelings even when Aaron stops speaking coherently.

• Brinson also happens to be married to Lindsay Mendez, who plays Tanya. They met while starring together on All Rise.

• Lloyd’s real texts to Shaneah Jenkins aren’t exactly the same as presented here, but almost.

• CTE watch: Aaron tells Shayanna that he “forgets shit,” having neglected to tell her the news about Tanya. (Then again, he doesn’t seem to care much about keeping Shayanna updated on anything.)

• Well, if this doesn’t solidify Shayanna as the actual most loyal person Aaron has ever known, I’m not sure what will.