The Five Spot: A Truly Upsetting Acting Performance

ALSO: How did Keanu’s stolen watches end up on another continent???

The Five Spot is a weekly Friday roundup where I rank and riff on my five favorite things from the week. Most of the entries will be about film and TV, but there might also be ones about weird local news or sandwiches I ate or anything else, really. The whole thing is an exclusive for paid subscribers, so if you want to read the top four entries, you can do that by upgrading…

Off we go.

FIVE: I hate that I love this

Every single molecule in my body was ready to dislike this clip of Jerry Jones making a guest appearance as himself in Landman, the latest Taylor Sheridan series about cowboys and/or oil to hit Paramount Plus. My reasoning was simple: I cannot in good faith support anything Jerry Jones does or says because he owns the Dallas Cowboys and I am a lifelong fan of the Philadelphia Eagles. Is this outrageously petty? Yes, of course. Is it fair? Maybe. Do I feel conflicted about this bone-deep animus toward a person I’ve never met whose sole offense is being the public face of my favorite football team’s hated division rival? Reader, I do not.

What I do feel conflicted about, however, is… and I hope you realize how much I have to mean this given all the stuff in the previous paragraph… Jerry Jones is… just really freaking great in that scene up there. Go watch it now if you haven’t. I mean that sincerely. Stop reading right now and click play on that video up there. Watch Jerry Jones act. Watch how much he means every word he says in a shockingly long monologue the show gave to a billionaire who has no real acting experience and is just playing himself. Watch him in a scene with Jon Hamm and Billy Bob Thornton somehow not just holding his own but delivering the most believable performance in the whole hospital room. He’s crying! Look at the real tears welling up in this man’s eyes! What the hell is going on out here???!!!

It’s… I mean, it’s incredible, right? It’s hard to quantify just how low the bar was here. Think about what you’d expect if someone walked up to you and said “Hey, Jerry Jones is gonna appear as himself on a Taylor Sheridan show tonight.” You’d expect a creaky, wooden performance, stunt casting at its best, maybe 30 seconds of handshakes and a “hey, go Cowboys” from one of the other actors to him as he greets people at some event. We’ve seen that before. What we have not seen is MY MORTAL ENEMY EMOTING WITH SUCH CONVICTION THAT IT MAKES ME RETHINK MY ENTIRE VIEW OF HIM AS A HUMAN BEING.

Frankly, I do not enjoy this at all. I can’t decide which scenario is worse for me, the one where Jerry Jones has secretly acquired so much acting talent that I need to seriously start wondering if he deserves an Emmy or the one where he’s such a big softie about his family that I need to start looking at him as a three-dimensional person who gets misty watching the grandkids splash around the pool. I don’t want to think about Jerry Jones like that. I want to think about him pouting in a luxury box during a football game his Cowboys are losing 35-3.

This will not do at all. I’m upset.

FOUR: I need to know how Keanu’s stolen watches ended up in Chile