Now I know what you’re thinking, “Oh, a Penn State guy doing an article on HBO’s ‘Paterno.’ He’s gonna hate it and defend Joe to the death.” Well, that’s not what I’m going to do. I’m going to try to do this as unbiased as possible. I don’t hate Joe and I don’t think he was the most at fault, but I do think he could have done more (I know shocking from a Penn Stater). Also, I’m not getting into the scandal. This is solely going to be about what I thought about the trailer, which is below.
This is the second trailer that has been released for “Paterno,” but this is the first actual look into what we’ll see. I’ve watched the trailer a few times, but can’t really tell the perspective they’re giving on this. I just hope they don’t go too far onto one side. I’m hoping they’ll tell the facts of what happened and I think they will. HBO knows what they’re doing. They know how to attract the biggest audience they can, while still creating high quality and high merit cinema. To do that, they’ll have to be as unbiased as possible and they probably will.
When “Paterno” was announced, I admittedly wasn’t excited. I thought it would just bash Penn State and make us look horrible. After watching the trailer, I still have some doubts. I do however think that HBO is trying their best to stick to the story as much as possible and I, for one, appreciate that. Not all of Penn State is madly in love with Joe and thinks he could do no wrong. I’m hoping that, with this series, it will show that not all of Penn State is like that. I hope they will stick to the true story of what happened and not that Joe is the worst person ever. I hope that they show how Penn State has recovered from the scandal. So please, HBO, just stick to the main story and show what Penn State has become after the scandal. Not only what we were before.