Tonight at 8p on NBC, Old Rock, who is running for President of the United States, is dealing with the repercussions of choosing his VP (Rosario Dawson) on Young Rock. He tells Randall Park he is always loyal to his partners in crime, and he started doing that during his days at the University of Miami.
Since his grades are down, the coach tells him he has to get an on-campus job if he wants to stay at UM. He gets a job checking the emergency phones on campus to make sure they all work.
His co-worker becomes his partner-in-crime. That is because Hopkins tells him they can spend the day watching action movies instead of working. Side note, DJ, says he is a fan of Sylvester Stallone to his friend. What neither of them mentioned is that Sly went to UM for a little while before he got kicked out.
Back to the show, one of the reasons why they are able to goof is because no one checks on their work. That is until now. There is a woman who is going to check all of the phones to make sure they work. If they don’t, then he will get kicked out of school like Stallone.
Therefore, he and Hopkins go on a mad dash to check all of the phones before she does. Can they do it?
You might ask, why do I know that factoid Stallone. That is because I went to UM with DJ. Therefore, I have a lot of problems with tonight’s episode because it is full of a lot of inaccuracies. Now, you won’t know that because you didn’t go to school with us. But I don’t know why DJ allowed it to be done this way. Things that are so simple to check and ask. They mention things that did not exist on our campus, like a quad. I mean, they did do a good job of finding a school in Australia that kind of looks like our college, but it wasn’t. And I get that. But I don’t get why they made such simple errors. But I am too close to the story.
Now, I have been close to other stories that have been adapted to a screen. For example, The Newsroom gave me flashbacks to my days at CNN, and it was traumatizing. Reliving a scandal that haunted the network was not easy. Aaron Sorkin did not work at CNN (I am so grateful he did not include our meeting at the news network on the show), but he did a better job with accuracy than DJ is doing with his show.
There I said it. I am sorry, DJ, I support you, but I cannot support this episode.
Has anyone else experienced this with a production that is based on a period of your life that you lived? Tell me how I can let it go.
Tonight at 8p on NBC, it is time for DJ (Uli Latukefu) to go to the University of Miami in Young Rock.
His freshman year starts off amazing, but then he runs into some trouble. That trouble gets him in even more trouble, and there is only one person who can get him out of it.
A lot has happened to DJ since we saw him at 15, and he gives us an update on all of it. He lets us know what is happening with his grandmother (Ana Tuisila) and his parents. How will his mom (Stacey Leilua) handle being away from her only baby? His dad (Joseph Lee Anderson), on the other hand, loves telling everyone who his son is.
Can he live up to his dad’s expectations? You have to watch an episode that shows the transformation of Little Dewey into DJ the man.
I was looking forward to this episode because I also went to UM. It didn’t disappoint, and it brought back some nice memories. UM was good to me and The Rock, just like Young Rock is good to us.
When you are done watching Young Rock, stick around for Kenan at 8:30p.
Before The Rock was one of the most well-known wrestlers in the world, he was watching his dad wrestle at MSG. How cute was the supportive 12-year-old back in 1984?
Young Rock is a sitcom based on Dwayne Johnson’s life before he was The Rock. NBC imagined what he really looked like back then, and he was solid, solid as a rock.
Tonight at 8p on NBC, Dwayne Johnson is getting his story told in the biositcom Young Rock. The show will focus on life at the age of 10, 15, and 18. Before the show started filming, DJ sat down with each of the actors and explained to them why each three of those years are significant to him.
Adrian Groulx is the first Dwayne Johnson we meet. We will call him Dewey, one of Johnson’s many nicknames. He grew up in Hawaii surrounded by wrestlers. His grandmother (Ana Tuisila) was a huge wrestling promoter. His father (Joseph Lee Anderson) was the wrestler Rocky Johnson. His uncles were wrestlers, as were his parents’ friends. He was the only child among these bigger-than-life men like Andre the Giant. They all helped to raise him, along with his parents.
What advice did Dewey have for Groulx? “I’ve got the kid who’s playing me at 10 years old and that little, innocent boy who just needed guidance but who loved the world I was in,” Dewey said during NBC’s TCA Winter Press Day. “I loved the bad guys of pro wrestlers, of pro wrestling, I love my dad. He was my hero. Never understood that things were actually tougher than they appeared in terms of lifestyle. I never knew. And that’s the blessing that I have with mom and dad, who never, you know, really hit me to what happened, to what was happening.”
Bradley Constant plays Dwayne when he was going through his Tomás stage. By this time in his life, the 15-year-old had lived in 13 states and two countries. All he wanted to do was fit in. Thus, he stole clothes to make himself look rich. Something he and his family were far from at that stage of his life.
What did Tomás tell Constant? “And then now, I’m looking at Bradley at 15 and it’s a kid
who had some anger issues but also thought he was really cool. Clearly had an identity crisis. I didn’t want to be known as Dwayne when I moved from high school to high school. I called myself Thomas. Girls used to call the house and ask for Tomás and my mom would go, ‘I’m sorry. There’s no Tomás here.’ And I would run, ‘No, no, no, no, no. That’s me. That’s me.’ I’d get on the phone, ‘Hey. Yeah, hey, hey. It’s Tomás.’ And she would be like, ‘What are you doing?’
Next up, we meet Uli Latukefu, who is DJ at 18 when he went to our alma mater, the University of Miami. I call him DJ because that is how we knew him at UM. This is the first time DJ is on his own, but his dad is still there to help him out. Although, it might not always feel like help. This was also a time when he grew up and stopped being a punk. Well, a punk who got arrested all the time.
DJ’s advice to Latukefu was, “I remember telling Uli, just remember, I was just so determined to make something of myself. That was so important to me.”
How did the younger versions of him do, according to The Rock? “And, you know, these guys nailed it, so I’m just — it’s so surreal, and I want to give these guys so much credit,” The Rock said. “Never in my wildest dreams, number one, would I have ever had the career that I’ve been lucky enough to have. I’m a lucky SOB to have this career. Never did I ever think I’d be in this position where people are bringing to life people in my life and my loved ones. So, these guys did such a tremendous job.”
How does the show do as a whole? Tonight’s episode combines all four parts of his life into one 30-minute episode. The fourth part is The Rock running for President of the United States in 2032. The 60-year-old will be leading into stories from those times in his life via interviews with former-actor Randall Park and press conferences.
Back to the show. Take tonight’s episode as an introductory one because, in the next two episodes I saw, they focus on two years, one in the past and one in 2032. Those episodes are much stronger. Not that the pilot isn’t. It just has to fit a lot of information in a short period of time.
We all know that DJ and his fanny pack had an interesting life. Now, we get to see it play out every Tuesday at 8p.
