In general, it is a useless exercise to check the opening night of anything entertaining. The creative process is not linear. It changes shape and what we see on the first day of a program is very similar to the mature product. Unfortunately, we live in a time when judgment is moving faster than Elaine Thompson-Herah.
ESPN’s “Manning MegaCast.” which ran last night on ESPN2 as an add-on piece to the main Monday Night Football show, started too hot. A hard watch. There were too many things going on for spectators at first between Mannings coach emulating Raiders Jon Gruden on the headset, to the frantic commentary on the plays, until the actual game was barely seen in the background in at least one shot. You couldn’t blame a viewer for getting the remote to move to the friendly limits of traditional streaming on ABC and ESPN. Too much juice.
Things slowed down later in the first quarter, which was good. The brothers were at their best for viewers when we saw them on the left or right side of a screen in two small boxes with the game on the other 3/4 of the screen. This made me really feel the knowledge the Mannings imparted against the play I was seeing on screen. Peyton and Eli have easy chemistry, which is always an important part of the battle of the sports studio shows. Eli made fun of Peyton for training the Colts fans when the team was offensive, it was fun. They interacted well with Charles Barkley, who is always a great guest.
The second quarter was when I started to feel like I had a quality view as a spectator, including a discussion about the NFL roster number changes.