New Financial Year 2024/2025 Streaming - Clipped - Miniseries

Clipped just concluded on Disney+ as one of their FX on Hulu pieces of content on the Australian app.

Created by Gina Welch, based on the ESPN 30 for 30 podcast The Sterling Affairs. 

Following the Veil, this miniseries premiered early June, with a short six episode run. It is your first post, in the New Financial Year 2024/2025 Streaming series.

Across the six episodes (where no one wins) Clipped focuses on the downfall of Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling, amid the team's drive to win a championship under coach Doc Rivers.

Starring, Laurence Fishburne as Doc Rivers, Ed O'Neill as Donald Sterling and Aussie legend Jacki Weaver as Shelly Sterling. I literally just watched Weaver in a fun made for streaming film, Stage Mother, alongside Lucy Liu.

Weaver is killing it in the USA right about now!

Also in the early episodes Cleopatra Coleman as V. Stiviano is excellent. Her character gets a little less air time as the series rolled on.

In episode six, Keep Smiling, Doc & the Clippers are facing a big playoff series against Oklahoma City, but the players are distracted by Donald’s disastrous TV interview with Anderson Cooper. 

They lose the next game, and soon enough, they’re eliminated from the playoffs, with Doc reminding his players of how much they overcame just to get there. 

Donald Sterling wraps the series annoyed that Shelly is trying to line up buyers for his team, and after his on-air meltdown, Shelly starts thinking about invoking a clause in their trust where she can remove him if he’s deemed incompetent. 

She has Donald meet with a neurologist, and he doesn’t do great on the test, with the neurologist suggesting he may have Alzheimer’s. But Donald shrugs it off, and when Shelly brings him the hyper-enthusiastic tech mogul Steve Ballmer, who offers to buy the Clippers for $2 billion, Donald dismisses him.

Left with no other options, Shelly uses the neurologist’s evaluation to get Donald removed from the trust, and Donald is incensed. 

Donald takes her to court, where he declares that he runs the team. Shelly testifies to Donald’s failing mental faculties, and he gets belligerent, yelling at the judge and calling Shelly a pig. The judge rules in Shelly’s favor, clearing the way for her to sell the team to Ballmer. 

Shelly doesn’t exactly end up smelling like roses, either. Even her best friend Justine turns on her after she stays with Donald following the sale.

And after a heart-to-heart with LeVar Burton helps him get in touch with his anger, Doc Rivers tells Shelly off, too. Even though she sold the team, she and Donald still own their practice facility, and she’d still get a ring if they won a title, and “that absolutely fills me with rage,” he flatly tells her.

But the saddest ending of all has to be V. Stiviano’s, with her lawyer reminding her that Shelly is still suing her for the duplex, just as her finances are drying up. She sells her Ferrari but keeps the vanity plates and goes to court to face Shelly, telling her that Donald would have taken her side. But then Donald enters the courthouse and takes Shelly’s hand, leaving V. devastated.

On the witness stand, V. says she was Donald’s right-hand arm, even though she had no official employment record, and that he wanted to take care of her. 

But in Donald’s sworn testimony, he says that the cars he gave her were his, and he only put them in her name because of her criminal record. V. loses in court, and we see her taking a sad walk through her empty duplex before moving out, carving “STERLING PROPERTIES” into the wall with her keys. 

She has a drink with Deja to commiserate, but even there, a couple of drunk jerks make fun of her and call her a whore. When she stands up for herself, then V. angrily confronts them, she gets punched right in the face.

Bruised and battered, V. turns back to what she knows best: working for Donald, fetching his coffee and medications and signing for his deliveries. 

Donald sunbathes nude, somehow coming out of this scandal with a billion-dollar windfall. The Clippers players are befuddled by new owner Steve Ballmer’s rabid enthusiasm, but they bond by playing a midnight game of street basketball, far away from the cameras. 

As for Doc, he hits the Clippers court with Elgin Baylor, shooting hoops and talking about their legacies.

Doc wants to be remembered as a winner. But he admits his fanatical drive to win led to his wife just filing for divorce. Elgin isn’t worried about his legacy, though; he just enjoys the sound of a basketball swishing through the net.

So overall it was a fairly depressing finale. The series is full of unlikable people, real people. However Weaver as Shelly Sterling really steals the show in this last episode. Well done.