The Feel Good Mythology of 'The Blind Side' is Official Dead as a Judge Destroys the Tuohy's Conservatorship Over Michael Oher

Matthew Sharpe. Getty Images.

Like I said a month and a half ago: 

It's taken just under 15 years for The Blind Side to go from the perfect American story to … well, the perfect American story. From an inspirational tale about what is best about our culture to a cautionary tale about the worst of it. From a saga about love, faith, hope, charity, family and sports triumphing over poverty and conquering the racial divide, to just another courtroom drama about a bunch of people lawyering up and fighting over money.

From this hearwarming fiction:

To this grim non-fiction:

Well it seems like the curtain has finally come down on the saga:

Source - Former NFL tackle Michael Oher has gotten part of what he wanted. But that was the easy part.

Via the Associated Press, a judge has ended the longstanding conservatorship that the Tuohy family had secured. …

In ending the arrangement, Shelby County Probate Court Judge Kathleen Gomes expressed dismay that the conservatorship was ever permitted. She said that she had never seen a conservatorship for a person who was not disabled in some way. 

“I cannot believe it got done,” the judge said.

This suggests that she will take a very close look at everything that happened, searching for any irregularities or proof of chicanery.

It doesn't get any harsher than that. Getting dope-slapped by the judge for an arrangement that she has never seen in all her years of handling family probate arrangements. At least, that is, until she digs further into the money situation. Losing the love of an almost-family member you kind of semi-adopted and then took a lucrative victory lap for putting a roof over his head as he was drafted in the 1st round and Sandra Bullock got a Best Actress Oscar is emotionally painful. But losing money hurts in a much more practical way. 

All of which begs the question: When do we get the sequel? Because The Blind Side II: The Tuohys Get Blindsided will, while really dark, be way more compelling than the original. A tense, taut, courtroom drama with plot twists all over the place. And actually be a much more contemporary American tale than that Disneyfied mouseshit we all bought into watching the first outing. One can only imagine what kind of a script that say, Aaron Sorkin (A Few Good Men, The Social Network) could put together with this source material. 

As a matter of fact, this could launch a whole new genre. A cinema verite' of grim, gritty, follow ups to the uplifting sports movies that have brought us so much joy. 

--Rudy 2, where Ruttiger ends up addicted to the meds he's given for his dyslexia and ends up murdering the millionth Notre Dame hater who told him he was offsides. 

--Forget the Titans, where a racist judge re-segregates the district TC Williams High School is in and neither fractured team ever wins another game. 

--No More Hoosiers, which follows the adventures of Norman Dale once Jimmy Chitwood graduates, and he flounders around as an old, forgotten shell of a man who can't get another job because of that punching incident that was never resolved in the first one. Meanwhile, Shooter dies horribly of cirrhosis of the liver. And this one is mostly just reenactments of that gross scene where he makes out with a much older Myra Fleener.

--Rocky 7, where a punchy, concussed Balboa … Scratch that. It's already been done. 

--Field of Screams, where Ray Kinsella finds out the hard way that the cornfield is the Gateway to Hell, where the Black Sox are damned for eternity for throwing the 1919 World Series. 

The point being that it feels more and more like everything we believe in that represents the best about life in America ends up being the worst. But at least Sandra Bullock gets to keep her Oscar, so I guess it was worth it.