Hard Knocks: Training Camp with the Buffalo Bills Episode 3 is one of the more thorny episodes of the HBO series, just because it’s a week that the Bills and their fans would rather forget. It’s painful to hear coaches talk about this being the most important week of preseason, only for the Bills to be blown out by the Chicago Bears without even managing to score.

In watching Episode 3, viewers can understand why some NFL teams have been gunshy about Hard Knocks in the past. It’s not great to have a camera and microphones documenting your every move when your team goes through a rough patch, and there’s not much bigger a disaster than what the Bills experience in Week 2. But the series can only show what actually happens, with some attempts to mitigate in between.

The Hard Knocks producers try to balance out the bad with several different asides of comic relief, whether it’s the offensive line discussing what a crumpet is during a pizza party at Connor McGovern’s house, or a lengthy scene in which Dalton Kincaid talks about peregrine falcons. Such random detours are what audiences come to Hard Knocks for—chances to see the slice of life things that would never make it into a highlight reel or sports news feature. The sequence in which Bills players go to an improv workshop is an instant classic and the best part of the episode by far.

However, there’s only so much they can do to keep things from being too heavy, simply because the team comes up so short in the preseason game that’s meant to be the climactic part of the episode. The entire final act of Episode 3 is as frustrating to watch for viewers as it must have been for the players to experience. There’s very little to hold onto. (It would have been fun for Josh Allen keeping Pam Oliver from being “sideline roadkill,” in her words, to make it into the final cut, but since that was part of the FOX game broadcast, perhaps HBO and NFL Films weren’t able to use it.)

In fact, Hard Knocks: Training Camp with the Buffalo Bills Episode 3 feels like it ends too abruptly. Audiences want to see how the players and coaches truly reacted to such a massive loss, but there’s not much from inside the locker room. There’s shots of forelorn players getting on the bus, and a soundbite from head coach Sean McDermott’s postgame press conference. But fans know that’s only scratching the surface—and they want to see this team get upset, to see them rally, to just feel something more than disappointment.

The journey of Hard Knocks is to show everything, both the good and the bad. And on the same day that Netflix and NFL Films released their Dallas Cowboys docuseries, Hard Knocks: Training Camp with the Buffalo Bills at least feels more down to earth. But it’s an episode that also never completely comes into its own.

Hard Knocks: Training Camp with the Buffalo Bills airs Tuesdays at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT and streams on HBO Max.

Article content is (c)2020-2026 Brittany Frederick and may not be excerpted or reproduced without express written permission by the author. Follow me on Twitter at @BFTVTwtr and on Instagram at @BFTVGram. For story pitches, contact me at tvbrittanyf@yahoo.com.