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The hardest thing to get my head around is why McNally's suffering is expressed in almost a sporting context. Like it's the International Competitive Suffering League and McNally has his (broken) heart set on bringing that gold medal back to New Brunswick. And why would he bring it back to New Jersey anyway? So confusing.
But in addition to the fact he's obviously off-his-tits drunk, it's so clear that McNally's raging demons are born out of his broken heart from his lost brother that you pretty much have to be heartless not to feel for him. If Keith Malley can sit in the room with McNally and take the full force of that firestorm of hate for his beloved America and still react so outstandingly level-headedly (and frequently hilariously) then I can't be frustrated at or pissed off at or hateful towards McNally.
There's a particularly touching moment where Keith responds calmly to an episode of McNally's full volume blood-letting and you can almost see the red mist clear from McNally's eyes and there's a sense of relief and gratitude in his voice as he says something like "Thank you for fighting through the shouting fits". At some points it was almost as if he was possessed, but Keith's refusal to be mad at his friend for how wildly he was behaving kept acting as that release valve. Kept grounding the charge.
Kyle was great but after a while it was clear the way he was shouting back at McNally wasn't helping because McNally couldn't be broken out if competition mode. It was only feeding the beast. It was Keith Malley's calm, oddly affectionate verbal jiu-jitsu that kept bringing the whole thing back on track when it continually threatened to derail and explode.
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