We Need to Talk About Cosby

I think this content is bound to rub many people the wrong way. The director admits that he has a viewpoint from the beginning.

If you are coming to this project to explore Cosby's "innocence" you won't find that here.

What you will find is a nicely paced docuseries that doesn't lie about Bill Cosby's impact to American & Black culture. Instead W. Kamal Bell decenters Bill Cosby the legend and recenters him as a real person while giving space for survivors to tell their stories.

This isn't a piece to simply bash someone who has done bad. It's deeper than that and worth the watch.

In the late 1970s, I went to a comedy club with my housemate, a woman from Philadelphia. I thought the young comics were great, but pretty raunchy. On the way home, I joked that there weren't any funny comics who didn't rely on dirt jokes.

She said, "Well, there's Cosby, He doesn't tell dirty jokes, but he acts like a dirty man. He put his hands on my friend when she went to see him,"

The cab pulled up to our building at that time, and we were distracted by paying the cab driver and getting out the flat keys. That was the end of it.

By 1985, I had moved across the country, gotten married, and gotten involved with showing dogs. My dog did well, and it wasn't until the Southwest finals that I found out it was the same breed that Cosby owned. In fact, my dog was from a litter by the same sire and dame that Cosby owned, which made our dogs brother and sister. I was grooming my dog backstage at the show, when I heard Cosby was visiting the private staging room next to the show ring,

One of the other dog owners knew him, and asked if I wanted to meet him. My husband said he would watch my dog if I wanted to go, and I started off to the staging room. Just then, a woman stepped in front of me and said, "Don't be alone with him. Take your husband with you. It isn't safe."

I only tell you these stories because I am not a model, beauty pageant winner or a showgirl. I am a 70 year old woman who isn't the least bit involved in show biz, And, I am telling you that, to young women in the 1970s and 1980s, Cosby's perfidy was the least kept secret in the United States. If I knew, everyone knew. I was no one special.

Why didn't anyone out him? Women tried. They were humiliated.

And, let's be honest, no one wanted to believe that a decent black man would do the things those two women told me he did. No one in my liberal, white and black circle of friends wanted it to be true. And we knew he wouldn't be prosecuted if he were arrested.

We hate Hugh Hefner and we hated that sexism, but there was no way to fight it. We just worked on passing the ERA.

I'm glad Cosby got caught. I wish he were still in prison. But, more than anything, I wish he hadn't been a monster who let down all the people who believed in him,

There's nothing new in this documentary, if you have been paying attention. But most people aren't paying attention, which is how Cosby got away with it so long,

This thoughtful and intelligent look at the complexity of the legacy of Bill Cosby is a must see. While the creator, W. Kamu Bell, makes it clear about his opinion of the guilt of Cosby, that does not stop him from doing two important things. The first is to provide a platform for a wide variety of opinions on Cosby and his legacy. The second is highlight the positive and negative impacts in a societal and personal way. There are a tons of interviews of people who have first hand accounts, were influenced by Cosby, and experts in the industry. The footage of Cosby on television, in standup, and in movies, makes this worth seeing alone. It is an archive of great film and television. One of the complexities of this project is that as it was completed there was a dramatic change in the legal proceedings against Cosby-which extended the project. I have seen Bill Cosby several times live. He was amazing. His impact on the world was amazing. That doesn't change by my belief that he did terrible things. It is complex. I don't have an opinion more than that people are more than any one thing they do, or don't do.

As Episode 1 of "We Need To Talk About Cosby" (2022 release; 4 episodes of about 58 min each) opens, various talking heads offer their view of what has become of Bill Cosby these days. "The juxtaposition is just bananas", offers one. That would be the understatement of the year. We then go back in time as Cosby makes his first appearance on the Jack Paar show in 1963, and his career takes off in no time. But a dark side also emerges soon...

Couple of comments: this TV mini-series documentary is written, produced and directed by comedian W. Kamau Bell, who readily admits to having idolized Cosby as a kid (and he's not the only one). Indeed, the juxtaposition of Cosby as America's dad and Cosby as the serial rapist is hard to stomach, but the evidence as to the latter is undeniable and overwhelming, just as is his track record as one of the greatest comedians in American history. The key moments in this series are when women provide in-depth, first hand accounts of what Cosby did to them: he drugged them, and then he raped them. And then they blamed themselves (a/k/a "victim blaming"). Cosby got away with it for DECADES. How many women did he sexually assault during that span? Hundreds? Thousands? (Please note that Cosby was found guilty of sexual assault in 2018. In June, 2021, he was released on a technicality. Still that makes him a convicted felon, and not just "alleged" as IMDb lists it here.) Bottom line: this mini-series is revelatory in many ways, presenting both sides of the person that is Bill Cosby. To which I kept thinking: "how does this guy sleep at night?"

Episode 1 of "We Need To Talk About Cosby" premiered in Showtime last Sunday, and new episodes are released on Sunday evenings. (If you have SHO On Demand and SHO Anytime, as I do, all episodes are already available.) If you have any interest in Bill Cosby or how he got away with what he did for all these years, I'd readily suggest you check this out, and draw your own conclusion.

An incredible series. This is an important conversation piece and must be seen. So well done. It's pretty shattering to think about and see what this monster did and how he got away with it for so long. Complete monster.