We Need to Talk About Cosby

Wow. Brilliant documentary. It certainly went back in his history and further afield with his life than I expected. I learned a lot about Cosby, the man, I did not know before.

I loved him as America's dad, but that ship has passed. Author Ann Rule said to love the man but hate the deed (and she was talking about Ted Bundy!), but Cosby went way over the line.

I am very glad I watched this with an open mind. Yes, I am going to say the women were awesome! And brave.

THANK YOU, Kamau Bell!!

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.

I've always believed human beings have a darker side. (Even the Force of "Star Wars" has its dark side.) The hope is that the darker side doesn't dictate our behavior. Shockingly , one of America's most beloved iconic entertainment figures, Bill Cosby, had a dark side that controlled secret criminal behavior when he was off-camera. Cosby the entertainer and Cosby the predator appear to be two very different people occupying the same body.

When the truth about Cosby's sexual assaults, not just adultery mind you, was exposed, I was stunned. I had "Himself" on video and many of his comedy albums. I had watched "Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids" when I was a pre-adolescent kid. He was one of the funniest and most entertaining figures in American entertainment, one who always came off as unpretentious and good-natured. He also seemed to have a high sense of morality until he began ranting about the shortcomings of the African-American community as if they were some kind of monolithic entity. Interestingly shortly after his "rantings" began, the accusations of sexual assault avalanched into the mainstream media when dozens of female victims came forward.

This documentary produced by W. Kamau Bell in four parts is a retrospective on Cosby the lovable entertainer and Cosby the secret predator. Bell's approach is excellent being both a comedian and a commentator-presenter on CNN often producing down-to-earth stories concerning race in America. There is little "script" as the documentary is essentially "written" mostly by the interviewees with occasional comments and narration by Bell. Women and men involved with entertainment, comedy, and show biz news discuss the man they thought he was and who he turned out to be including some fellow comedians and even actors who had worked with Cosby on previous shows. The main bulk of the discussion is with female victims who tell their stories about how Cosby sexually assaulted them. The reason their stories are so very plausible is because of the striking similarities between the incidences.

Cosby had a ready-made sequence concerning how he went about his criminal business. Often Cosby would "invite" a young woman to some kind of social gathering, the understanding being that it was to help the young actress meet people in the industry. But when she came to Cosby's home or hotel, no one else was there but Cosby. He would then offer the girl some sort of beverage often accompanied by a barbiturate. She would lose consciousness and Cosby would have his way with her. She would wake up many hours later disoriented but knowing she had been a victim of rape or some kind of sexual assault at the very least.

In one instance, she asks Cosby what happened and he would tell her to use the phone to call a cab, which tells us he was also misogynistic. He didn't care at all about the girls he assaulted. They were just his playthings to be cast off when he was finished. This fact makes the accusations even more disturbing that he wasn't this kind-hearted fatherly figure but a malicious felon who cared nothing about his victims. So unlike America's Dad of the television show of the 1980's, arguably the highest rated show of that decade.

For perspective I was a Cosby fan. Not so much of the 1980's television show, but his stand-up comic routines, and some of the cartoons. I grew up with "The Electric Company" and "Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids", the latter probably my favorite ongoing show with Cosby. I also own many of his stand-up comic albums.

The one show which forever solidified my admiration for Cosby was the HBO special "Himself" which I happened upon accidentally at my grandparent's house. (They were HBO subscribers but my family wasn't.) I began watching this program and I was stunned. To say it was funny and introspective is almost an under-exaggeration. So many of the stories I identified with as a kid. The story "Chocolate Cake" for breakfast made me laugh so hard I was almost gasping for breath. Still possibly the greatest comedic performance of introspective and storytelling humor ever broadcast on cable television. And yet this same man who seemed to know everything about human nature was not as introspective and self-analyzing on "himself" as we thought.

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.

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.