We Need to Talk About Cosby (Sundance) TV Review

PLOT: Comic/filmmaker W. Kamau Bell explores the troubling legacy of the iconic Bill Cosby.

REVIEW: The overall intent of Showtime’s new four-part doc, We Need to Talk About Cosby, is right there in the title. This isn’t an expose but instead comedian W. Kamau Bell’s attempt to kickstart a conversation about Bill Cosby’s place in culture following the revelation that he was a serial predator throughout nearly the entirety of his career. The thing about Cosby is, you can’t dismiss the impact he had. In the 1980s, he was called “America’s Dad,” and indeed, people felt that way about him. His character was unassailable, and he had a bigger cultural imprint than pretty much anyone else out there. He was a hero to black households, and white households too. Everyone loved him.

Of course, we know now exactly who and what Cosby was, but does that erase the effect The Cosby Show had on the culture? As a former die-hard fan, that’s the question Bell has to wrestle with here. Throughout the documentary, he explores all of the milestones in Cosby’s career, rightly celebrating his genius. Still, every time we hit another triumph, he pauses and interviews one of the women Cosby assaulted. So even when he was being celebrated as this paragon of virtue and a surrogate father to us all, he was drugging and raping women.

Bell also acknowledges another uncomfortable truth – mainly that it was an open secret for a long time. People in the industry knew, but we also shrugged off many accusations, and it took Cosby making a comeback in 2014, when he signed a deal for a new NBC series and a Netflix special, to kick off the reckoning. Comedian Hannibal Burgess kickstarted the blowback, but it was overdue. Bell shows a lot of unseemly footage where Cosby seems to be telling on himself, from routines about “Spanish fly” to even episodes of The Cosby Show where he talks about his special BBQ sauce that drives women wild. It was all innocuous-seeming then, but knowing what we know now, yikes.

Yet, his place in pop culture can’t be dismissed, and Bell does a good job showing just how good a lot of his stuff was. He broke down barriers as the first black male lead in a dramatic series, I Spy, for which he won three Emmys, through his hugely popular stand-up, to his greatest success of all, as Cliff Huxtable on The Cosby Show. While Bell can’t resist tweaking Cosby for overinflating his academic credits, his impact on the culture isn’t shrugged off, and even his harshest critics here can’t help but agree when shown clips that a lot of his stuff holds up. Yet, he’s a monster, but his downfall isn’t depicted as a triumph, with the whole situation being a tragedy as the women he assaulted had to wait decades for any kind of vindication, while the culture lost a hero.

It adds up to a compelling series that aims to start some conversations and never pitches itself as being the last word on Cosby. The talking heads are sometimes random, but pretty much everyone has something interesting to say, although notably the only major stars of his shows to go on the record with Bell are Doug E. Doug and Joseph C. Phillips. I imagine it’s hard to reconcile the man they thought he knew with who he ended up being for many of them. Indeed, as a former fan, it’s a question I’ve wrestled with myself over the years, and Bell’s going to accomplish his goal – it’s going to kickstart an overdue conversation.

Bill Cosby

GREAT

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