Stream It Or Skip It: ‘We Need To Talk About Cosby’ On Showtime, A Docuseries That Tries To Reconcile Bill Cosby’s Legend With His Misdeeds

We Need To Talk About Cosby is a four-part docuseries, directed by W. Kamau Bell, that examines Bill Cosby’s legacy, both the good and the bad. It’s a topic that someone like Bell, a Black comic born in the ’70s, is reluctant to talk about himself. Given what we now know about Cosby’s history as a predator of women, how do we reconcile that with the legendary comedy and acting career that paved the way for Black comics, actors, and even stuntmen that came after him?

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT COSBY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Writer Jamilah King is sitting for her interview with director W. Kamau Bell. Bell asks her, “Who is Bill Cosby… now?” She pauses, lets out a puff of breath, and says, “Man, I don’t know.”

The Gist: Bell admits that a lot of people that he wanted to interview turned him down because the conversation is so difficult. But he does get to interview a lot of comedians, culture experts, people who acted on Cosby’s shows, and more. All of them reflect back on Cosby’s career with the same awe that they used to before the allegations that he drugged women to have sex with them started coming out. But they all look at some aspects of Cosby’s early years and wonder how they didn’t make the connections they needed to.

The early years of Cosby’s career are covered in the first episode, from how he started his stand-up career almost preternaturally polished, going from clubs to TV appearances within a year or two. Unlike some of his predecessors, like Dick Gregory, Cosby made a decision to talk more about his marriage, family, his childhood in Philadelphia, and not race. That allowed his career to flourish as the civil rights movement pushed on during the sixties.

He was the first Black male lead of a network drama, I Spy, and that’s where he pushed to have Black stunt doubles, opening up doors for African-American stuntpeople. That was a tidbit that even the host of the Cosby Unraveled podcast, Annette John-Hall, didn’t know.

But Bell also examines Cosby’s association with Hugh Hefner, who had Cosby play his Playboy Clubs, as well as the comedian’s obsession with something called “Spanish Fly,” which he mentions on a 1969 standup album and a 1990s-era interview with Larry King. What does “Spanish Fly” do? It’s supposed to make a woman more open to sex.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? We Need To Talk About Cosby has the feel of other reexaminations of cultural legends, like Richard Pryor: Omit The Logic, but this is personal to Bell and all of the people he interviewed, because of how hard it is to balance their worship of Cosby and the knowledge of how heinous his behavior has been since almost the beginning of his career.

Our Take: We were particularly interested in We Need To Talk About Cosby because a) we know that, as reluctant as he was to take this on, Bell is one of the best people to examine Cosby’s legacy through such an uncomfortable perspective, and b) we can relate a lot to what Bell and his interviewees are feeling.

I’ve been a fan of Cosby’s since my father used to play some of his sixties comedy albums at home when I was a kid. I watched Fat Albert and The Cosby Show, just like Bell, and Himself was one of the seminal comedy specials of my teenage years. It’s been tough for me to reconcile that the Cosby who did all that is also the Cosby that raped women. Do you separate the art from the artist? And in the case of Cosby, can you completely dismiss what he’s done because of, well, what he’s done?

For Bell and the people he interviews, though, it goes deeper than that because he was so influential to so many Black people in multiple generations. Can you still pay tribute to that without discounting the many women he’s irreparably harmed and their stories? Can you think of him as a pioneer and a predator?

The first episode goes a long way towards trying to answer those questions. Bell takes a few side trips, like examining how Gregory paved the way for Cosby and just what Hefner’s legacy meant (a bit of a mini Secrets Of Playboy, essentially). But he always has his eye on some of the aspects of Cosby’s early years that, in retrospect, might have been indicative of the real Cosby, like the whole Spanish Fly thing.

Parting Shot: As we see scenes of Cosby in decades worth of pop culture, Jemele Hill says, “No… not Bill Cosby.”

Sleeper Star: Calvin Brown, who became Cosby’s stunt double after he was hired to double the star in I Spy, gives a lot of good perspective on how Cosby insisted that any stunt double of his needs to be Black, not a white actor in blackface.

Most Pilot-y Line: None we could find.

Our Call: STREAM IT. We Need To Talk About Cosby is definitely hard to watch, and that’s the point. It brings up many of the same feelings Bell himself is working through via his direction. But that discomfort is a big indication that Bell is doing his job.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

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