Colin in Black & White

“Colin” triggers that unscratchable itch that comes from a television show as easy to admire as it is hard to love. There’s still a great story to be told from Kaepernick’s life, but “Colin” feels like wasted potential.

Six half-hour episodes that swing between wildly perceptive and entirely self-obsessed, between artistic innovation and bland formula, between being a show that I thought could and should be watched by everybody and being a show whose target audience may only be Kaepernick himself.

“Colin in Black and White” can feel sentimental and blunt in a way that feels as disparate as those two terms are. But there’s something highly watchable about it, particularly in young Colin’s narrative.

"Colin in Black and White" is ambitious in the similar way to young Colin Kaepernick, in that it is attempting to pull off several storytelling approaches in six episodes. It would have been far more effective if it had focused on one of those avenues and laid it out for us, brick by brick. Instead we're presented a pile of narrative that doesn't neatly cohere.

It’s already a massive undertaking to dive into his upbringing, and Colin In Black And White only sporadically tugs at heartstrings or provides meaningful insight while doing so.