We Need to Talk About Cosby

“We Need to Talk About Cosby” justifies the length because of Bell’s intellectual curiosity and journalistic thoroughness – he’s gonna grapple with all of it because it’s complicated. And while he’s covering a lot of territory, it never feels scattershot or unfocused.

An insightful yet sobering examination of how a monster fully infiltrated our cultural DNA.

We Need to Talk About Cosby is a fascinating look at the life of Cosby, the duality of his career, and the immense letdown of being disappointed by “American’s dad.” But it’s also an integral series in terms of allowing the survivors to tell their own stories, coming to grips with how to explore art from individuals with horrendous pasts, and how it’s important to walk the walk, instead of just talking the talk.

In presenting the issue with a level of nuance that's often elusive, Bell and company have significantly advanced it.

We Need To Talk About Cosby does not attempt to provide a definitive response, but it nonetheless deals sensitively with the whole messy issue. It acknowledges the many ways Cosby’s work positively impacted so many lives, while never taking its eyes off of the lives he irreparably scarred along the way.

The series is a comprehensive, harrowing, and exhaustive look at Cosby’s rise in the entertainment industry, his strategic self-branding throughout the decades of his career, and the unimpeachable impact he had in changing Black culture and how Black Americans are viewed in this country. ... The series also painstakingly builds the other pillar of Cosby’s legacy, brick by haunting brick: the graphic detail of the dozens of assaults alleged by his survivors.

However repetitious We Need to Talk About Cosby occasionally is and however much Cosby’s abrupt release in 2021 left Bell with a more uncertain conclusion for his documentary, this conversation feels like a defining one in our era where questions of separating the art from the artist — Can we? Should we? How do we? — keep coming up. Bell isn’t mealy-mouthed in his harshness or in admitting to his unease when he feels inclined to offer praise or even respect. It’s provocative and important stuff.

One of his best decisions, and what really elevates the series, is how cleverly he eschews the “fall from grace” structure. ... We don’t just need to talk about Cosby, we need to hear about Cosby, and hearing what he did from the mouths of the people he did it to has incredible power.

Good emerging from bad and bad emerging from good — that's the contradiction of Bill Cosby. We don't have to like it, but Bell proves we don't have to be afraid of it, either.

All ingredients of a system that needs to be dismantled to make sure a Cosby doesn’t happen again. It’s to Bell’s credit that he makes this argument with such clarity and conviction, while also centering the voices who need to be heard the most.

You may not want to talk about Bill Cosby right now. I sure don’t. But we still need to, and Bell’s series provides an accessible, perceptive, and thorough way to move the dialogue forward.

This was no cut-and-paste runthrough of the rise and fall of a former national treasure. It was a serious attempt to understand why and how it happened, how one of the country's darlings landed in court accused of serially drugging and raping women.

It is clearly a heartfelt film, but not blinkered, and while his personality suffuses the whole, he makes sure to get out of the way of the women telling their stories and lets them own the screen for as long as they need.

Bell has created a space in which multiple voices and opinions co-exist (even within the same person) without being prescriptive about how his audience should feel. We Need to Talk about Cosby is by no means the final word in a chilling and challenging conversation that will and should continue.

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.

The recurring theme in Mr. Bell's rigorous, riveting program is that Mr. Cosby's image precluded a belief in his guilt: No one this nice could have done these things. ... Most of the time, he's a clear-eyed documentarian. Once in a while, tears cloud his vision.

We Need to Talk About Cosby is difficult to watch, but it is absolutely necessary.

Nothing is tied up in a neat bow, and that’s largely what’s so engrossing about this series. It struggles, like the rest of us, with where to put Cosby.

Bell marshalls incisive commentary and archival video. In doing so, the comic and director who is a self-proclaimed “child of Bill Cosby” less makes a case than presents a problem. It remains for viewers to decide what to do with Cosby’s legacy.

By generously sampling Cosby’s greatest hits, by praising Cosby’s philanthropy, Bell masterfully builds us up in between damning indictments. He reminds us of the “monument to Black excellence” that was “The Cosby Show,” its cast and even its set, and of Cosby’s place at the center of American culture. Remembering how high the man rose, how trusted he and his “brand” became makes his fall more disheartening, the reluctance to believe his accusers and the whispers easier to understand.

Bell’s series falls short of questioning the systems of paternalism that endowed a serial rapist with so much institutional control. Sometimes its Black American audience is rendered as an impressionable bloc, pinging between the conspiracies of white supremacy and that of Black respectability politics. ... “We Need to Talk About Cosby” is most compelling as an honest self-reflection of Bell himself, both as an artist and as a Black man invested in the betterment of his people.

What the docuseries does decently well over its well-paced, informative, and insightful four hours is show what lies behind Bell’s trepidation.

It’s a multi-episode conversation that’s thoughtfully and sensitively handled, and rightly places emphasis on how Cosby’s downfall has affected the Black community. It is also transparent about how conflicted Bell and others remain when it comes to how to define this comedian, a feeling that ultimately interferes with the series reaching the strong conclusion it seems to be setting up.