When They See Us is a heart wrenching Netflix limited series about the central park five and how they were wrongly convicted for a crime they didn’t commit. I’ll be honest I cried in every episode of this show and each episode I felt a pit in my stomach because stuff like this still happens.
It’s incredibly frustrating because the people involved in this case knew what they were doing and were framing these kids just because of the color of their skin. Each episode of the show demands that you see what happened and is truly hard to watch, but incredibly important.
The show delivers incredible direction because it puts you in the shoes of these boys. Director Ava DuVernay makes us see the systemic racism that’s in our police system and how these boys at such a young age were broken to the point of saying and agreeing to whatever the detectives wanted them to say or hear.
Police, judges, detectives, and lawyers were all against them and the show details that with extreme realism. The interrogation scenes for each boy were heartbreaking and infuriating at the same time. These young boys at the time were put into rooms alone with two aggressively racist and corrupt cops that wouldn’t let them call their parents, lawyers or have them in the room to help them through this process.
The performances in this show were outstanding and everyone who played one of the members of the central park five executed it perfectly. There are so many scenes that just leave you speechless with tears in your eyes and that’s credited to the performances and the writing of the show.
There’s this massive sense of importance that you feel throughout the show and that is translated so well because of the fact that the story is true. You feel as though its so relevant to current times and never doubt that something like this happened or something like this could happen again.
The show is able to make us feel things in such extreme ways. It’s simultaneously unbelievable and completely believable at the same time. When they see us is able to hit you in such a way that makes you never forget. That’s really the importance of this show and the story is to make us never forget the injustice that our system has done to these men and so many others.
An extensive amount of times while I was watching When They See Us I had to take a step back and just reflect on what I watched. The material is so heavy and that’s why to me it’s successful because it doesn’t shy away from the gritty details of our racist system.
We as the audience feel as though we’re given a first hand look into what has happened in the case of the Central Park Five, which was a case that for so many was viewed through rose colored glasses. When They See Us is able to broaden our perspectives on the world around us and it’s impact goes beyond just being an amazingly well done show.
When They See Us should be a show that everyone sees because it gives us all a sense of empathy. Maybe we haven’t experienced something like this, but a lot of people have and still are experiencing the consequences of a system that disenfranchises so many.
I give When They See Us an A+
