Malachi Nelson

“When They See Us” is one of my favorite shows on Netflix. The show is based on the Central Park Five, a group of kids wrongfully accused of a crime and spend years in jail. The show shines light on how racist and ignorant the justice system is and the devastating effects it has on its victims. The show makes you feel what the boys are feeling in the show, as if you are going through it with them. This show isn't like anything else I have watched before. I mostly watch comedy and drama shows, so this was definitely a change of pace for me. I was scrolling aimlessly through Netflix and the show kept on showing up since it is a Netflix original. I finally decided to read the description and eventually watched the first episode. Although I wasn’t intrigued at first, after I watched the first 30 or so minutes, I was immersed. I found myself heavily relating to the main characters as they are young black teenagers just wanting to have fun on the weekends. Because of this, everything they were going through made it feel like it was to me. I have heard multiple accounts of black men being treated unfairly by the justice system, but this show goes behind the scenes in a way. It shows the emotions of the children and their families and what they are going through individually. The show accurately represents how ignorant the media is ignorant and manipulates people's opinions. For example, when the actual event occurred, Donald Trump was interviewed stating that he “hates these people” and wanted them to be executed. he also went as far as buying out the daily newspaper and replacing the front page with headlines like “BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY”. The show is great, but it has one minor flaw. The officers and officials in the court are casted as white in the show but in real life, they were black and Latino. This is a problem because it stokes hate towards one race and only looks at the situation one way. The one thing I noticed about the show is that it is an emotional roller-coaster. From the first episode, I found myself getting angry, sad, and annoyed. Out of all of the episodes, the final one is the most emotional. It highlights the hardships of one of the five children who are still in prison several years after the other four were released. I had to pause the episode many times because I found myself getting too angry. The show is a ten out of ten in my opinion as it tells the tragic and emotional story of the Central Park Five.