Stream It Or Skip It: ‘When They See Us’ On Netflix, Ava DuVernay’s Examination Of The Central Park Five Case

In 1989, five young men were arrested and accused of raping a woman as she jogged through Central Park. If you believed the NYPD, the District Attorney’s office and the news media, all five of the boys were completely guilty. But, over the intervening years until their verdicts were vacated in 2002, details emerged not only about who actually attacked the jogger that night, but how the police and a particular prosecutor created a case out of a combination of fear and institutional bigotry. Ava DuVernay takes on the case of the Central Park Five in the new Netflix miniseries When They See Us. Read on for more…

WHEN THEY SEE US: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: “Harlem, April 19, 1989.” A teenager looks out the window of his room, and then we see him talking at the breakfast table to his father about the Yankees releasing Mel Hall.

The Gist: When They See Us is a four-part miniseries produced, directed and written by Ava DuVernay, and in the first episode it shows the perspective of the five boys were arrested in relation to the rape of a jogger in Central Park in April, 1989. We see the five boys — Antron McCray (Caleel Harris), Yusef Salaam (Ethan Herisse), Kevin Richardson (Asante Blackk), Korey Wise (Jharrel Jerome) and Raymond Santana (Marquis Rodriguez) — joining a group of friends and strangers in a pack of boys heading to Central Park. These boys were generally going along for the ride. But others are hassling people and attacking bicycle riders. Some of them are arrested during the “wilding” incident; McCray is subdued by a cop whacking him with his helmet.

After the rape victim is found, assistant district attorney Linda Fairstein (Felicity Huffman) insists that, as the head of the DA office’s sex crimes unit, she should be in charge. She directs the police to be aggressive in questioning these boys and some of the others that were known to be in the park that night. Salaam, who shows the detective that brings him in for questioning that he changed his bus pass to say he was 16 so he could meet girls, is questioned without his parents present, as is Wise. The other three have their parents present.

The boys are questioned for hours, told that the other members of the group of five — none of which know each other — have pegged them as the person who actually raped the jogger. None of them cop to that, but, under pressure, they all say that they at least participated, even if they just held her down or, as one supposedly says, they just felt her breasts. When his son is pressured to confess, Bobby McCray (Michael Kenneth Williams), asks the cop why his son is being hassled. When the cop brings up Bobby’s priors and how that might affect his job, McCray relents, and tells his son Antron to just go along and make the confession.

Our Take: If you lived in the New York area 30 years ago (as we did), you know how dominant the “Central Park Jogger” case was in the media that spring and summer. The jogger’s name was never revealed by the mainstream media, but names of the Central Park 5 — the five boys accused of the rape — were splashed all over the media, despite the fact that all of them were minors. As the case played out, though, their claims that their confessions were made under duress started filtering out into the media. However, all five were convicted of either rape, attempted murder, or both, and they all served lengthy prison terms; their sentences were vacated in 2002, after a man already in prison admitted he’s the one who acted alone and none of the five had anything to do with the attack.

That’s the perspective that DuVernay takes with this miniseries. She wants us to see these five boys — all now middle-aged men whose twenties were spent in prison for no other reason than blatant racism — as the people they were and not just names and mugshots. She also wanted to show how the system was rigged against them mainly because they were all people of color (4 were Black, one was Latinx). To do that, she likely had to lean into the NYPD and DA’s office institutional bigotry that caused so many issues during the Dinkins administration, making the mostly white male detectives more menacing and more over-the-top bigoted than they were in real life.

It was unsettling to watch, but then again imagine how it felt to be one of those boys, all of whom were between 14 and 17 years old and — from what we understand — were mostly good students and not troublemakers. Williams, as Antron McCray’s dad, shows the futility Black people faced when being questioned by the NYPD in not only his demands that Antron go along and admit to something he didn’t do, but in the anguish on his face while he’s yelling at his kid to do it.

We also thought we’d experience some heavy ironic feelings seeing Huffman, who filmed the series before being arrested and pleading guilty in the college admissions scandal that also snagged Lori Loughlin, play the uber-determined prosecutor Linda Fairstein. But it speaks to Huffman’s acting abilities that she made us forget about her involvement in the scandal and just got us ticked off that Fairstein wanted to automatically arrest any Black person that was in Central Park the night of the attack on the jogger.

Sex and Skin: Nothing.

Parting Shot: As Antron, Raymond, Kevin and Yousef are led out of the station where they were being held and herded into police cruisers, they think back to the very normal things they were doing before they ended up in the park. Then Korey is led out, having come along with Yousef when he was picked up but suddenly now implicated in the rape. He also thinks back to what happened right before Yousef urged him to go to the park, then sees Yousef in the back of a cruiser, and just about loses it.

Sleeper Star: Here’s a good spot to mention some of the other notable members of the cast: John Leguizamo plays Raymond’s dad Raymond Sr., who signs off on his son’s confession even though he knows his kid is innocent. Niecy Nash plays Korey’s mom Dolores, who is overwhelmed by reporters when the names of the suspects leak out. Aunjanue Ellis plays Yousef’s mother Sharon, who angrily takes her son out of the interrogation room, shaming the cops for questioning him without his parents, considering he’s only 15. Famke Janssen plays Nancy Ryan, a rival prosecutor who doubts Fairstein’s investigation and will later re-investigate the case.

Most Pilot-y Line: Nothing we could see.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Despite its heavy-handedness, When They See Us is a powerful indictment of the institutional bigotry that big-city police departments have that cost people of color their freedom and — sometimes — their lives.

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, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Stream When They See Us on Netflix