what is going on to all my hbo fans out there and welcome back to my channel movie files
elliott back again with a brand new tv review and tonight we're breaking down episode one of the new
hbo miniseries by the name of we own the city which by the time this video is out the first
episode will be available to watch on hbo i'm very excited to share my thoughts on that first episode
should you watch it if you didn't get a chance to check out the premiere episode we're going to
be discussing that and so much more all in this review before we get into tonight's discussion
make sure you all are checking me out on all my other social media accounts if you all are new
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screen now if you enjoyed this breakdown review of episode 1 of hbo's we own the city we'll make
sure you're liking this review and also sharing it but more importantly in the comment section
let's discuss the show were you excited for it did you watch the wire but more importantly once
you sat down and watched this first premiere episode what did you all think let's talk about
which plot was more interesting to you which performance stood out to you what were some things
that didn't really work for you all and of course will you be back to watch this on a week-to-week
basis and if so do you want me to cover it and have these discussions every single monday let's
discuss all that in the comments section so for me personally i had this show circled on my calendar
months ago number one it's hbo i mean come on i mean do i have to give off the resume of the
revolutionary shows including the wire that they've put out so i was already intrigued because
it's hbo but then when i saw that it's made by the creators and the producers and the writers
of the wire which as i just mentioned i believe is one of the most revolutionary shows to ever
come on television i was sold and then the ice on the cake was this cast so hey does it live up
to the expectations is it worth your time well let's get into my thoughts and i want to start
this review off giving you all a little bit of backstory of what this show is all about
just in case you're not too familiar with it we own this city is based on true events and adapted
from justin fenton's non-fiction book of the same name the series is developed and brought to us by
the same creators of the wire now this six episode limited series is directed by filmmaker renardo
marcus green the cast includes john berthold jamie hector josh charles and wumi mushaku we own this
city chronicles the rise and fall of the baltimore police department mainly focusing on the gun task
force where corruption ran rapid amid policies of drug prohibition and celebrated mass arrests
in lieu of detective work so getting into my thoughts on this first episode i will warn you all
we will be talking about spoilers of this first episode so if you haven't seen it go check it
out and come back and join the conversation but i want to start off by talking about the structuring
of this first episode which i'm not gonna lie it took a little bit time to get used to for my
personal taste and we'll talk about that a little bit later in my breakdown of the pros and cons and
what worked and didn't work and what have you but getting into the plot a that we're introduced to
led by john bertha who i'm such a big fan of him as an actor he goes by the name of sergeant
wayne jenkins now he is a central figure within the baltimore police department mainly in the
gun task force and we see wayne giving a speech very early on this episode to his fellow police
officers and at first you're like okay maybe he's one of those good cops right because he's talking
about his ideology of being the police and what it means to use force and when not to use force when
to fight and when not to fight and you're like okay but it's not until you see wayne in action
on the streets that he's definitely corrupt his pride is in the way his ego's in the way he's been
doing this for years so he feels like he can get away with anything he feels like he says in this
episode i'm superman they can't touch me i thought john berthold was great again we'll talk about his
performance a little bit later but tying that into jamie hector for all my wire fans out there
you know him as marlo so it's a very interesting switch a drunk lower turn into a police officer
now we see jaime playing the character by the name of sean who is a homicide detective
he switched apartments because i can tell that he probably wasn't a fan of some of the stuff
that he saw when working side by side with wayne now hell sean might have some dirt of his own
but you can tell that sean is going to probably be one of those police officers that let things
slide that didn't speak up because hey he doesn't want to lose his job but also their brothers and
sisters at arm there's a lot of camaraderie within the police force so if you snitch on me what can
happen to you so i'm very interested to see where that dynamic goes between those two characters
tying that into women mushaku who is such a fantastic actress she goes by the name of
nicole steele who is an attorney assigned to the civil rights division of department of justice now
very early on you can tell that woman mushaku is a character who is seeking justice who's seeking
answers now we're given that this story takes place in 2017 but we have a flashback to 2015
which if you obviously know it the true events of what happened to freddie gray it caused a lot of
controversy i mean the the mayor in this episode she's resigning we have a new commissioner there's
a lot of shake-up but it's within that shake-up we see that nicole is realizing wait there's still
a lot of bad apples within the department why is this person who has been with the department for
10 15 20-plus years and they have a lieu of complaints why are they still in the streets
so you can tell that she's gonna be the one that's gonna shake the cage to get some of those bad
apples out of the department which brings us to josh charles character who goes by the name of
daniel herschel now he is a police officer who is one of those police officers that you don't want
to come across on the streets because if you look at them wrong if you have a slight you know you
make a slight wrong turn or you don't turn your blinkers on and if you have black skin color or
if you're hispanic or if you're a person of color he's going to mess with you he's going to take it
upon himself to make you look bad and if you like i said it's something he does in this episode
later in the episode where he pulls someone over for i don't even remember what the reason was but
then he there's nothing found and then he bumps the guy and he says police force you hit a police
officer you're resisting the rest and he beats him over the head like that's the [ __ ] that just
frustrates me and i know this show isn't going to be for everyone but i i appreciate them
showing those things that do happen in the streets especially when it comes to baltimore and their
police force but she's gonna be the one that's gonna get him off the streets which i'm really
intrigued to see where that plot goes and if i'm addressing my favorite parts of this first episode
it's easily plot a plot a with john berthold his relationship with sean what we get with wound
mushaku and herschel that stuff to me was the most intriguing element of the episode but we do have
some other plots which let's talk about plot b which we have g money and o dog as we know from
the wire they're two undercover police officers that are tasked with getting this particular drug
lord off the streets and they've been doing their deeds and they've been doing it under the books
they've been doing it without proper you know paperwork without putting stuff into the system
so they're gonna be and we saw this episode that it's the fbi that's investigating them we
see that they're under arrest and you could tell that this series will be 2017 and tying back in
2015 maybe even further showing how they became you know at first they want to get drugs off the
streets they want to get guns off the streets but eventually the pride the greed the money
and all that stuff the reputation of what they do got to their heads and they kind of went to
that dark side so i'm very intrigued to see where that plot b goes because again the fbi is involved
and they're seeking answers and i'm just curious on who was it exactly that snitched on them and
that brings us to plot c which brings us to the character by the name of david mcdougall who is
a investigator a police officer with a another department within the baltimore jurisdiction so
he's a he seems to be a good cop him and his partner seem to do the right things
whether it takes them four hours 15 hours to type everything out to get the proper documentation
they need to get a warrant they seem to be the good cops right and they're going to be the ones
that stumble upon the you know the g-money of the worlds to see okay why is their tracker under this
car why didn't we see their information a system so i think they're the ones who's going to kind of
spark that investigation on that side so again plot a was the most intriguing followed by the
stuff that we got with plot uh b which obviously ties into plot c which i gotta admit kind of get
into some of my criticism of the show that plot c wasn't all that interesting because one things i
love about what they did with the wire they had a lot of like non-actors in the show to kind of
bring that authenticity to the show and they're doing the same thing here whether it's the mayor
you know whether it's uh the different people in in the different departments
whether it's you know drug lords or people in the police force and sometimes within that place i
just feel like the acting wasn't all the way there it was just very like this is their reading to how
they think a police officer react versus like actually having that reaction to just being a
good actor so i felt like some of the performances in that plot c just wasn't as strong as plot b
and plot a but i can see it kind of growing and we're probably going to get more of that
personal going to david's house what he stands for why he's a good cop or maybe again we might
explore some of the things that he did wrong but i i wasn't all that interested into that plot c
and that brings me again to another kind of criticism that i have about this first episode
if it's a 50 plus minute long hour-long episode but i easily it could have easily been an hour
and a half because i thought that there was just too much stuff going on we were going here plot b
plot c plot a checking in here going back in time so i thought that the way that they told the story
was a little confusing to a certain extent because again they didn't really always state
we're in 2017 we're in 2015 we're maybe even a little bit further here wait who's this character
how they tie into this are they a good cop they're the bad cop i thought the structuring could have
been a little bit more concise a little bit more focused if they would have just mainly gave us
two perspectives if we could have followed john berthold and woman mushaku who i'm going to talk
about as my positives here in a little bit and maybe sprinkle in some of those stories
i thought it would have been maybe more focused but the fact that this feel like i was going to a
you know museum and it's like okay here's exhibit a all right let's move on to the next one you
know actually let's go back to this one it was just kind of confusing in how we went from here
there here there and it just didn't feel as focused as i personally would have
liked it to be especially when you have two more stories that i found to be a little bit more
intriguing than the other third story so that's kind of my main criticism is i wasn't all that
invested in plot c and i also feel like the structure was just a little bit too all over
the place for my personal taste but that brings me to the positives listen man the the writers
and creators of the wire they know how to tell a good story even though i felt like it was a little
bit convoluted they at least planted the seeds in this first episode that makes me intrigued to
see what happens next and i'm talking about john berthold as wayne and woman mushaku as nicole they
were easily the highlights in the show and it's unfortunate i should say as far as my criticism
we only spend you know about five seven minutes with john berthold wayne at the beginning and
then we don't check into them to the end of the episode but within that you know what like
eight minutes of screen time oh my goodness him as wayne when we see the fbi arrest him
and him feeling like you know john or has to say feeling like the punisher like let me go do you
know who i am and when he goes in the room and the commissioner looks at him he doesn't even bet an
eye it doesn't look away and when the when the fbi actually go in there i can't even do like the look
in his eyes i i love john berthold he's such an underrated actor he he knows the assignment
every single role and i think he's going to be a very pivotal character in this show as
he says to them do you know who i am i'm superman like i thought that he was fantastic so that plot
that performance diving deep into his corruption because i think we're going to get flashbacks on
this show and particularly how he was you know introduced to the police force and maybe how he
was a good cop but it wasn't until you know he got bad advice or he came across a bad situation where
someone gave him money and he's like wow this is pretty easy to do this and you could tell he
probably took that and ran with it for the rest of his career so i'm very excited to learn more about
wayne's character and see that you know him going down and getting arrested and all the different
stuff that comes with that and then tie that into woman mushaku i think she's going to be of course
she's attorney she has her different perspective but i think she's going to be the audience because
i think she's going to start diving deeper into where this starts from where this stems
from right and dive into the politics and dive into the underbelly of letting stuff slide and
we even have the conversation where the herschel character that she's looking into statistically
he's one of the best police officers when it comes to arrest rate but on paper when it comes to his
complaints he has police force he uses force when it's unnecessary he you know ignites uh
conflict with people on the streets so it's gonna be really interesting to get that point of view
of her getting those answers and questioning those people in power why are these police officers
still wearing a badge and why are they still in the streets so i'm really excited about that
and then going back to the stuff that we got with the undercover cops right with g-money and
uh you know the other character there that's going to be really intriguing because we see
that interaction between them and their sergeant how he just you know he kicks over the person's
uh license plate and again seeing that corruption seeing just a taste of money them you know being
undercover they're working on both sides of the coin they can pose themselves as you know drug
drug dealers you know people are selling guns on the streets but then they're trying to get those
same guns off the streets so they're playing that ying and that yang but we know that they're mostly
you know bad and they're corrupted so i'm really intrigued with all that stuff and even though
like i said plus c wasn't all that engaging i do see that being the more human side of the story
showing you that not all police officers are bad from personal experience i have an uncle
that works in the police force in chicago and i you know uh definitely have more aspirations and
and applaud them putting themselves out there every single day in the line of duty and the line
of you know losing their lives and protecting the streets and serving the community is such a big
thing so i obviously i'm not a type of person that thinks that all cops are bad so i think that that
placee will show you that there are good cops out there so that's what i hope to get from that plot
but overall i think this is the wire the sequel to the wire mixed in with the show on fx by the name
of the shield it has you know great performances like i said led by woman mushaku and john berthold
there's enough meat in those two main plots that just makes me really engaged and really
you know looking forward to see what this show can offer what kind of questions that the show poses
what kind of this show doesn't to me does a good job also i'm not like saying that all polices our
officers are bad and there should be reform across the board but they're showing you that there
should be change and that there are people in position of power that can make that change happen
so that's what i'm hoping that i get from the show and i really enjoyed for the most part what we got
in this first episode minus the structuring of the story and minus some of the stuff that i
wasn't all that engaged with with plot c so hey that's my thoughts on this first episode let me
know yours from your pros your cons again i know this is a political show but let me know if you if
you didn't like the show let me know your reasons why or if you enjoyed it let's talk about that
and like i said up top do you want to have these type of conversations every single monday
do you want me to cover this every single monday let me know in the comments by liking the video
sharing the video engaging in this video because i would love to cover the show i'm going to be
watching it every monday but the question is will you be watching it and do you want me to cover
it let's have that discussion in the comments if you stuck around to this point of review i
thank you again just a friendly reminder if you haven't already like share comment and subscribe
to the channel and come and join this community thank you all for watching review hope you're
staying safe as you can see on the screen now subscribe and come and join the community i will
be covering barry so by the time this video is out check out my berry season 3 episode 1 review
as well as checking out my other content i'll catch you all on the next video