Is We Own This City woke?
TV Show · 2022
We Own This City has a wokeness score of 8/10, which we rate as Strongly Ideological. Woke messaging is very prominent and often feels forced or shoehorned in. Characters and plot are primarily shaped to serve the ideology. Many viewers feel the agenda overshadows the entertainment.
Key points
- Prominently features systemic racism and police brutality critiques tied to Freddie Gray protests and Black Lives Matter context.
- Positions federal civil rights investigation and consent decree as necessary response to institutional corruption disproportionately harming minority communities.
- Uses character arcs and dialogue to deliver commentary on the drug war as a flawed 'mission' causing civilian harm and enabling abuse.
Wokeness analysis
We Own This City is a David Simon and George Pelecanos miniseries adapting a true story of Baltimore Police Department Gun Trace Task Force corruption. While rooted in real events including the 2015 Freddie Gray incident and post-protest policing dynamics, the narrative heavily emphasizes systemic issues in American policing, the failures of the drug war, racial profiling, police brutality against Black communities, and the need for federal intervention via consent decrees. Characters like civil rights attorney Nicole Steele (Wunmi Mosaku) serve as moral proxies investigating predatory policing, with explicit commentary on how the 'war on drugs' creates warriors who view civilians as enemies and count bodies as victories. The show frames corruption not as isolated bad apples but as enabled by broader institutional culture, political pressures, and racial dynamics in a majority-Black city. Reviews highlight its alignment with Black Lives Matter-era critiques of policing, portraying systemic rot disproportionately impacting communities of color. Diversity in casting includes prominent Black actors in key roles across police, victims, and investigators, with natural integration of racial themes that drive the plot toward ideological conclusions about reform and mistrust. Conservative-leaning critiques note its didactic tone, white liberal framing of events, and tendency to lecture on systemic racism over individual accountability or effective law enforcement. Entertainment elements like gritty performances and nonlinear storytelling are present but often subordinate to the message of institutional failure and the need for external oversight, making the series feel message-driven rather than purely narrative-focused.
Plot
We Own This City is a six-episode HBO miniseries created by David Simon and George Pelecanos, based on the nonfiction book by Baltimore Sun reporter Justin Fenton. It chronicles the rise and fall of the Baltimore Police Department's Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF), an elite plainclothes unit led by Sergeant Wayne Jenkins (Jon Bernthal) that devolved into widespread corruption including robbery, evidence planting, overtime fraud, and theft from citizens and drug dealers. Set primarily around 2015-2017 in the aftermath of Freddie Gray's death in police custody and ensuing protests, the story interweaves the GTTF's crimes with parallel investigations by the FBI, DOJ Civil Rights Division attorney Nicole Steele, and internal department dynamics. It explores how arrest quotas, the war on drugs, political pressures, and a code of silence enabled misconduct, leading to federal convictions of several officers. The series features a large ensemble including Jamie Hector, Josh Charles, Wunmi Mosaku, and several actors from The Wire, and premiered on April 25, 2022.
Analyzed by AI on August 28, 2026