Dynasty: Die Insidergeschichte der New England Patriots

I was really looking forward to this, The twenty years of unprecedented success of my beloved New England Patriots, but how disappointed I was after each episode.

This Series was produced by the Kraft Family & was a complete character assassination of Head Coach Bill Belichick & a love note to "Tommy".

The Patriots second and third Superbowl victories vs the Panthers & Eagles were completely overlooked whilst the Scandals & Losses were heavily focused on.

I lost all respect for owner Robert Kraft after this, Funnily he omitted his own massage parlour Scandal from the documentary but was happy to insinuate Aaron Hernandez murder victims would still be alive if it wasn't for Belichick.

Tom Brady Love in.

Bill Belichick hatchet Job.

Kraft Mr good guy holding a dynasty together.

One day I hope for Coach Belichicks version of events.

I'm through 6 episodes this far, and I have two issues.

First, I can't tell who the audience is intended to be. There's almost no context to allow someone unfamiliar with this team over the last 25 years to get a good picture of who the Patriots were during this stretch. They basically only introduce two players: Brady and the QB he replaced (Bledsoe). They don't even bother telling us about how awesome the defense was in those early years. They interview a couple defenders, but don't show their abilities; they're only there to tell the story of Brady, Belichick, and Kraft. There's no details during games like score, stakes, down, nothing. There's no sense of the importance of any game whatsoever. Even the undefeated regular season in '07. Wouldn't it make sense to mention that only one team in the NFL's history ever went undefeated and won the Super Bowl? And it's not like they ran out of time - episodes 5 and 6 are 30 minutes each.

Second, it feels like it's very biased towards owner Robert Kraft. In episode 6 (focusing on Aaron Hernandez and being charged with murder), at one point they basically insinuate that if Belichick had traded Hernandez to the west coast (as he requested), that the whole situation could've been avoided. If anyone's unfamiliar, there's been quite the rift between Kraft and Belichick the last few years.

So the tl;dr is that this feels rushed to get it out right after Kraft fired Belichick, and as a result of rushing, lacks a ton of fundamental production/editing qualities to make this hold up to any of the recent docuseries. Maybe it needed 10 years to have a better perspective on the whole thing. Too bad.

I'll give them credit because they do have some never before seen footage of my beloved New England Patriots which was cool to see. Also they get some tid bits of players prospective that nobody's heard but is this a hit piece to try and make certain players/coaches look bad? They focus way more on the negative and drama than they do on the actual teambuilding, tough front office decisions, game strategy, and player relationships. Seriously they skip right over Super Bowls seasons to focus on scandals and murderer stories. It does sometimes catch lightning in a bottle, but could be been better.

The vast majority of my football-watching life to this point occurred during the Bill Belichick & Tom Brady New England Patriots dynasty. As such, this Last Dance-style sports doc was always going to hit the nostalgic sweet spot for me. Filmmakers Matthew Hamacheck & Jeff Benedict are largely able to transcend the "nostalgia grab" narrative, however, by featuring excellent production values and one-on-one interviews with key Patriot figures that are as enlightening as they are sometimes exceedingly strange.

The Dynasty examines exactly that--the New England football dominance of 2001 through 2018. Quite literally every main event of that time period is covered through the prism of old TV footage, sit down interviews with the figures themselves, and color commentary from NE or national reporters. There will likely never be another dynasty rivaling the one created by Brady, Belichick, & owner Robert Kraft, and this ten-part series examines it all.

For the most part, I'd call this a pretty fair examination of the "Patriots Way", so to speak. They are hit hard on the Spygate scandal, the mismanagement (which led to tragedy) of the Aaron Hernandez situation, and Belichick's slide into utter arrogance towards the end. At the same time, the team's remarkable resiliency through it all is chronicled step by step.

Of course, to get the "big hitters" (Brady, Kraft family, Bill, other key players) to participate whatsoever there were a few seeming concessions made. The narrative here about "Deflate-gate" is poo-poo'd almost to minimization levels, and the elder Kraft is often portrayed as the "white knight" of the whole shebang despite off-gridiron scandals and chumminess with NFL commissioners that are never even hinted at. But all in all, a relatively small price to pay for on-the-record cooperation.

The strange--and often outright hilarious--piece of "Dynasty" is Bill Belichick's participation (or lack thereof). He does not have one insightful or constructive comment on anything asked of him. The now-former Patriots head coach simply refuses to engage--either playing to his stereotype or actually living it to fruition. As such, he is painted (rightfully or wrongfully who can tell) the villain of the piece simply due to his reticence towards any sort of candor.

Overall, I enjoyed "Dynasty" and more often than not had both Friday night episodes binged before my head hit the pillow! I can't quite give it the full 10-star treatment--mainly due to Belichick's odd presence and the Deflate-gate "hatchet job" episode--but it was a treat to re-live (through the lens of 20+ years of history) the entire saga of the dynastic New England Patriots.

New York Football Giants fan here, as well as a big sports fan. I have no axe to grind with The New England Patriots, and I found the documentary interesting and informative to watch. They certainly get buy-in from the three people you have to have for something like this to be good: Kraft, Belichick and Brady. They got most others...I'd be interested in knowing which people they wanted to get who declined participation.

In some of the earlier reviews, it seems that the people most unhappy about this series are the New England Patriots fans themselves. Not sure what they were looking for, but if you're not a New England fan, don't let New England fans tell you it's not worth watching. It definitely was.

The other criticism I'm seeing is that it didn't really delve into the whole history of this "dynasty period" of New England. It was already 10 episodes at around 40 minutes each! How much more were we going to have to see? Ten episodes at 40 minutes each was plenty. Any more would not have been a good idea.