The Trainwreck documentaries on Netflix are rapidly turning into my favourite factor to stay up for on the 2025 TV schedule. The newest, Trainwreck: Mayor of Mayhem, tells the wild story of former Toronto mayor Rob Ford. If I’m sincere, I bear in mind the entire story fairly nicely. I used to be fascinated by it, and I didn’t study any new information from the movie. I did, nonetheless, change my view on the late Ford and why his legacy deserves extra of my sympathy.
His Vanity And Bluster Turned Me Off, Not His Private Issues
To be clear, I used to be by no means offended by Rob Ford’s private issues. His addictions and all that went with them weren’t why I used to be turned off by the man. He wasn’t my mayor, so it was straightforward to embrace the circus and root for the wildest issues to occur. Had he been the mayor of my very own metropolis, I might need felt totally different in 2012 when all of the information broke. He wasn’t, although, so I may sit again and be entertained by the carnival, regardless of all of the terrible issues he did.
What I actually didn’t like about Ford on the time, was that he was so rattling smug about his private issues. His bluster, which appealed to a whole lot of voters, didn’t enchantment to me. I believed it was, for lack of a greater phrase, gross. He blamed everybody else for his personal points, and it took him a very long time to lastly admit that his issues, each private and political, had been all his personal making. By the point he owned as much as them and took duty, his political life, and shortly his precise life, had been over. That’s the place I started to sympathize whereas watching the documentary.
Ford Didn’t Get A Second Act
In case you’ve adopted the Rob Ford saga, you realize that it ended along with his tragic dying from most cancers in 2016. The ultimate interview of his proven within the Netflix documentary presents a really totally different Ford. He’s a person who has been utterly humbled by his terrible illness. That’s the place issues modified for me. I went from seeing him as a clownish carnival barker to seeing him as an actual particular person.
One in all Ford’s pals, Tom Beyer, who’s interviewed in Trainwreck: Mayor of Mayhem, talks about how the previous mayor by no means had an opportunity for a second act. I’m somebody who believes in forgiveness and second probabilities, and I actually sympathized with the cancer-ridden Ford, who, not less than in that ultimate interview, bald and weakened from chemo, appeared like a genuinely modified particular person. I’m unhappy he didn’t get that second likelihood.
It’s unattainable to know if he was actually modified or what he may have completed with a second act; one other likelihood to hook up with folks like he did his complete profession, however with out the burden of his addictions pulling him again from his higher angels. I won’t have agreed along with his politics, however I did actually begin to perceive why folks liked him a lot regardless of his inside demons.
In a few of the different Trainwreck documentaries, all of which you’ll be able to watch with a Netflix subscription, there’s a clear villain, however on this one, there’s solely tragedy.