PARKS’S TAKE: The Netflix “Mr. McMahon” docu-series seems geared toward a viewer not already thoroughly familiar with his story

Hurricane Helene passing by us yesterday gave me the opportunity to sit down and watch the first episode of “Mr. McMahon,” the new Netflix documentary on Vince McMahon that dropped on Wednesday. By that point, I had read all of the reaction online to this series, which largely fit into the category of disappointment.

If you were searching for a documentary that truly went in-depth into psyche of Vince McMahon, to try to understand why he is the kind of person he is, well, you probably could’ve shut the first episode off after about five minutes. In the early portion, before questions even start flying, Vince jokes that he’s only going to reveal what he wants to reveal and even speaks with almost reverence about the stories he deems too hot to be told in this medium. The interviewer follows-up and asks for one of those stories and McMahon shuts him down.

To many of us – and by “us,” I mean the people that have followed McMahon and his company for the past 20, 30 years or more – very little of that first episode is new. It’s a lot about McMahon taking over the company from his dad, making Hulk Hogan the big star, mortgaging his future on the first Wrestelmania, so on and so forth.

But we do have to remember that WE are probably not the target audience for this. There are a lot of people out there who know of McMahon because of the details of the Janel Grant lawsuit, or just peripherally are aware that he is the guy who ran WWE for so long. So while this doesn’t cover a lot of new ground that previous episodes of Dark Side of the Ring or WWE’s own McMahon DVD produced, the majority of the Netflix audience watching this documentary will never have seen those episodes, and don’t know about Vince’s disdain for the territory system, or the David Schultz/John Stossel incident, or anything else that appeared in episode one.

Folks like me and the people I follow on social media will be disappointed that McMahon isn’t held to fuller account or that certain incidents are only glossed over. An in-depth accounting of those would’ve been more interesting – to us – but there is another audience out there that this project is geared toward and it’s clear that those viewers were given more weight than the ones who are the hardcore wrestling fans.

Check out the latest episode of the Wade Keller Podcast weekly Tuesday Flagship episode with guest cohost Jason Powell: CLICK HERE to stream (or search “wade Keller” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or any other iOS or Android app to subscribe free)

Stay right here and keep the flow going. We think you’ll like to read this next…

RECOMMENDED NEXT: Vince McMahon issues a statement on the eve of Netflix docu-series dropping about his life and scandals, alleges clips are out of context

OR CHECK THIS OUT AT PROWRESTLING.NET: Shawn Spears on why he left WWE, what led to his return to NXT, using the Shawn Spears name in WWE