Parents' Guide to Clipped

With the magic combination of great writing, great actors, and an absolutely bonkers real-life story to draw from, this limited series is a gas. In Clipped's retelling, every character is sympathetic: O'Neill's Donald Sterling is loathsome and abusive, true—but he's also a kindly ol' grandpa guy who tells his wife she's pretty and gives her a sweet kiss. Said wife, Shelly, is a marvel in Weaver's hands, alternately a wide-eyed innocent and a cunning strategist, by turns—whichever gets her what she wants. And Coleman's V. Stiviano is perhaps the strangest of all, demanding attention from Sterling and the press, while in her private life she adopts two foster children at the same time as she ignites the 2014 scandal with her surreptitious recordings of conversations with her boss.

With a big, sprawling story packed into six episodes, Clipped moves at a breakneck pace and does a stellar job illuminating the different parties and POVs of the Sterling scandal. It also takes us behind the scenes with a team that has what Clippers coach Doc Rivers calls "a Cinderella story in the making" despite the handicap of a "bad boss." In Fishburne's stentorian delivery and sad eyes, we see what the Clippers could have been, what this fine coach could have made them, without the layers of racism and capitalism that gave Donald Sterling the power to ruin it all. We feel his pain.