Documentary Review: The Spill

Expecting a play-by-play review of the Deep Water Horizon last night's FRONTLINE: The Spill | PBS [Watch streaming online] was instead a deep dive into the events and corporate culture that created the environment in which the Gulf Oil spill was just one of many disasters ready to pop.

Apparently, the investors and the Board of Directors were pence wise and pound foolish by cutting, across the board 25% of their operating cost. While this was great for pentioners depending on BP's stock dividends - the men on the ground and the antiquated equipment suffered. They suffered with safety failures that lead to death. Their systematic attitude that comes across is, "Why spend hard dollars on silly things like updating safety gear? It's not like there's been an accident!?"

The documentary uses Deep Water as the cherry pit on the moldy banana split that BP had created. I had the expectation of a play-by-play of a failed blow-out preventer, and instead the journalists got into the DNA of BP and the failure of a culture. I was pleasantly surprised, and then horrified by the misconduct of BP management and employees, let alone their complete disregard for overall safety of human life and consequences be damned... the plan was to just get the checkbook out after it happens... and then lowball it.

A dollar saved is a dollar on the balance sheet.

One of the episode’s strengths is footage found in BP’s own film library. In one sequence, newly-minted BP boss Hayward, speaking to business-school students, pretty much confesses to all of the company’s extant flaws and errors.

“He comes in and pledges that he’s going to correct all this,” Smith said. “He analyzed it correctly and had good intentions, and was by all accounts trying to do the right thing, but you essentially have a guy who’s trying to turn around the Titanic when it’s too late.”

Expecting to see Hayward come off as the media comic book villain - I was disappointed. They actually were able to show his, if not human, at least pragmatic sense of course correction. It's a study in his Public Relation's department that should show the failure of the image of the man -- that's a whole other doc, if you were to ask me.

I should also note that the documentary doesn't shy away from pointing out that the failure of the United States government to connect the dots also contributed to the Gulf spill.

Do give this a watch, it's worthy of your hour of attention.