Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story. Ella Beatty as Lizzie Borden in episode 401 of Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix
Netflix has had its fair share of controversial shows over the years. Still, one I think everyone knows is Monster,a series co-createdby Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan, often classified as a “biographical crime drama.” One of these co-creators just said they have a “ten-season” plan… and I just can’t get behind that whatsoever.
For context, Ian Brennan recently discussed this blueprint in an interview withThe Hollywood Reporter to promote the latest season, Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story.In this interview, he was asked how many seasons he and Murphy would want and if they had their next “monster” lined up.
“We never do. We always switch. It’s always three or four different ones, and we toggle between. There’s a hopper of three things, but Ryan and I both said we want to do 10 of them. It’s a fairly exhaustive list, but it’s tricky. You’d be surprised at how many subjects we start and then abandon, because it’s just not [right]. You can really tell when it’s wrong right away, because you’re asking people to spend seven or eight or nine or 10 hours getting inside this person’s head. They better be really interesting.”
Look, ten seasons is already hard to pull off today, with production timelines, streaming shows canceling left and right, and so much more. But there’s an even bigger reason I don’t think this series should go beyond maybe season 5.
And that’s their classification system.
We’ve lost the point of using the term “monster”
With the first season, that title made sense. Jeffrey Dahmer was a true monster. He had done horrific things to his victims and caused so much pain to every victim’s family. He deserved that title. And while I don’t necessarily agree with the series being made because it once again dramatized their trauma, it was still an appropriate title.
But then season 2 came along, otherwise known as Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story.
Taking on that story was already a challenge, but putting the Menendez brothers’ faces on blast and labeling them as “monsters” when this is a very nuanced and delicate case is just a slap in the face to not only the trauma the two boys went through but also the entire family. Not only that, but it consistently painted the brothers in strange situations and a weird light, turning the show from a simple biographical feature into something… I don’t even want to rewatch it ever again.
We follow another multi-killer with Monsterseason 3, which featured killer Ed Gein, who stole corpses from graveyards and made keepsakes from them. Yes, that is at least more of an actual horrible person, but even then he had some serious mental problems going on and was found legally insane, so I don’t even know if you can really label him as a “monster” if he was never in the right state of mind.
And now we’re in Monsterseason 4, following a case that remains a real mystery more than a century later with Lizzie Borden and attempting to turn it into a feminist tale. What are we doing here, guys? These are real lives you’re messing with, and the stories from the first season feel like they’re getting more controversial just for fun.
But it wasn’t even these four that made me say “absolutely not” to this ten-season plan. It was what Brennan mentioned in this interview—that a “monster” they had considered doing for season 4 was Luigi Mangione.
“We were trying to crack the Luigi [Mangione] story and it was just laborious and nobody knows it yet. It’s still too new; unknown and esoteric. There’s something not visceral about it.”
I’m sorry, what?
Regardless of how you might feel about Mangione and what he did to the CEO of United Healthcare, I would never classify him alongside people like Jeffrey Dahmer, a literal cannibal serial killer,and Ed Gein, someone who created trinkets from skin and bone.
It’s things like that that make me wonder whether they’re purely trying to make people hate their choices. Their slogan for this series is, “Are monsters made, or are they born?” I can understand that because of the whole nature-vs.-nurture thing. But using examples from cases that truly have a LOT of grey area instead of just sticking with the mindset of serial killers is insane to me.
You could pick so many who wouldn’t be nearly as controversial as the Menendez brothers, Mangione, or anyone like that. Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, Jack the Ripper, Son of Sam (David Berkowitz), the freaking Zodiac Killer—so many,and yet you willingly choose the ones that will spark the most backlash.
I can’t get behind that. It compromises the show’s integrity. I get that it’s a ratings game for most people these days, but this is just… disappointing. I know I’m probably just feeding the controversy by writing this, but there are some things I can’t stay silent about. And this was one.
Please, don’t let this go on for more than one more season. This was supposed to be just a limited series, and now we’re here. It’s gone on long enough.
