singedsun

Last week Netflix sent me an email saying that it thought I would be interested in the new Ted Bundy documentary. Yes, Netflix. I also thought I would be. I don't watch a lot of documentaries, but when I do watch them, they're true crime related. Since Netflix started advertising this new Ted Bundy documentary, I've been looking forward to it, wanting to hear the tapes made by the journalist that he talked to while in prison.

First I had to finish up the first season of Sex Education and the last five episodes of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Both of which were great. I get a little completionist about media, I like to finish a season or series before starting a new one, if it's something I can do that with.

This four episode documentary isn't going to be something I finish though. I feel like I was sold something different on the ads/teasers for this than what I got in the first two episodes I watched. It's supposed to be about the tapes Ted made with journalist Stephen Michaud where he talks both about his own history and later the individual cases as though he were an expert witness in a trial, and not the murderer himself. That appealed to me on a sort of Hannibal-esque level, where you have someone clever and learned, someone that's studied law and psychology giving theory.

But after two episodes it seemed pretty clear that's not what we were getting. Sure, some of the details from the tapes made it into the episodes and I'm sure there was more later too. For my time though I didn't need to spend two hours waiting to get to the point where we're hearing him talk about the cases. I especially didn't need to spend two hours listening to everyone tell us what a handsome, charming man he was. Charming? Sure. He was a reasonably intelligent man who was capable of having friendships and relationships with other people. There had to be charm involved. Handsome, though? Not really. And it's mentioned over, and over, and over again in those first two episodes.

I didn't need to hear about why people didn't believe he didn't do it. That ship sailed like forty years ago. This shouldn't have been a rehash of his life story. There were other ways to tell this, to play the tapes without feeding back into the same, tired narrative. More than maybe ever, in 2019, the last thing we need more of is to see a story where a young white man isn't seen for the villain he clearly is (was). I don't know, it really set a bad tone for me and I decided I didn't care enough to watch the rest of the show.

PS. Does anyone else get annoyed that sometimes Netflix lets stuff linger in the "Continue With" section? Like sometimes I finish a show and then it sits there in that continue section even though I've seen all the episodes. I think it's because Netflix skips those last few seconds of a show to keep you watching but then later doesn't count that as finished? I don't know why that annoys me, but it does.

Thankfully, for stuff like this when I know I'm never going to go back to it, I like that I can go into my account and remove it from my watch history so it stops showing up there at all.