Transcript
Speaker: Hey everybody, this is Carl recording from the Editing Bay.
Speaker: Before we get into our first episode, I just wanted to give a small trigger warning to anyone who might need or appreciate it.
Speaker: As we're talking about the Dahmer series from Netflix, we talk about the crimes and acts in question.
Speaker: We also talk about stuff somewhat cavalierly or glibly at times because we're focusing on the show rather than the actual events in question.
Speaker: If any of that sounds upsetting to you, or maybe just not your cup of tea, no worries about dipping out of this episode and its second part.
Speaker: We will catch you next time.
Speaker: Also, not quite a trigger warning, but we also don't give one shit about spoilers on this or any other episode.
Speaker: Enjoy!
Speaker: Okay, so we will have some sort of theme song that I don't know what it is yet, but theme song will play, it rolls in.
Speaker: Hello, everybody, and welcome to Carl and Jonathan Watch Everything.
Speaker: I'm Carl, and this is my co-host, Jonathan.
Speaker: Hey.
Speaker: So this is our very first episode of this particular podcast.
Speaker: We have done a little bit of podcasting before.
Speaker: We've tried a couple things in the past with a podcast that by the time this episode comes out, I will have scrubbed the old one because we will no longer be using it.
Speaker: So Jonathan, what are we watching today?
Speaker: So Carl, today we're watching the Netflix miniseries Dahmer Monster, the story of Jeffrey Dahmer.
Speaker: And so you were the one who suggested that we watch this for our first episode, and you had already seen this.
Speaker: I'm coming into this fresh.
Speaker: We're covering the first five episodes today.
Speaker: We had a lengthy chat about movies that
Speaker: we both liked, we thought were historical capstones, cinematic marvels, whatever you want to say.
Speaker: But I had just come off the heels of a few binges.
Speaker: And because of one of the main actors in this, well, two of the main actors, and its relevancy right now in the zeitgeist, I thought that Dahmer would be an interesting watch to talk about.
Speaker: And before we really get into it, the other thing that you, I remember you really emphasizing in our pre-show conversation, you said, Carl, the dad in this.
Speaker: I think that's word for word.
Speaker: The father.
Speaker: Yes, the father.
Speaker: I think when I watch certain things, when I digest my movies and TV stuff,
Speaker: I really get wrapped up into the characters and it's not just, you know, this toss around term character arc and where they start out like a bad guy and then turns into a good guy.
Speaker: But because of film school, I went to film school for those who don't know Carl Knight's background.
Speaker: My background is in film and television production.
Speaker: And of course, going to school, I did some writing.
Speaker: I actually wrote a script.
Speaker: and I really get involved and invested in writing characters.
Speaker: And I feel like even though this is a series based on real life events and a real life person and victims, they often in this particular series become characters.
Speaker: And I thought back about each episode and how it's building off the other, even though this is told in a very,
Speaker: back and forth, flash forward, flashback type of manner.
Speaker: The father was very constant in his growth and his development, or at least our understanding of him as a viewer.
Speaker: And I noticed that all throughout, even though he gets upset, and we'll get into that later, the father loved his son a lot.
Speaker: He loved Jeffrey.
Speaker: And it stuck out to me probably midway through our
Speaker: five episode review, which would be like episode three-ish.
Speaker: It really came forward around three and four.
Speaker: And I think each episode in succession kind of really establishes each person in Jeffrey Dahmer's life.
Speaker: And another thing we'll talk about is glorification.
Speaker: And a lot of the backlash that this movie, or not movie, I'm sorry, show or miniseries had is that it glorified Jeffrey Dahmer.
Speaker: And I think once I let all that go,
Speaker: and I got into it, the father really stuck out.
Speaker: The grandmother did too.
Speaker: I actually took some good notes.
Speaker: This is my second time watching.
Speaker: So this was a recommendation.
Speaker: So that meant I watched it before.
Speaker: So my second time round, the grandmother was extremely funny, but the father, I don't know what it was, but it was something there for me that just let me know, like, this is kind of how people that don't have, you know, two parents or maybe the love from one parent,
Speaker: or in general, people want to be loved like this, and it was very unconditional.
Speaker: The crux of the love he had for Jeffrey was unconditional.
Speaker: I think that is just everything you just said is a perfect segue into... So, at the beginning of this episode, I will have put in some sort of general content warning, just because of the nature of what we're talking about.
Speaker: But I want to do something a little more specific right here, just to...
Speaker: tell everybody who might be sensitive to this or who cares about this, we are going to be talking about this as something fictional.
Speaker: Obviously, this is something that is based on real events, but we're going to be talking about performances and story arcs and writing and stuff.
Speaker: We're basically going to be treating this as if it is something completely fictional, for the most part.
Speaker: That's really our...
Speaker: angle on this here.
Speaker: So if that's not for you, if you are someone who feels like that's an insensitive way to talk about this, totally understand this podcast is probably not going to be for you.
Speaker: We are approaching this really as like, viewers, emotional impression to like the media itself, rather than talking about like the larger context of Dahmer as a serial killer and like the historical aspect.
Speaker: That's interesting that you say that because I know where you and I met,
Speaker: was in a mythology and folklore class.
Speaker: And I remember the teacher at the top of the class said, we are going to be discussing stories.
Speaker: Some of these stories come from religious texts.
Speaker: We are going to review these stories as a religious text.
Speaker: Even if you have a connection to that religion, we will not be diving into it as people who are trying to uphold or discuss the religion on its own.
Speaker: So I think this is a similar saying is that
Speaker: you know, I really want to push that I respect and care for the people who were involved in this, you know, real life event.
Speaker: And of course, this was actually talked about and spoken of as though it was told from the perspective of the victims.
Speaker: So I do have thoughts about that, but I will say like, just to, you know, put a cherry on the top is like, yes, this is going to be discussed as a work of, you know,
Speaker: visual art.
Speaker: Perfect.
Speaker: Could not have said it better myself.
Speaker: So let's get into it.
Speaker: So before we get into like episode by episode breakdowns, let's just talk about like some extremely broad stuff.
Speaker: So I was going into this.
Speaker: The only person that I think I knew anything about was Evan Peters.
Speaker: I don't think I knew anyone else in this or know anyone else in this.
Speaker: But holy shit, is he fucking good.
Speaker: He's really good.
Speaker: He is.
Speaker: He is so good at being someone who is awkward and stilted and like standoffish and just like a total fucking creep.
Speaker: I think it plays into like his wheelhouse because if you had to name like three other movies he was in or three other shows he was in,
Speaker: The only things that, so I know that he has been in American Horror Story.
Speaker: I've never seen any of it.
Speaker: So if you asked me to name all the other stuff he's done, it's Quicksilver.
Speaker: That's what I know it as.
Speaker: So that's where I'm coming from is like, oh yeah, Quicksilver as Dahmer.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: So I know him off the top of my head.
Speaker: He was in Pose, which is a very famous series.
Speaker: I believe it was on.
Speaker: I can't, I won't even say what I think it was on.
Speaker: But it's a series that's following the ball and drag scene from the 80s.
Speaker: And so I remember he played a character that I wouldn't say is too far from Dahmer.
Speaker: And I think he was in something similar to Pose as well on top of the American Horror Story.
Speaker: So I think he's kind of showing like a
Speaker: I wouldn't say he's being pigeonholed for these characters, but I think it's not far from him.
Speaker: But that doesn't take away from his performance, I will say.
Speaker: Let me go on a mini rant on that real quick.
Speaker: Let me just fire off a hot take right here.
Speaker: I think it is so dumb when people say that someone isn't a good actor or actress just because they have limited range.
Speaker: people are specialists, right?
Speaker: Like, it's fine to be, like, a heart surgeon, and then you don't expect a heart surgeon to also be, like, a foot surgeon, you know?
Speaker: Like, it's totally fine to be like, oh, yeah, you know, this is someone who can only play, like, this one particular role, and then they keep getting cast in that kind of role because they're really fucking good at it.
Speaker: I agree.
Speaker: I don't think it's a problem at all.
Speaker: I think some people kind of gravitate towards actors who can wow them at every
Speaker: turn, like they want them in an action, they want them in a comedy.
Speaker: Whereas if you're good at one thing, like take Samuel L. Jackson, for instance, I would say he's a good all around actor, but someone else might say he's a good actor in yelling and screaming and getting upset, but he's been in things that had comedic tones to it.
Speaker: He's not like a slapstick comedy actor, but he's able to, you know, be diverse.
Speaker: And some of this actually comes from the directors, because if you're not getting the work
Speaker: to showcase how multifaceted you are, it's because Hollywood itself is pigeonholing you.
Speaker: So, you know, if you're a black actor, that's a big, strong, you know, visually stereotypical
Speaker: you know, heterosexual black man, you're only going to get certain roles like The Rock, for instance.
Speaker: He's been able to branch out because he had stardom earlier on.
Speaker: But just for his physical look alone, like there's only going to be certain roles you can get.
Speaker: So someone like Evan Peters, I think it's interesting because he's known, but he's not.
Speaker: He wasn't super, super known as far as I'm trying to allude here.
Speaker: And he was almost perfect with the casting.
Speaker: Like he's a good enough name where they got him, but he wasn't so big to where like, let's say that they wanted to put Henry Cavill in here for his stead.
Speaker: That wouldn't have worked.
Speaker: It would have been very weird because he's known a certain thing.
Speaker: I think Henry Cavill's a poor example because as our off-mic conversation revealed to me, you have a whole fucking thing with Henry Cavill.
Speaker: So I don't think he's also... I also don't think he's necessarily famous enough maybe to be in that role.
Speaker: Listen, I agree with you that I don't think Henry Cavill would have worked in this particular role, but just like the fact that he is your go-to example, I think it's more because you have a weird thing.
Speaker: And the weird thing for the listeners that he's alluding to is like, I have certain celebrities that
Speaker: I just don't enjoy seeing and it's usually because they've done or said something in social media or have said something that is just egregious.
Speaker: And I just think it's just poor taste and not good showings of a good person.
Speaker: It sounds petty, but.
Speaker: Henry Cavill, unfortunately, has done none of that, and I feel like he is going to do something.
Speaker: Unfortunately, he has done nothing.
Speaker: You don't want to like somebody, and they haven't done anything to warrant you disliking them, so I'm waiting, and that's petty.
Speaker: Because when we had this conversation before, there were three examples.
Speaker: It was like it was...
Speaker: Someone whose name I don't remember, and then Kevin Hart, and then Henry Cavill.
Speaker: And it was like, whatever the other guy was in Kevin Hart, you gave two examples of people who had, like, actually done terrible things.
Speaker: And then Henry Cavill was your third thing.
Speaker: And it was very confusing until you explained it.
Speaker: Like, no, I just don't like it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's totally fine to just not like somebody, but the way that you placed him in the list, it definitely made it seem like he had done something weird.
Speaker: And it's kind of like one of those things because the other person was Mark Wahlberg.
Speaker: Mark Wahlberg, that's right.
Speaker: He is, for anyone who doesn't know, he definitely did a hate crime.
Speaker: Mark Wahlberg.
Speaker: He did a hate crime twice and got
Speaker: that those crimes are really I think the main one was the attack on a specific gentleman and he got that expunged by the mayor of New York City but nonetheless Henry Cavill I think what kind of got me to the edge or edging for him to do something bad was there was some kind of talk about how
Speaker: British or any actor from across the pond basically could kill it when it comes to doing American accents, but the vice versa is just never good.
Speaker: And I don't know if he was in the conversation at the time and agreed, or if he had alluded to being able to do an American accent better than Americans.
Speaker: It just rubbed me the wrong way.
Speaker: I'm like, you know what?
Speaker: I'm watching you.
Speaker: But he's done nothing.
Speaker: He's been nothing but like the pinnacle actor who's beefy.
Speaker: He's conventionally attractive.
Speaker: He's a cis white man, heterosexual.
Speaker: So he's getting these roles.
Speaker: He was the Witcher.
Speaker: So he's getting work.
Speaker: He's Superman.
Speaker: I think he just signed his contract to still be Superman in the D.C.
Speaker: EU.
Speaker: So he's just doing all these things.
Speaker: I'm like, eh.
Speaker: He's almost like giving me like the jock vibe.
Speaker: Like he's a jock.
Speaker: He's famous.
Speaker: He's done nothing.
Speaker: I don't like him.
Speaker: I don't want to like him.
Speaker: Back on the series we're talking about.
Speaker: I mean, I'm the one who brought it up, but it's fun to hear you talk about it.
Speaker: Yeah, and they are petty.
Speaker: And I think the more I talk about them, people, I used to think people would be super judgy, but I think I'm at an age now to where I don't care.
Speaker: I'm ready to just throw my hands up with trying to be a people pleaser.
Speaker: And just if I don't like somebody, I don't have to have a good reason.
Speaker: Also, if someone's going to be judgy about it, we all have these sorts of things.
Speaker: You know, he who is without sin may cast the first fucking stone.
Speaker: And everyone has a handful of stones.
Speaker: Everyone's got some kind of fucking thing.
Speaker: Everyone's got some sort of petty bullshit lurking in their heart.
Speaker: But yeah, back to the series.
Speaker: Speaking of petty bullshit, let me be really petty about this fucking series for one second.
Speaker: Did you have a hard time just seeing stuff?
Speaker: Because it seems like, I don't know if it's my computer or if it's Netflix, but like the color balance seems real fucking dark.
Speaker: And like, even cranking my screen brightness all the way up...
Speaker: there were like sometimes when it's like oh it's at night inside a house and the only lighting is like the yellowish lighting from the like the the little table lamps i could hardly see anything i actually had to alter the gamma of my screen and like crank the gamma all the way to the max to actually be able to see anything in those things so my thought is a few things i know this is one of the comments that somebody had said about the series is like this is just a whole bunch of
Speaker: bland gratification of Jeffrey Dahmer and it's all a sepia tone.
Speaker: And I'm like, well, that's a really mean statement.
Speaker: But to answer the question or to give some type of like response to what you're asking, I think it's similar to what happened with Game of Thrones when they were on the eighth season and they did, I forget the episode name, but there was a huge battle and a lot of people said it was super black.
Speaker: They did the same thing.
Speaker: Everything was too dark and really it boils down to
Speaker: how the filmmakers had recorded it and how they intended it to be watched because people forget that with all this new technology and how they have this advanced like recording equipment,
Speaker: Sometimes directors, and that's why there's a setting on TVs now where directors kind of want people to see it the way that they intended them to see it.
Speaker: And that doesn't always equate to watching something on a smaller screen or sometimes certain TVs that aren't set, right?
Speaker: And I think there is something to where you're supposed to have your TV calibrated to watch certain things, which is weird.
Speaker: But I would say it's probably from that because I don't think I had an issue
Speaker: But I just have accepted that dark scenes nowadays with certain things that are new, it's just super dark.
Speaker: I don't know why they choose to keep us just in such darkness, but they are definitely, it's on their end.
Speaker: It's not a your equipment thing.
Speaker: Well, I'm definitely going to be petty about that and say, whoever did this, get your fucking shit together.
Speaker: I'm going to watch it on my laptop.
Speaker: Just know that I'm going to be watching this shit on my laptop or my fucking phone.
Speaker: Make it okay to do that.
Speaker: They should know that because it's on Netflix.
Speaker: It's going to be on anything they can stream Netflix, which that's,
Speaker: a Netflix thing, and of course, if we haven't named the person, Ryan Murphy, who's the producer of this miniseries and a credit to the writing of this miniseries.
Speaker: That's on them.
Speaker: Yeah, just fucking know that people aren't going to be watching this on a big fancy TV in a dark room.
Speaker: There's going to be... That has all these expensive calibrations, by the way, because to get your TV calibrated, you have to have someone who's a professional come to your home, and that's something that not everyone's going to do.
Speaker: Bob and Betty Beer can...
Speaker: that live in middle of class America is not going to have their TV calibrated for Netflix.
Speaker: It's not happening.
Speaker: I am watching this shit at 9 a.m.
Speaker: and I do not have blackout curtains.
Speaker: I need to be able to see this in the morning glare.
Speaker: Let me see Jeffrey Dahmer kill someone properly before I go to bed after the night shift.
Speaker: Come on, Netflix.
Speaker: Get your shit together.
Speaker: Especially with these numbers.
Speaker: Yeah, this was super popular.
Speaker: This was, I had kind of heard about this before you mentioned it, but I had only heard of this because my girlfriend watched it and she had mentioned something about it and I was like sort of vaguely peripherally aware of it.
Speaker: Yeah, this was what, like the most or like the second most popular fucking thing on Netflix?
Speaker: It was the second biggest show on Netflix outside of Stranger Things season four, which even though I watched it, I didn't know that little
Speaker: little nugget of information.
Speaker: I just knew that when you go on Netflix, there are like the top 10 most popular shows trending either in the US or globally.
Speaker: And this was one of them.
Speaker: So I just clicked on it and started watching.
Speaker: But of course, I would almost say maybe responsible in part to the backlash wasn't such a big success.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, that sort of controversy can really drive viewership numbers.
Speaker: Sort of side question.
Speaker: Are you familiar with the Saturday Night Live serial killer sketch with Jim Parsons?
Speaker: No, I'm not.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I will send you this.
Speaker: I forgot if we mentioned this already.
Speaker: We're doing this in two parts.
Speaker: This is episodes one through five and like intro.
Speaker: And then next week is going to be six through 10.
Speaker: I will send you this video after we're done recording.
Speaker: Watch it between episodes because it is, I mean, it's a funny sketch, but also like the characterization of the serial killer in this sketch is,
Speaker: is Jeffrey Dahmer, and it was in... For most of episode one, it was goddamn the only thing I could think about as I'm watching Evan Peters be Jeffrey Dahmer.
Speaker: And, like, this show made me realize how much of my conception of a serial killer is actually based on people doing riffs on Dahmer himself.
Speaker: Because, like, Jeffrey Dahmer, either as himself... I mean, not literally the guy, but, like, people playing him...
Speaker: Or a character who is like kind of supposed to be Jeffrey Dahmer has shown up in like so many other like TV shows and movies and cartoons like when a serial killer comes in like his mannerisms are the characterization that gets lifted to be a serial killer and I didn't realize quite like how impactful that was until I was watching episode one.
Speaker: And I was thinking about that SNL sketch.
Speaker: And I was thinking about how every single time Evan Peters is on screen, I'm like, the neighbor, she knew shit was up.
Speaker: But just like, fucking everybody should have known that this guy was a serial killer.
Speaker: That was my thinking.
Speaker: It's like...
Speaker: come on, this guy is a serial killer.
Speaker: We have all seen the movie where this guy shows up.
Speaker: And I had to keep reminding myself, no, these people haven't, because the reason that I have seen that is because of this guy.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And I think when I watched it the second time, like I was telling you, pre-recording,
Speaker: I was given the grace to pay attention to the small things because I'd already seen this series one full go through.
Speaker: And so themes were popping out.
Speaker: And of course, because we're dealing with Ryan Murphy, and if you're not familiar with Ryan Murphy, he's the responsible person for writing and producing Glee and other things.
Speaker: I'm thinking one's called The Watcher on Netflix.
Speaker: So for those people who are Netflix aficionados, he's got a stint of like,
Speaker: shows that are similar to this in tone like murderous-y or kind of creepy and eerie but he also does a lot of social awareness of like uh
Speaker: I guess, inequality.
Speaker: And so this whole motif around people not seeing this obvious serial killer walking around was, in my opinion, through Ryan Murphy's writing, cloaked in white privilege, because I thought there are little cops pulling him over for DUI-worthy offenses, asking about huge garbage bags in the back of the car.
Speaker: And they're like,
Speaker: Dude, the phrase white privilege shows up in my notes at least like three or four times.
Speaker: I do.
Speaker: And that was one of the reasons I'm like, wait a minute.
Speaker: So he's driving and swore.
Speaker: We'll get to that part.
Speaker: But anyway, my point was is that it's just insane that everyone else is seeing it.
Speaker: And it's almost like either we as the audience members are in on the joke and the rest of the people within this world are just looking at us like,
Speaker: is this even a joke or is this serious?
Speaker: And we're looking like, well, we don't know.
Speaker: We're the audience.
Speaker: But Jeffrey's walking around like, yep, it's a joke and I'm not going to get caught yet.
Speaker: Or yeah, you don't want to go in there.
Speaker: You don't want to see the gay stuff.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: Just relax.
Speaker: I just want to take some pictures.
Speaker: It's like, what?
Speaker: I told you I was going to pay you.
Speaker: I told you I was going to give you $100.
Speaker: You're right.
Speaker: It's weird how I don't watch SNL, but I felt that
Speaker: that essence because I feel as though, even though I don't know Evan Peters myself, I'm kind of a fan of Evan Peters.
Speaker: I don't even think he's conventionally like- I like him as Quicksilver.
Speaker: That's like the only thing I know him from.
Speaker: I know him and I feel like the stuff that he's done, like he's good in it.
Speaker: And I feel like if he had to do SNL, this would be like mannerisms he would do for a person.
Speaker: Obviously, this show does not play this for laughs.
Speaker: And it's like, you know, they do a good job of having it be tense.
Speaker: But you could definitely take these same mannerisms, almost his entire performance, I think aside from the like the sex scenes and the anger scenes, but the rest of it, you could take that and just change everything around him and it would be a comedy.
Speaker: If other people were reacting to him differently and you change the music, it would be it would be the funniest fucking comedy you would ever.
Speaker: You just gave somebody the idea to re-edit those scenes if they can pull it on Netflix, if they're listening.
Speaker: So yeah, I just agree because I think I can, I don't know for a fact that I wasn't there when they recorded this or when they shot it, but
Speaker: some of the scenes where he was dancing and just doing like this weird stuff by himself, I'm like, this was improv, I know it because I feel like I've watched enough stuff off camera with him where he's doing an interview or just like, you know, in nature and then seeing him in movies where like, I think that is him.
Speaker: improv-ing because it seems like it's a him thing it's super interesting but yeah let's start to talk about this episode by episode episode one bad meat uh this is the the very first episode of the series and it is where he gets arrested the show opens with the what's his name tracy who manages to get away from dommer and gets the cops to come to him and the episode ends with dommer getting arrested that is that's like a really interesting way to open it
Speaker: Especially since this is historical in a certain way.
Speaker: It's an interesting move to open with him getting arrested so that there's no tension around when is he going to get arrested.
Speaker: It is an interesting way to open it up.
Speaker: I like it, but I think for some people... Let's just pretend the person that's watching it, for instance, isn't even into this, but they're watching it because their friend said it was something to watch because it was good.
Speaker: It's almost...
Speaker: The way that Ryan Murphy, which I'll just say it's his fault since he kind of wrote this, does the time jumping, it's almost,
Speaker: disorienting because you don't know where you are come episode three.
Speaker: But if you're aware that this is a story about the amalgamation of things that happened with Jeffrey Dahmer, then you shouldn't be like, well, I want to have this from start to end.
Speaker: Like this is like a one story.
Speaker: Like it's very circular and it jumps and it is nice that we see the end result.
Speaker: But then now we're going to dive into all the things that happened before.
Speaker: It was it was interesting because that's the first episode, which you would assume is the last thing that happened.
Speaker: But once we get to part two, which will be next week, then, you know, like, that's not the last thing, him getting arrested.
Speaker: So you're not really starting from the end.
Speaker: You're just starting from a specific point.
Speaker: Yeah, this is, you know, so before we had our podcast, just like a couple days ago, I was sort of lightly talking with my girlfriend Brianna about this as well since she had watched it.
Speaker: And this is a point that she had brought up that like she because of the the way that the episode opened this way.
Speaker: For her, it really cut out a lot of the dramatic tension because of the fact that, like, now we have seen him get arrested.
Speaker: That wasn't how I viewed the series.
Speaker: But, like, that's a very interesting point, I think.
Speaker: That, like, to do this of, okay, first episode is going to be Dahmer getting arrested and then all these other episodes are how we got to that point.
Speaker: It's definitely a big swing.
Speaker: It's not good.
Speaker: It's not bad, like, in and of itself.
Speaker: But it is definitely, like, um...
Speaker: it's almost like picking a genre but for your story structure yeah like it's it's sort of narrowing your audience intentionally in the same way as if you were making like a genre pick like in the same way that if you're saying like okay this is say a horror movie you know for certain that like there's a chunk of people that are just not going to see this or like this categorically regardless of anything else because like this kind of story this is like the same thing but
Speaker: based on like the structural bones of the story as opposed to the genre.
Speaker: I agree.
Speaker: And it definitely opens up like, like she said, it just kind of takes out the tension, but I think it,
Speaker: The way we open is we have Glenda, which is his neighbor, played by Nisi Nash.
Speaker: She's watching something on TV and you hear about this.
Speaker: Glenda knew what was up.
Speaker: She knew shit was suspicious.
Speaker: She did.
Speaker: So she was watching something that kind of like stuck out the second time around, which was a specific police officer who was undercover, had gotten beaten up by his fellow police officers.
Speaker: So it was a police brutality type issue.
Speaker: And so that also is a marker of Ryan Murphy again.
Speaker: commenting on the political climate of today where we're still dealing with police brutality.
Speaker: And this particular person wasn't some guy walking down the street with a hood on.
Speaker: It was another police officer who was undercover.
Speaker: And so she cuts off the TV after hearing about this black man getting beaten down by his, you know,
Speaker: coworkers and we hear the saw, the, I guess, knife saw, hand saw that Jeffrey's using.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: One of his power tools or whatever to cut up the victims.
Speaker: And so this already like,
Speaker: cues us as the audience members to like, okay, so are the people within this world super aware?
Speaker: But we kind of get the inkling back.
Speaker: Glenda is hyper keen.
Speaker: She's next door obviously, but she's always watching and listening speculatively.
Speaker: And that noise is something that you can't mistake.
Speaker: At that hour of the night, we're assuming that this is sometime at night, it's dark and she's next door, but she's hearing it through the air vents, right?
Speaker: Yeah, Glinda knew what the fuck was up.
Speaker: Glinda knows.
Speaker: I think Glinda Goodwitch from Witch of Oz, but Glinda knows, man.
Speaker: She's on.
Speaker: And the fact that Nisi... Let's get on to this.
Speaker: I don't want to harp on the first episode for so long, but Nisi freaking Nash, man, she deserves to win an Oscar for this performance because it's not that this is groundbreaking work, but maybe this is also leaning into what we talked about earlier with
Speaker: Evan Peters, maybe playing a character that's not super far from what his wheelhouse is, but Niecy Nash, she does a good job of just embodying the motherly, very down-to-earth, just easy to talk to, understandable person.
Speaker: And all of our thoughts as a viewer, she is the lightning pole for that.
Speaker: She's like, what's that noise?
Speaker: And she sees him in the hallway.
Speaker: Hey, what's going on over there?
Speaker: Or...
Speaker: As we'll get to it, what's the smell?
Speaker: Because that's going to come up several times throughout the series.
Speaker: Like people are noticing these smells and Niecy Nash, you know, not to be like too on the nose, but she's smelling what's going on and she's getting a bunch of bull crap from Jeffrey.
Speaker: He's like, oh, it's some bologna or some meat or something that I got from my family that I'm keeping in the freezer.
Speaker: And the freezer, you know, is broken.
Speaker: So now the meat's rotting.
Speaker: from the beginning, opening scene, Niecy's on it.
Speaker: I'm sorry, Glenda is on it.
Speaker: Niecy Nash, I had only known her from Reno 911.
Speaker: Have you seen anything else that she's been in?
Speaker: Are you someone who's pretty familiar with her?
Speaker: I really, and you put me on the spot, Carl, because I'm not the best at regaling information on the spot.
Speaker: That's fine.
Speaker: It's okay.
Speaker: I was going to say, she's actually in another...
Speaker: cop type series, like a law enforcement series that is coming out if it's not out by now.
Speaker: And I guess that's not too far from a Reno Nomin1 except for it's not so comedic.
Speaker: I noticed she was in maybe a handful of other movies as well.
Speaker: but she is a known actress.
Speaker: And I think her being a black actress, people know the name Niecy Nash.
Speaker: Even if you can't say anything else other than Reno 911, Niecy's well known and she's good.
Speaker: She's good at comedy as well, but she's a good actress.
Speaker: Yeah, she's fucking funny as hell.
Speaker: And I feel like she brought that in this too.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I mean, it's not meant to be comical, but I think the shock value of how odd some of this behavior is and her speaking out about it is comical because she's like,
Speaker: what in the hell, like what's going on?
Speaker: And you know, she's talking to the police and they're just telling her to be quiet and shush and they got it.
Speaker: But I feel like if you watch Reno 911, you can kind of feel some of that same character coming through without such comedy.
Speaker: like whacking up and she's definitely like i i agree with everything you were saying about her performance here like she's just she's very very real here very real i love that like it's just you know i feel like people say often there's three different types of roles for black women you get the uh slutty foxy brown sleep with you hooker you get the uh sassy black woman
Speaker: or you get the old, old, old, I'm just so old that I'm pretty much like the Oracle from the Matrix type black woman.
Speaker: So, but this one is like the earthy motherly one that you don't really get to see in a lot of movies.
Speaker: And I think I love it.
Speaker: A lot of movies that are not specifically like targeted toward black audiences anymore.
Speaker: So moving on here to a little bit later in this same episode, I have some thoughts about the dad here.
Speaker: So do we want to talk about the dad episode by episode or do we just want to go on a dad tangent?
Speaker: We can do it episode by episode because I think I want to build up to my feelings of the dad come episode three or four.
Speaker: But what are your thoughts about the dad right now in episode one, if you want to share?
Speaker: Right here, when he's... I mean, it was so striking when he's talking with the cops and he just... He gives, like, some kind of... I mean, it's not even a sob.
Speaker: It's just, like, a little breathe in.
Speaker: And then his instant response is like, oh, I'm sorry for getting emotional.
Speaker: Like, that is just...
Speaker: this is something that's going to come up again and again, like how these people are so caged in by their concepts of like what it means to be a man.
Speaker: It's like, yeah, it's both.
Speaker: It's tragic.
Speaker: And it's also an indictment.
Speaker: Like it's both of those.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: I can't even explain to you how I felt the fields.
Speaker: And I think I was able to detach myself from thinking, oh, this is something that happened in real life.
Speaker: And
Speaker: I don't want to watch this and get into this because it was so horrific in real life.
Speaker: I got into it for the characters.
Speaker: And like I said before, the father, Lionel Dahmer, which is played by Richard Jenkins.
Speaker: And some other guy for his young version, right?
Speaker: Yeah, it was another person for his younger version.
Speaker: That's correct.
Speaker: I didn't recognize who it was, but I could tell it wasn't like the same guy.
Speaker: Yeah, you're right.
Speaker: I didn't write his name down, unfortunately, because I was just so captivated by...
Speaker: Richard Jenkins' performance specifically.
Speaker: Oh yeah, he's so fucking good.
Speaker: He is so goddamn good.
Speaker: He's good.
Speaker: I really couldn't tell you what else he's in, but... The one thing that I know that he's been in is The Shape of Water.
Speaker: And then off the top of my head, that's the only thing that I recognize him from.
Speaker: You know what?
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: I looked up his filmography at one point, and so he's one of these dudes who has been around for a while and has been in like a thousand things.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Which is going to lead me to another character, but I don't want to say a word about it.
Speaker: That character was not introduced by name in this episode, I don't think.
Speaker: But anyway, so I was going back to that sob.
Speaker: That sob, I actually wrote in my notes, Lionel has an emotional...
Speaker: breakdown after sitting with this information.
Speaker: So because this is told out of sequence, we're hearing the phone call he gets when his son is being taken in to be charged for all the crimes now.
Speaker: And so you have the buildup of all the things that have happened from childhood to this point.
Speaker: And that really shallow breath in and then him trying to tell them, I'm sorry, I don't want to get emotional or whatever.
Speaker: That was...
Speaker: something that I kind of felt in my bones because I feel like I have people in my family like this to where they are old school men and they typically don't get emotional in public and they don't really show emotion or affection with each other in their family.
Speaker: But I think when they left him for episode one, I think it's either the detectives or the regular police or something like that, but they left him in the room.
Speaker: He breaks down and I was like,
Speaker: That is a broken man.
Speaker: That is a man who has tried his damnedest to make it work.
Speaker: He might not have had the best to work with, meaning like he wasn't the most evolved, fully formed man who showed all facets of what it is to be a man to his son, meaning he didn't connect to him emotionally as best he could, but he did try hard to connect with him.
Speaker: And he, I don't know what he thought in
Speaker: But to me as the viewer, I thought he was feeling I have failed.
Speaker: I have failed as a father and I've tried.
Speaker: And now the monster, hence the title, this monster is no longer able to be ignored.
Speaker: And I was like, damn, that was good.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That was good.
Speaker: It was.
Speaker: Perfect place to end.
Speaker: Let's talk about episode two.
Speaker: Perfect.
Speaker: Second episode.
Speaker: Please don't go.
Speaker: This episode primarily cuts between Dahmer as like a young child, and then we also...
Speaker: get some scenes of him as an adult again in, I guess this is probably like, let's say like maybe halfway through his killing spree or somewhere earlier.
Speaker: I don't know exactly where it is in the timeline, but one of his more famous kills.
Speaker: If you have heard anything about Jeffrey Dahmer, aside from like the most basic stuff, you may have heard the anecdote about how like at one point there was a
Speaker: a kid who got away from Dahmer and the cops returned that kid to Dahmer's custody.
Speaker: That is this episode.
Speaker: And that kid, I believe, was one of the two Filipino children or boys.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think they're both brothers, by the way.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: First off, the scene where Dahmer's parents are fighting when he's a small child, it just instantly, immediately reminded me of BoJack Horseman.
Speaker: I was like, this is BoJack's parents right here.
Speaker: I'm not familiar with BoJack Horseman.
Speaker: I've probably seen like maybe three episodes a super long time ago.
Speaker: Can you kind of elaborate?
Speaker: Well, so Bojack's parents also have a terrible failed marriage where like both people are at fault and they're both bitter and hate each other and like scream at each other like this.
Speaker: That's really, that's really all it was.
Speaker: For anyone who has seen Bojack Horseman, this immediately reminded me of those two.
Speaker: The situation isn't super analogous because the Bojack's parents' marriage is tragic like this one is, but also both people are worse.
Speaker: Like both of Dahmer's parents are better people than Bojack's parents are, but it's that same kind of vicious dynamic where like everyone's making it worse.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So it just instantly reminded me of that.
Speaker: So for those of you who have not seen Bojack Horseman, but have watched this series, Joyce Dahmer, Jeffrey Dahmer's mom, I am not sure if it was stated clearly and succinctly that she has bipolarism, but his mother's kind of, um,
Speaker: I don't know how to explain it, Carl.
Speaker: Would you say she's just kind of aloof?
Speaker: Because she's kind of the starting point for the arguments, it seems.
Speaker: The father, he's just not very present.
Speaker: But the mother tends to do things that incite these arguments and fights.
Speaker: Yeah, it's pretty clear.
Speaker: I don't know if they ever state exactly what it is.
Speaker: But yeah, she has some kind of mental disorder.
Speaker: And it's pretty clear that...
Speaker: Neither of these people live in a time or culture that has equipped them with the tools to, like, talk about this shit or, like, get help in any way.
Speaker: In some ways, it's very stereotypical earlier generation of parents where just, like, the husband is just, like, shutting the wife down.
Speaker: Like, there's a few times where Joyce, like, tries to talk about things and get some help and Lionel just shuts her right the fuck down.
Speaker: That is true.
Speaker: That happened when they went in for a doctor's appointment when she was pregnant with, I'm assuming, Jeffrey.
Speaker: And I believe Joyce was told by maybe in the woman's center she was working at that she had postpartum depression after the fact.
Speaker: But during this, it just seems as though Jeffrey's father treats his wife as though, you know, like the old 50s version of like the dad goes and works and
Speaker: comes home, wants his food, but the wife is always at home with the children.
Speaker: And she seems to have been more than just stir crazy.
Speaker: I think her grip on reality might've been a bit skewed, but I think his treatment towards her was very subservient.
Speaker: say the least yeah this is this is a situation where at any given second you could like depending on which scene we're looking at you could blame either one of them like seen in the doctor's office that's obviously lionel like just being that was lionel the the fucking worst
Speaker: But then there's like, there's a couple scenes where, where Joyce is also kind of the bad guy.
Speaker: Not that Lionel's like being great in those scenes either, but like where she's clearly kind of going off the handle or like really like, especially with scenes involving Joyce and, um, uh, and young Dahmer, Jeff, like leaving him alone and like, you know, yelling at her son, like obviously like later on Dahmer becomes a monster, but you know, you should still probably not treat children that way.
Speaker: That's probably not great.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It really seems to be one of these situations where just like, there's no winner.
Speaker: You can't say, like, these people are both just doing terrible.
Speaker: But also it's understandable why they're doing shitty things because, like, they come from a culture that perpetuates shitty things.
Speaker: And hides things and doesn't talk about things.
Speaker: And I think this was all very excellently crafted.
Speaker: And not to say that this is, like, the best miniseries in the world, but at least for the story we're being presented with,
Speaker: These were the ingredients to create the monster because you have someone who has mental illness and it's not being addressed.
Speaker: You have a father who is loving in the sense that he provides, but he is not providing the emotional things that is needed to sustain these relationships with his wife and his son.
Speaker: So you have two people who are probably better
Speaker: apart, but are toxic together and have created this little baby who is absorbing the situation and is also probably not right himself.
Speaker: And that baby is baby Dahmer.
Speaker: And this is perfect.
Speaker: This is like, we're watching the ingredients and we're seeing the cake bacon.
Speaker: the relationship between the Dahmer parents is just like a perfect microcosm encapsulation of like a total indictment of like the overall patriarchal heteronormative social structure in which we live like it's like this little thing right here just shows you exactly why this shit doesn't work and why like strict gender norms don't work and why stigmatization of mental illness just doesn't fucking work exactly exactly
Speaker: And funny enough, before we move on to the next point, at this junction, when the question of glorifying Jeffrey Dahmer, the real life person, comes into play, what are your feelings towards the character within this particular telling?
Speaker: Because at this point, seeing the father and the mother's relationship, seeing young Dahmer as a child and witnessing these arguments and these big, you know, not, well, it's not knock down, drag out fights, but like really just like bad fights verbally and slightly physical because I think she cut it with a knife.
Speaker: Are you sympathizing with Dahmer at all?
Speaker: Dahmer the child?
Speaker: Yeah, definitely.
Speaker: Dahmer the child, yeah.
Speaker: Pre-murdered.
Speaker: Well, so it's very clear that at this point, yeah, because we're talking about him.
Speaker: He's in, like, fucking, like, middle school or whatever, elementary school or something.
Speaker: Elementary school, yeah.
Speaker: It is very clear at this point that something is still wrong with him.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like, it's pretty clear that he is, there is still something wrong in the way that his head is put together.
Speaker: But his environment does not help.
Speaker: You had the perfect intro to this.
Speaker: Everything I'm about to say, let's just, let's just reiterate.
Speaker: We're talking about Dahmer, the character in this miniseries, not anything about Dahmer, the human being.
Speaker: I don't know, and I can't say anything.
Speaker: But in the context of this TV show that we're watching,
Speaker: it really seems like at that point in his life, there is like a theoretical other path.
Speaker: There's still definitely something wrong with him as a kid, but it's not in such a way that he is definitely destined to go on to murder and eat people.
Speaker: If he had been in an environment that was better for him, and particularly if he was in an environment where he felt like he could be open and like talk about things, like if his queerness wasn't stigmatized and his...
Speaker: They name it in a later episode, whatever the thing is where he has a sexual attraction to corpses and like dead bodies and body parts.
Speaker: I actually have that written down by the way too.
Speaker: I would probably have a tough time pronouncing it, but we'll get to that when we get to the episode.
Speaker: If that kind of shit... Because, like, that specifically, that's really the mental illness part.
Speaker: Like, really, everything else is kind of ancillary to the core of he has this weird attraction to body parts and corpses and blood.
Speaker: And, like, that is the thing that is fucked up in his head.
Speaker: So, if he was in an environment where, like, he could...
Speaker: You know, he could go to his parents and be like, hey, mom.
Speaker: Hey, dad.
Speaker: I've been having these urges that I don't think other kids are having.
Speaker: Can we talk about that?
Speaker: He maybe he he could have not been a cannibal.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, obviously, it's it's a different time.
Speaker: So the understanding of.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, I'm talking about a purely theoretical world in which he is... Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Just like, you know, this is a... Based on what we're seeing here in the show, I feel like this isn't... This is one of those nature-nurture, like, overlap kind of things.
Speaker: It is, you're right.
Speaker: Where it's like, nature plays its part where there's this initial seed of him being kind of fucked up, but that seed doesn't necessarily have to bloom...
Speaker: into the tree of an altar of human skulls and, you know, like, jerking off on corpses and shit.
Speaker: In that same vein, some of his, like, early interests aren't even necessarily... Some of these things are only weird in hindsight.
Speaker: Obviously, he's got the sexual thing going on, but, like, in a very broad sense, a kid being interested in, like, dead animals and taxidermy and stuff, that's something that I think is, like, kind of only... That's only a warning sign in hindsight.
Speaker: I might just be talking out of my ass here.
Speaker: I'm pretty sure there's plenty of kids that are interested in that kind of stuff and they just grow up to be doctors, right?
Speaker: Yeah, I think that that's what the series is kind of like presenting to us.
Speaker: It's not that any of these things by themselves would create this monster.
Speaker: It's just the neglect and the ignorance of said things coming together and then the at-home life.
Speaker: Because just the dead animals thing...
Speaker: that's not enough.
Speaker: And his father even said he had a tough time trying to connect with him because he didn't know what he liked.
Speaker: This was before the taxidermy.
Speaker: And I thought, well, that makes the way that he said it made me feel like children who are different or don't really take to sports and being talkative are now
Speaker: looked at or, you know, this is the early onset of what could be, you know, this type of behavior later.
Speaker: That's not true.
Speaker: I just feel like all these things by themselves, like it's just a pure indicator that you have to like talk and be open and connect.
Speaker: And even though the father, in my opinion, tried in his own way, it still wasn't good enough in the beginning.
Speaker: Dahmer has, like, if you were to, they go into his diagnosing at some point, I forget when, but they list off, they rattle off a whole list of, like, he has this, this, this, and, like, they list, like, five or six different conditions.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: And there are plenty of people in the world with any or all of those conditions who don't fucking eat people.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: So, like, there's definitely... It is no one thing, and none of these conditions in and of themselves, like, destined him to be psychotic and violent.
Speaker: It is... It is a product of... He is a product of his environment up to a certain point, and then, like, yeah, he becomes a shitty adult and makes a lot of shitty choices.
Speaker: you know, it's like, then again, the environment comes into effect because of all of this turning a blind eye to things because we live in an environment where it's beneficial to be a certain gender, to be a certain ethnic, you know, race.
Speaker: And anyway, we can just go on and on and on forever.
Speaker: But yeah, like it is definitely environmental.
Speaker: And then also people not looking in and leaning in to help because it was just something that was left undone.
Speaker: Like this malfunctioning thing was growing and no one wanted to like
Speaker: fix it in the early onset and not even i mean like i hesitate to say this because we are talking about dahmer here but part of me wants to say it's not even that there's something that needs to be fixed i mean purely just in the context of like we're talking about mental illnesses here it's not that like oh he needed some kind of surgery or like oh he did like there was the thing that needed to be corrected is like the set of behaviors
Speaker: That's what I would probably be alluding to.
Speaker: Like definitely not that mental illness would need to be fixed, but like, yes, the behaviors and the way he was viewing his relationship to things needed to be fixed because I think he might've wanted to like feel and see this viscera of things, but his connection to people was off.
Speaker: And I think that to me is where we see the disconnect.
Speaker: It's like the viscera is one thing, but the disconnection from the people is what really hurts it because now he's able to
Speaker: do things to kill the person to get to the thing that he wants, which is the body and the viscera and exploring his sexuality.
Speaker: Yeah, that really comes into play in some of these later episodes where it's really showing him as thinking about people as objects and like things to be controlled.
Speaker: I would say that really the one thing that young Dahmer does that is like a categorical, this is for sure a red flag regardless of circumstances, is killing the tadpoles.
Speaker: That's kind of fucked up.
Speaker: It was odd, but I think it was just done out of spite.
Speaker: And I think that to me again is where the disconnect for people, because the boys stole the tadpoles that he gave his teacher.
Speaker: When all other students gave the teacher an apple, I'm assuming on the first day of school, Jeffrey decided to get tadpoles because he had an interest in animals.
Speaker: And this is where I kind of got offended because I felt like as a kid, I had a huge interest in animals and I wasn't a really talkative kid necessarily.
Speaker: So it was kind of painting him to be a certain
Speaker: character already, but the killing of the tadpoles was almost like these things that I cherished, I gave to my teacher as a present.
Speaker: She tainted them by allowing someone else to have them.
Speaker: Therefore, no one's going to have them.
Speaker: I'm going to steal them back and kill them.
Speaker: Yeah, I meant red flag in terms of, like, this is a sign that a kid needs to go to a therapist.
Speaker: That is true.
Speaker: I 1,000% agree.
Speaker: Because if you had a kid who was in an otherwise healthy environment and was showing an interest in, like, dead animals and, like, taxidermy, I could be wrong.
Speaker: I don't think that in and of itself is, like, this is a trip to the therapist.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: but when when you are getting into the the territory of like killing and torturing small animals like that's a classic serial killer son like that's a oh we need to talk to you about some stuff young man yeah for sure especially when it was the result of not getting something and i think that's what i'm trying to drive through with that is um he killed them because he was angry at the other child and i think
Speaker: That disconnect, again, is just kind of one of those weird things where like, you don't, when you get upset and angry, you don't do this.
Speaker: And I think that's what we could have fixed the disconnect.
Speaker: So now I would like to move on to what will be a recurring segment as long as we are watching this show, which is Carl's serial killer advice.
Speaker: Oh my gosh.
Speaker: Because I just keep noticing Dahmer doing stupid things.
Speaker: Really, I should have brought this up in episode one.
Speaker: So maybe we'll put in a jingle or something here.
Speaker: If you are a serial killer, here's some things not to do.
Speaker: I know I'm being a little gloved about it, but seriously, like throughout this show, I kept, there were moments where I kept thinking about like my, my response was like, why are you doing that?
Speaker: That's dumb.
Speaker: It's just in terms of like achieving his goals.
Speaker: I can't wait to hear what you caught.
Speaker: Please tell me.
Speaker: Well, so actually, let's go back to the first episode here for a second.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Fucking cover up that vent.
Speaker: Come on.
Speaker: I'm assuming... So, no, I can't even say I'm assuming because when he took the last guy in there, I think the guy's name in the show is Tony, he said it was hot.
Speaker: So this brings up a point that I want to make.
Speaker: If you didn't want to cover the vents, that means that you wanted there to be airflow.
Speaker: But if your air is not on...
Speaker: then you're not using the airflow.
Speaker: Therefore, you should have covered the vents because the windows aren't open.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But here's the thing.
Speaker: This is probably one of those weird things where art's not imitating life, meaning we have to jump to the real world happening.
Speaker: The character Glenda was an amalgamation in this show.
Speaker: The real Glenda actually lived in the next building.
Speaker: She didn't live next door.
Speaker: So I'm wondering if they just put bars on the windows in this miniseries and acted like he couldn't open the windows just so it gives, you know, good rise to the reason why Glenda was bothered next door because of the vents.
Speaker: Because the whole vent thing didn't make sense.
Speaker: The obvious thing is to open the windows to me.
Speaker: So I didn't know any of what you just said.
Speaker: I have done almost no historical background research in most of these things.
Speaker: I assumed that he was noticed by a next-door neighbor.
Speaker: So when I keep coming back to this recurring segment of Carl's serial killer advice, I am not talking about any sort of, like, unbelievability or historical aspect.
Speaker: Really, it's...
Speaker: I understand.
Speaker: I mean, also, this is one of the things that's notable is like the real life Jeffrey Dahmer wasn't that great at like hiding his trail all the time.
Speaker: He got by because people didn't give a shit.
Speaker: So you can consider this really like to be more in that vein of like, look at all these fucking things that people could have noticed.
Speaker: But really, my emotional reaction to it was getting mad at Dahmer because he's being he's bad at what he does, you know, just in the same way that if you see a character doing something stupid on TV,
Speaker: even if they're a bad guy there's a part of you that's like well come on do it right i think that was also another part of the character like damard wasn't necessarily like the smartest apple in the bunch yep definitely not he's very clearly like average or just below or something yeah like a whatever type attitude like yeah you know whatever so i'm like okay so i guess he just lets the fumes come through the vents
Speaker: So, secondly, the reason I brought this up in this episode... Put the mannequin in the fucking closet!
Speaker: Why do you leave him in the bed?
Speaker: Of course Grandma's gonna go into the room and look!
Speaker: Why did you leave the mannequin in the bed with the covers on... It's so... obviously... sus!
Speaker: Put the dude in the fucking closet, you idiot!
Speaker: It's almost like you wanted to pretend like you're still in bed type mannequin.
Speaker: Like it wasn't, this mannequin felt a little huge, by the way.
Speaker: Like it wasn't a small mannequin.
Speaker: It was full size mannequin for a six foot man.
Speaker: And like you, I was like, I knew the moment she came up the stairs with the basket of clothing, grandma's going in the room.
Speaker: But because this show does this thing where it does cuts and it switches, we're assuming that she's going to see the mannequin, but it could have easily had been maybe Jeffrey in the bed and this now we've jumped forward in time or backward in time.
Speaker: But to the point, again, I would say this is another aloof moment where Jeffrey just, he's just not that kind of tactitious murderer.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's being a dumbass.
Speaker: He's being a bad serial killer.
Speaker: If you're going to do something wrong, do it right.
Speaker: Any other ones?
Speaker: Any other moments?
Speaker: Oh, I mean, we'll get to them.
Speaker: I have them scattered throughout my notes.
Speaker: But speaking of the cuts, I want to talk about that
Speaker: Because that happens right here, where Grandma pulls the blanket back, and then we cut to one of Dahmer's victims.
Speaker: Just like, that's a really well put together shot, because that visually draws an excellent parallel between mannequin, object, and dead black man.
Speaker: Dahmer views this as an object.
Speaker: Character perspective, sane category.
Speaker: That was just like a really, I like that shot.
Speaker: Like, I noticed it, and I was like, that's great and well put together.
Speaker: I appreciate that.
Speaker: It was probably jarring to people who weren't expecting it, obviously, and it's meant it's intentional.
Speaker: It's a juxtaposed cut scene because like you said, some things have,
Speaker: Semiotics is the word that we'd use.
Speaker: And so semiotics is the study of signs and symbols and other underlying meanings to things that you see visually.
Speaker: And so that is a good interpretation of a mannequin who is lifeless, but Jeffrey was enjoying the mannequin because it's lifeless and he was able to exert himself onto it and his sexual proclivities.
Speaker: Whereas the dead human being that he murdered, the black man, which was in the apartment
Speaker: that I'm assuming he had while he was with his grandmother, but that kind of goes and comes.
Speaker: I think he had a... Well, yeah, we can't worry.
Speaker: There's a lot of time skipping.
Speaker: We can't always worry about the timeline.
Speaker: We just know this is a scene that happened.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: That's all that matters.
Speaker: So it was pretty good.
Speaker: I think it was interesting.
Speaker: It was a really interesting cut.
Speaker: Yeah, I think this show really, at least so far, they've really seemed to be going out of their way to really emphasize not only, like, the systemic racism around this, like, you know, the cops ignoring the Black neighborhood, but also, like, Dahmer's own implicit racism.
Speaker: Like, they really highlight that multiple times.
Speaker: Oh, wait a minute.
Speaker: I didn't catch that.
Speaker: I think his grandmother had some.
Speaker: I don't remember the dad having it, but Dahmer, I think it was predatory and predicated on the fact that this would have gone over fine in areas, although...
Speaker: when the police were talking to him, he seemed as though he wasn't aware of this.
Speaker: So I'm not sure if he was playing stupid or he really didn't think about it, but just felt as though, hey, I'm, cause I think the attract, the whole, the gay thing, and then people being of a different race or ethnicity than him.
Speaker: I don't know if he ever really addressed it in the way we could understand like where he stood, but I didn't catch racism from Dahmer, honestly.
Speaker: Oh, I just it's to me, it seemed to be like pretty clear, like undercurrent subtext of like fetishization.
Speaker: Yeah, it's OK.
Speaker: I can agree with that.
Speaker: There was definitely.
Speaker: And like, you know, and like the thing we'll get there, the thing with the black cop when he's in the interrogation room and then Dahmer doesn't respond to that.
Speaker: That seemed to me to be like, on Dahmer's part, a discomfort with having to confront that idea.
Speaker: That's true.
Speaker: Dahmer is very... At the point that Dahmer gets arrested and is being interrogated by the police, he's very clearly come to terms with the fact he views himself as...
Speaker: I actually don't know if I can say that if he views himself as evil, but he definitely understands in, like, a societal context that, like, people don't like what I did and the, like, the equation of me doing these actions equals I should be executed.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I don't know about his own moral judgment.
Speaker: I think that's maybe a little more complex to say, but he definitely, at the very least, he has come to terms with the fact that like, yeah, I've done all of these terrible things and I know I'm not supposed to, but then the black cop basically kind of threw him a curve ball and is like, yeah, so in addition to all this other stuff, you're also a racist, right?
Speaker: And then Dahmer's kind of like not able to process that in the same way that the average white person is unable to directly face the
Speaker: their own implicit racism in any context.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I would probably say with that, Dahmer did declare or denounce his belief in God when he moved with his grandmother.
Speaker: So as far as moral standings, I think we're given nuggets of what he might be feeling and thinking along the way.
Speaker: And then, I forgot the other points you made, but I know for a fact that he had a mental breakdown and he basically said, I'm no longer going to try to not do this thing, which would be
Speaker: gathering people, giving them drugs, choking them to death, then cutting them up and eating them.
Speaker: I think by the time we see the scene of the guy that ran away and came back, he was in the frame of mind like, yeah, this is probably not seen as good in societal standing, but he had given up trying to hold it back because he told the two police officers that, you know, I went eight years without doing it.
Speaker: But after those eight years, I just said, hey, I'm not going to give in anymore.
Speaker: I'm going to just do what I want to do.
Speaker: And I think that's very telling.
Speaker: Very telling.
Speaker: During that scene with Conorak, I was surprised to see Dahmer be less suspicious then than when he was with Tracy.
Speaker: Not that he wasn't suspicious, but he was a little more personable and more easily able to interact and not give off quite as much of a creep vibe.
Speaker: I think, and because it's told out of sequence, I'm not sure
Speaker: which was coming first because we know that he was able to concoct to this particular zombie-fying drug after he had heard about it in the army, but he didn't really perfect the delivery until after he had went to the bathhouses and was able to learn how to slip it in the drink at this particular time.
Speaker: So I think what's going on is that he was- I'm talking specifically about this scene in contrast to the very first episode, Tracy, the guy that he gets arrested.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: Those two things in contrast.
Speaker: You're right, obviously this shit jumps around a whole lot, but that first episode, I know that's at the end, so this one definitely came before that.
Speaker: So, basically, I just wanted to put those two points on screen to be like, you would think he would get better over time.
Speaker: But he didn't.
Speaker: I think he got relaxed.
Speaker: I think that's maybe where I was heading once I finished explaining it.
Speaker: He had gotten too comfortable doing it because now at the very with Tracy, the last person, which was the very first person we seen, he was watching movies with the person, whereas
Speaker: In his beginnings of kind of getting the routine down, he was stumbling to kind of figure out like, well, what do I do?
Speaker: Because most of the time, these gentlemen wanted to hook up.
Speaker: So they're wanting to kiss and get unclothed, whereas that was a stopping point for Jeffrey.
Speaker: Jeffrey was very specific in being in control of the intimacy.
Speaker: And he was more so in the mindset of wanting to lay with the person and caress and slow down, whereas they're going fast.
Speaker: But now here comes the drugs.
Speaker: the drug gives him the ability to take away their autonomy and make them into a zombie.
Speaker: So it is interesting that he got clumsy and kind of like not
Speaker: thought out in the end, but I think because we're watching some of the end in the beginning, he just got really relaxed because now he's watching The Exorcist with his victims and he's putting on these contacts looking like Senator Palpatine from Star Wars.
Speaker: It just, it gets wonky a little bit and kind of like Creep House, Creep Show.
Speaker: And it makes you think, why does the person that's there not recognize this and run, but of course,
Speaker: At most times, he's drugged them already.
Speaker: I guess going back to Carl's serial killer advice, don't get relaxed.
Speaker: Don't get complacent.
Speaker: That shit gets you caught.
Speaker: And I guess that's really like the overall tone is that had Jeffrey Dahmer been of the mind of Charles Manson, he would have been wiping out states because it's like he had the perfect guys for the time.
Speaker: He's a white man.
Speaker: during like the 80s and stuff and just in black neighborhoods had he been more cognizant he would have never gotten caught but because he was just so like patrick from spongebob he's just like we're all looking like how is he not getting caught the cops will always believe a handsome young white boy yeah yeah yeah
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: So episode three, doing a Dahmer.
Speaker: So this episode primarily focuses on Dahmer in high school and also shows him killing his very first kill, a hitchhiker that he picks up.
Speaker: This episode, I think, was the first time that I started to feel the hand of dramatization.
Speaker: Because up until this point, it was kind of like, I didn't think about it in any way.
Speaker: I was just sort of watching and assuming, like, I'm assuming that all of these details are accurate or whatever.
Speaker: Like, I didn't know the thing about the neighbor, Niecy Nash, being an amalgamation of multiple people.
Speaker: So I was just assuming that whatever I was watching is, like, accurate or relatively so.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: But specifically, like, after Dahmer kills the hitchhiker, that, specifically, like, his big emotional reaction and, like, being kind of cut up about it, that I started to feel, like, hand of the director here.
Speaker: I was kind of like, I feel like you're just, you're trying to make him a little more sympathetic right here.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I know this is the first time that, even though it's out of order, at least watching it from episode one and up,
Speaker: It's the first time we see him actually initiate a experience with somebody of the opposite, of the same sex rather.
Speaker: And once he's rejected, just like with the gift giving of the tadpoles to the teacher, we see him act out in a certain way.
Speaker: But this time has finally come to fruition.
Speaker: We see him, I think this is basically his first kill, which is the hitchhiker.
Speaker: And this is after...
Speaker: they have a really interesting workout session that is homoerotic and this is one of the moments where i parallel the why doesn't anybody realize he's a murderer to why doesn't anybody see how gay this is like this whole workout session was like so souped up gym bro like late 70s early 80s the dude's bulge was basically like hanging right above his face he could have
Speaker: Like lifted his head up and like nosed and T-sacked himself with that little scrotum.
Speaker: The hitchhiker, he could have just like squatted down and then rested his dick on Dahmer's forehead.
Speaker: And it was purposely done.
Speaker: So you're right.
Speaker: I'm glad that, well, obviously you watch movies and you're extremely smart, but this is a heavy handed thing that a director would do to emphasize the points of people who don't normally see things like this right off the bat.
Speaker: And I would like to say that Ryan Murphy actually is a gay man with children and he's married.
Speaker: So I wouldn't put it past him that they really wanted to emphasize that this is a gay scene, guys, unlike him slightly being, I guess, noticed by his father or him alluding to it through actions, this is a legit gay scene and we're going to see Dahmer initiate.
Speaker: And oh boy, did he initiate because when he gets rejected,
Speaker: That's when the monster fell.
Speaker: Because what we've seen in the show, he just kind of beat him over the head, caressed him, which is kind of revealing to us that he's really in love with the male body form and not with the person necessarily.
Speaker: Yeah, in love with attraction to the male body as an object.
Speaker: As an object.
Speaker: Like he objectifies it for sure.
Speaker: So he's remorseful in a very subtle way.
Speaker: initially when he sees the person is no longer alive, but then the compulsion for just molesting their body or their corpse sets in and he just goes for it.
Speaker: And I guess with this one, he must've, I guess, chopped him up.
Speaker: And like he's telling these detectives or police officers, he tried to break up the bones, but because bones are slightly hollow inside, we're not like birds, but we have bone marrow and things and it's squishy.
Speaker: So he had to burn the bones to make them hard and break them up.
Speaker: So this is when we really see him get not just gruesome, but lay the groundwork for
Speaker: His regimen.
Speaker: Like his process is what we're saying here, basically.
Speaker: And then one last thing for this episode before we move on.
Speaker: When the cop pulls over Dahmer, I'm sure we're going to talk a lot about this scene, but just I want to highlight this specific piece of phraseology first.
Speaker: When the cop says, you got your whole life ahead of you, and I don't want to fuck it up by arresting you tonight.
Speaker: In my notes, what I did is I put those words in quotation marks, and then right after that, I put in all caps, white privilege,
Speaker: I did the same exact thing.
Speaker: I'll read the bullet point after you've done.
Speaker: Also, all caps, getting arrested shouldn't ruin someone's life.
Speaker: Like, the fact that that is a thing that we have all just sort of accepted as a society, that like, oh yeah, that's a thing that can happen.
Speaker: You can get arrested and it fucks up your life forever.
Speaker: Nobody should be in that situation.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: When I scream at my screen white privilege in this scene, that's not because I want everybody to get arrested and have their lives fucked up.
Speaker: Nobody should.
Speaker: I don't have to tell you this, Jonathan.
Speaker: You do not.
Speaker: As a black man, you know this.
Speaker: But it's so frustrating.
Speaker: And that line was in the series, too.
Speaker: He was like, well, you know.
Speaker: He's like, I've never been arrested, sir.
Speaker: He's like, well, you know.
Speaker: But anyway, I will circle back to say I did the same thing.
Speaker: I'll read my, because my note almost, it's not verbatim, but if you did like a word salad of what we wrote down for this, it's pretty much the same.
Speaker: Jeffrey Dahmers pulled over by the police.
Speaker: After noticing he had been drinking, they asked about the garbage bags in the back of the car.
Speaker: They stopped him because he was swerving.
Speaker: When they asked him had he been drinking, he said, yes.
Speaker: They were being arrested.
Speaker: Then the cop kind of plays like, I'm going to be the tough-ass guy, like a father figure, and it's like, I don't want to ruin the rest of your life.
Speaker: Yeah, it's a tough love.
Speaker: And I'm like, dude, what are we talking about?
Speaker: So I think where I'm going with this is that Ryan Murphy...
Speaker: And some of the other writers did a great job of kind of showing us this is privilege at its finest.
Speaker: Like this is pretty much not every single arrest that happens in America that's somebody of color.
Speaker: But for the vast majority, these types of things do go on where the police officer makes a judgment of their own to decide, will I arrest this person or not?
Speaker: And even if the arrest wasn't even in question yet, the conversation was just so like, hey, so what's going on?
Speaker: There was no escalation or accusation or accusal of anything.
Speaker: The police, you know, they had their hands at their waist, of course, but it was almost like they were just shooting the crap.
Speaker: If Dahmer had been black, the first words out of that cop's mouth would have been, get out of the car.
Speaker: Get out of the car.
Speaker: And they would have went through that bag, those garbage bags in the back.
Speaker: They would have put them in handcuffs before they asked any questions.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: So I think for the people who feel as though this is a glorification of Dahmer,
Speaker: I really have to say like, it probably doesn't do the most spectacular job, but it really shows you like,
Speaker: Things that are happening now, it lets you know, like, they're trying to bring it to the light, basically.
Speaker: Like, this is a way to create conversation in a good way.
Speaker: So moving on to the next episode.
Speaker: Episode four, The Good Boy Box.
Speaker: I'm not even going to try and really summarize this episode, because this episode kind of jumps around a whole lot and shows us a whole lot.
Speaker: But it's, broadly speaking, this is like a bunch of Dahmer's early life plus him figuring out shit about the gay bathhouse scene.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: but it's this episode kind of, we see a lot in this episode.
Speaker: So we're just going to really jump around the scene where Dahmer tries to like talk to his dad and his step-mom about sex stuff at the diner.
Speaker: That just, Oh, that just fucking broke my heart.
Speaker: He is really fucking trying there to broach the topic.
Speaker: And then his dad just starts laughing and changes the subject and goes, Ohio state, we'll send you to Ohio state.
Speaker: It was so on par for the course because his,
Speaker: father.
Speaker: he wanted to bury that quick.
Speaker: And the mom, Molly Ringwald, like I said, in any scene, she, for me, is like my focal point because the emotion that we don't get from either of them is on her face.
Speaker: And the shock of her eyes of when that subject was changed, I was like, yeah, that was like a full stop and turn around.
Speaker: And we're looking like, what the heck just happened?
Speaker: But also she's an enabler.
Speaker: She just goes right along with what the dad's saying.
Speaker: She does.
Speaker: So even though she has some of the facial reactions that I'm looking for, she's not very different than what we got from Joyce, which is Jeffrey's actual mother.
Speaker: She is very subservient to Jeffrey Dahmer's dad, but...
Speaker: What we were saying about everyone's... Everyone here is, like, such a product of their environment.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Despite the terrible lens through which she talks about things, I do appreciate how much the grandma gives a shit.
Speaker: Like, I appreciate how much that she cares.
Speaker: It is sad that she talks about these things through, again, such a Christian heteronormative lens.
Speaker: You're being tempted by the devil.
Speaker: You need to come to church, meet a nice girl.
Speaker: When no one else... You know, the dad certainly tries, but I... Not to say that the dad doesn't care...
Speaker: He never shows care.
Speaker: His care is all internal.
Speaker: He's avoidant.
Speaker: So the father does care and he doesn't show it, but he's avoidant, which is why he dumped Jeffrey into the grandma's house.
Speaker: And you're right.
Speaker: I thought that the MVP, as far as like the people in Jeffrey's life was the dad, but it's grandma.
Speaker: Like I actually have my notes like grandma's funny.
Speaker: I like grandma.
Speaker: And I think something about being old, I don't fault her for the whole like lens of heavy Christianity and kind of just subverting things.
Speaker: I fault her a little bit.
Speaker: I think that's where we differ.
Speaker: I fault her a little bit.
Speaker: Because I feel like it was almost comical because at one point she's asking if Jeffrey wants to go to church with her.
Speaker: And he's like, nope.
Speaker: And I think all the things that they go through in her house, the one thing that she just really didn't like is that he refuted God saying he didn't believe in God and using the Lord's name in vain.
Speaker: Like he cursed her out.
Speaker: But the one thing she wouldn't stand is that he uses the Lord's name in vain.
Speaker: Like, well, that, that, that's hilarious to me.
Speaker: Like, I can't fault this woman now.
Speaker: Like,
Speaker: Her little like old people ways is just funny to me.
Speaker: I do.
Speaker: I really appreciate that she really gave a shit.
Speaker: Grandma definitely tried her best.
Speaker: She gave him chance after chance.
Speaker: Like I thought the dad did, but like I said, the grandma looking at the second time, like I think she did.
Speaker: Like there were things that he did that she took him back.
Speaker: In, in that, in grandma's house, when Gomer has the, when he's arguing with grandma, the fact, and you know, the whole, she threw out his mannequin thing.
Speaker: The fact that it comes out for him as anger, that he has this blow up again, just like perfect encapsulation of, of like showing the,
Speaker: an aspect of toxic masculinity because every time jeffrey gets frustrated his frustration it always comes out as anger and that's such that is such a toxic dude thing like he can't express his frustration in any other way he doesn't he never cries about these things he always yells about these things
Speaker: And I thought it was interesting that he did it towards the grandmother.
Speaker: So other than his victims, I don't think he would release that frustration at that level with men.
Speaker: No, definitely not.
Speaker: You are right.
Speaker: That's that he would not talk to his father that way.
Speaker: That's definitely talking to grandma that way.
Speaker: Which is interesting.
Speaker: Like his father, I mean, and even the father, when he was mad, he didn't even release the anger in that way.
Speaker: It felt like
Speaker: He just had like these Ned Flanders.
Speaker: The father did, but he only did it to his wife.
Speaker: That's true.
Speaker: You're right.
Speaker: The dad expressed anger that way to Joyce.
Speaker: He really fucking yelled it at Joyce.
Speaker: He didn't yell at Jeffrey that way.
Speaker: I guess the further we go back with that, it feels like that's because Joyce would have this reaction towards him.
Speaker: So it looks like we're seeing...
Speaker: where the apple fell from.
Speaker: Once they reached this boiling point, they both let it off and let it out.
Speaker: And I just hate the fact that the grandmother was in on that because like we were saying over and over again, grandma didn't deserve it because all she wanted him to do was have a job and eat her little swans and dinners with him at night and watch TV.
Speaker: Also in the bathhouse scenes, let me just say, fucking good guy Ricky, good on the owner of the bathhouse there.
Speaker: Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Speaker: So I have in my notes, when Ricky put him out, he did this finger point.
Speaker: It was so funny.
Speaker: I was like, what?
Speaker: What even is this?
Speaker: Like, he basically got to the point where he throws him out, rips up his car.
Speaker: He's going to call the cops.
Speaker: And he's like, yeah, get out of here.
Speaker: And he's like.
Speaker: But also, like, he, I mean, damn near almost anyone else in this series, he responds real quick.
Speaker: He did.
Speaker: And I think it was adequate and so.
Speaker: Like, from what they were saying, it sounded like after the second incident, he's like, no, no, fuck this shit.
Speaker: So, you know, just like, good on Ricky for fostering a safe community environment.
Speaker: I think given that that environment specifically is for those acts, I think, and I don't know how many times he, that's where I kind of got lost because it felt like the way the show was, you know, revealing this to us, he really got down pat the drugging.
Speaker: at first.
Speaker: And so I didn't know if it was like several people he had brought back or like he said, if it was two.
Speaker: But Ricky, once it was like too many times he found somebody, Ricky called the cops and Ricky was on it.
Speaker: And I don't know why, but it was just such a I think it was a relief in a way.
Speaker: Like there's certain moments in
Speaker: This type of storytelling where you have to have the suspense and the tense scenes and the who did it, look around for the clues and like figure this out with us.
Speaker: But then there's moments where you want some resolve.
Speaker: You have to give us something as the viewer.
Speaker: And I got that little bit of gratification from he was going to attempt to keep doing it.
Speaker: But Ricky stopped him and not only stop him.
Speaker: Ricky met this at the head with all of the emotion and anger that you should in that moment.
Speaker: He didn't kill anybody to my knowledge at the bathhouse, but Ricky met him with the basic premise of you want to be here in this space where we all get to come and be ourselves.
Speaker: And you've disrespected this place where in this time,
Speaker: we can be ourselves and your membership here is revoked.
Speaker: Get out.
Speaker: Loved it.
Speaker: Do you have any other specific thoughts on like any individual parts of these five episodes that we haven't hit or shall we move into, roll into closing thoughts?
Speaker: We can roll into closing thoughts because the only other thing I wanted to talk about that kind of started in episode three and maybe four was
Speaker: was the soundtrack because of course, being a film and TV person, I like all of the layers.
Speaker: And I thought some of the song choices, one song in the secular was called Catch Me, I'm Falling.
Speaker: And I felt like take off the falling part.
Speaker: And it was like, catch me.
Speaker: And this was the scene where he had killed the guy at the hotel.
Speaker: He had gotten so free with his method and so relaxed.
Speaker: He's like, I'm basically daring people to catch me at this point.
Speaker: So I thought that it's not a score, it's more of a soundtrack.
Speaker: I thought that the soundtrack was married very well with each scene or each mood or moment.
Speaker: And I thought that's cool, but we'll talk about that more in the second half.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: So we're not going to do it this particular episode because we haven't completed the season yet.
Speaker: But as a general note, every time we finish watching something, we're going to put it on a big old list and we're going to rank fucking everything that we have ever watched and compare all of it and say, which is better?
Speaker: definitively what is better Dahmer season one Casablanca or Ghostbusters oh boy put it all on the same list but so just quickly here impressions so far different for me since I've only seen these ones as opposed to having seen the whole thing yet I am liking it so far but at this point in my watching of it I am noticing it start to drag and my attention to kind of wane a little bit like the first three episodes
Speaker: I was totally engrossed.
Speaker: I was like, this is, I still am liking it, but for those first three, I was like, oh man, this is great and like riveting.
Speaker: I think we, we both agree here, especially the parents.
Speaker: Like basically anytime the parents are on screen, either interacting with each other or with Dahmer, mom, dad, and stepmom, all three of them are just treats to watch anytime they're on screen doing basically anything.
Speaker: Love all that, all that, like the most.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: I don't know exactly where in episodes four and five I would make any specific cuts, but I feel like there's some fat here.
Speaker: I couldn't point to anything in particular, but I kind of feel like, I don't know, I just had a sense of, is there some way to trim this down a little bit?
Speaker: I think the fat's gonna be due in part because this was, and I kind of feel like it was last minute, but it's supposed to be touted as from the perspective of the victims.
Speaker: So I feel like it's dragging because they can only do so many things where we kind of prep the viewer for like, this is him learning, this is why this happened, this is the relationship here.
Speaker: So we're getting to the point of like, at this juncture, when we get to part two,
Speaker: now we're actually going to go down the paths of said victims.
Speaker: And we're gonna like do what's called a handoff and we're gonna go through their lives.
Speaker: And I think for what Ryan Murphy and his writing room crew did, maybe this worked for it.
Speaker: But I think that's probably why it might've dragged in certain parts,
Speaker: It's almost like in the writing and the making of this, they thought, you know what?
Speaker: Let's make this where we're upholding the victims.
Speaker: Whereas it kind of did feel like this is a Jeffrey Dahmer story because honestly, if I were to give my honest opinion and this was my first time watching and only watched from one to five episodes, I don't feel like this was not a glorification of a Jeffrey Dahmer or maybe glorification is a bad word.
Speaker: I don't feel like that the victims were in mind.
Speaker: It's definitely, it seems really clear that this is, like, if you hadn't told me what you just told me about, like, oh, we're trying to show the victim's perspective, I would never assume that, because this whole series so far is definitely, like, this is not the story of the Dahmer killings.
Speaker: This is the story of Jeffrey Dahmer.
Speaker: Jeffrey Dahmer.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You can do either one.
Speaker: Either of those is a good, based on a real story slash documentary or docudrama series.
Speaker: You could do this whole story and have it entirely focused on the police investigation.
Speaker: Yeah, you could.
Speaker: From the victims.
Speaker: There's a lot of different angles, but this is very clearly focusing in on Jeffrey Dahmer, the human being, as opposed to being primarily focused on the events.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: i think that's probably why because i i feel like it was shoehorned i think i wanted to at least say that outright i feel like it was shoehorned in with the whole perspective of the uh victims because ironically there is another netflix i think it's a netflix show called conversations with the killer the john wayne gracie tapes where there are a bunch of it's a collection of tapes that they're talking to jeffrey dahmer about the killings i don't know
Speaker: how or why somebody would try to like make this into like this is for the victims but well i'm liking it so far i'm eager to watch more and uh we will reconvene here next week talking about episodes six through ten and i know it's going to be very suspenseful but we're going to put damer on the list yeah well he's going on the list right now it's the only item on the list so you know i'm sure that's going to have a lot of suspense for everybody
Speaker: know right i can't wait till the next episode so we can see what the second thing is to see if damer gets dethroned i'm certainly just based on on my inkling here i have a feeling that i'm probably going to have more complaints about fat that needs to be trimmed because just like as much as i'm enjoying this i've if if this pattern holds then i'm guessing that this could have been less than 10 episodes
Speaker: I will not spoil it for you, but I will say I enjoyed, like I said, I guess I kind of did spoil it already.
Speaker: There's a handoff that's going to happen.
Speaker: It's almost like you start out with four people and then they split up and then we follow one person and then the next.
Speaker: So this handoff, I mean, if you feel as though the fat needs to be trimmed, it would be trimming a victim's story.
Speaker: And one of the victims, which actually is one of the people that we leave off with, the deaf guy.
Speaker: I liked his story a lot.
Speaker: I did.
Speaker: I really do.
Speaker: So we'll see how you like it.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Well, thank you everybody for joining us.
Speaker: This has been episodes one through five of Dahmer.
Speaker: What's this called?
Speaker: Monster.
Speaker: Thank you very much for talking with me.
Speaker: And we will talk to all of you next week.
Speaker: You guys have a good one.
Speaker: It's been a pleasure.
