If you haven’t been under a rock for the past couple of weeks, you have probably heard of “Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness.” If you haven’t, it is a doc-series on Netflix exploring the world of big cat conservationists and private zoos. It also falls under the true crime genre as it follows Joe Exotic and Carole Baskin’s dispute, which is framed to be an “obsession gone wrong.” The more you watch, the crazier it gets, which is what I believe glued us all to our screens to watch this madness. On Rotten Tomatoes, it has an average critic score of 92%, which is insanely good for a docu-series.
One of my friends began talking to me about it before I had seen it and it sounded completely insane, so I decided to watch it. It’s truly something that you have to see to believe. I watched the entire seven-episode limited series in a day with my siblings, and we all were in shock at the number of twists and turns. We were all glued to it, and we even got my parents to watch it because we couldn’t stop talking about it. Now, especially on the internet, we reference it daily and constantly joke about it.
I would probably argue it’s one of the most watchable shows of this year because of how addicting it is. I can only compare it to watching a train wreck. It has caused the masses to react to it by jumping to conclusions and stating that Joe Exotic is completely innocent and framed, despite not being presented with all of the case facts. The Netflix series definitely frames Joe as being obsessed with Carole, but it also makes it seemed like Joe was framed for the murder-for-hire plot. Moreover, thousands of people totally gloss over the fact that he did kill and illegally sell many tigers.
However, I’m not saying that Carole is a saint. I don’t think anyone believes that because the internet is pretty much against her and thinks she murdered her husband. In fact, there was not a single protagonist in this entire show. Each person had their own faults, even the supporting characters such as Doc Antle and Joe’s husbands.
I feel like this series being released has distracted us from all the bad in the world right now, which is ultimately a good thing. I know that personally, I have been very upset with what has been going on, and this show provided me a good distraction outlet through all the memes that have been produced because of it. Although it has been released, there has been talk of adding a new episode on Netflix, along with the ID Channel covering the story of Carole Baskin’s missing husband in a Tiger King sequel. Joe Exotic has also filed a lawsuit over his prosecution, which tells me that we are going to be talking about this for a while.