Netflix released the third season of its “Monster” series, this time focusing on the infamous killer Ed Gein, on Oct. 3. The season consists of ten episodes, with each episode being about 45 minutes to one hour long. Overall, this season had potential in the way that it explores all sides of a crime, but it’s dragged down by the oversexualization and insanely false narratives added on.
The first two seasons of “Monster” followed the cases of Jeffrey Dahmer and then the Menendez brothers, respectively. Both of these seasons were heavily criticized due to the dramatization of the real events they claimed to tell the story of.
This season was a much harder watch than the previous seasons due to the disturbing and unsettling content. Content like this was expected, but a lot of the scenes and subplots were not needed and just made the story confusing.
One of the more controversial parts of the series is how it often shows the criminals in a sympathetic light. This theme continues in “The Ed Gein Story” by showing that Gein was a product of his home environment, heavily focusing on the aspects of his mother, Augusta.
Despite the criticism, I think it’s important to show these aspects of crimes because they’re not often talked about in true crime media. Exploring the factors of why crimes happen can give a fuller understanding of the crime itself, but in this specific series, it wasn’t done right.
The earlier episodes were the best at explaining this kind of narrative, but the more I watched, the worse it got.
It’s important to note that this show was not in any way a documentary. Many false narratives were displayed and fictional elements were added to the story to make it more dramatic. Many of the elements added were extremely unnecessary, causing the series to pull away from actually telling Gein’s story.
One of the most unnecessary and false elements was heavily relying on sexual content when it wasn’t needed.
A lot of sexual scenes felt like they did not belong and they were simply there just to force a sexual aspect into the storyline for dramatic effect. It felt disrespectful to the real victims, especially after finding out Ryan Murphy, the creator of the “Monster” series, did not inform the families of the victims.
With this season, a second storyline was added to show the various movies impacted by Gein’s story, including “Psycho” and “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” This was an interesting viewpoint and I did like that it was added, but I wish it had been added differently. It was added too early into the season and was focused on too much. If they had made the switches between the main story and the movie story clearer and shorter, it would’ve had a much better effect. I think even making it a completely separate episode in the middle of the season would’ve worked out better than what it was.
The way the story switched from the main plot to flashbacks, then to the movie storyline, was confusing and made the story hard to follow. I found myself having to rewind the episode, trying to grasp what was happening.
Adding onto the movie plotline, once again, there are parts of the story that didn’t make sense as to why they were added in. While showing how the movie “Psycho” was made, the focus was heavily on Anthony Perkins, the actor who played Norman Bates. A comparison to Perkins’ sexuality was made to Gein’s crimes, which felt odd to add in. Using a real person’s struggles in this way felt intrusive and wrong to watch, because it didn’t tie into the story of Ed Gein.
I think if the story had been mainly focused on Gein’s life and the roots of his actions, like the creators claimed the purpose was, it could have been a strong series.
