The Prestige TV Podcast - 'Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story' Series Recap

Episode Date: September 29, 2022

Bill and Joanna get together to discuss Netflix's limited-run series 'Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story,’ and they begin by talking about the decision to go all in on the blood and gore at the very beginning, and if Jeffrey Dahmer was as compelling in real life as Evan Peters’s sensitive depiction. They then dive into how the real-life events from the series were covered in the '90s, the amazing acting performances by Peters and Niecy Nash, and some of their favorite scenes.(6:28) Finally, they examine what we can learn from movies about serial killers, why they continue to be so popular, and compare ‘Monster’ to Ryan Murphy’s other projects.(22:40) Hosts: Bill Simmons and Joanna Robinson Associate Producer: Chris Sutton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Yossi Salick, and I'm the host of Bansplain, a show where we explain cult bands and iconic artists by going deep into their histories and discographies. We're back with a brand new season at our brand new home, the Ringer Podcast Network, tackling a whole new batch of artists, from Grunge Gods to Power Pop pioneers to new metal legends and many, many more. Listen to new episodes every Thursday, only on Spotify. It's a prestige TV podcast. My name is Bill Simmons. I'm here with Joanna. Robinson. We haven't done a podcast together in a while. You've been in, what's that show, Dragon House? What's it called? The HBO show? Dragon, Dragon Place. Yeah. Then there's a, then the ring power thing happened on Amazon. Whatever. You're in that whole universe. But now we're back because Jeffrey Dahmer has united us. Netflix drops out of nowhere,

like literally out of nowhere, a Ryan Murphy docu-series, not dockey. I guess it's a fictional, non-fictional, whatever that universe is about Dahmer. I plowed through it on Saturday. I did not intend to. I was home. My wife and my daughter were in Arizona. My son was out. I needed something to watch as I'm doing MBA homework for the upcoming season.

I'm like, all right, I'll put on Dahmer. And then eight episodes later, I was still going. You split it up a little bit more, right? Was this a binge for you, or did you ease into it? No, I watched a few. So did you do all 10 and 1? or eight on Saturday and then two on Sunday? How did you?

I'm ashamed to admit, I watched eight on Saturday, and I woke up Sunday morning before football and watched the other two, even though it was my birthday. I celebrated my birthday with the cannibal, Jeffrey Dahmer. Happy birthday. Thank you. A Libra? That's great.

Yeah, I'm a Libra. I am also Libra. Yeah, it's, I broke it up like three to four episode chunks. And I think the first one I think is the toughest one to get through. I think if people are like sit down. and watch the first one, and they wonder, is the whole thing like this? And it's like, yes, but also no, if that makes any sense. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah, this is good. Let's do, let's do first half of this. We'll do non-spoilers. And then second half will dispose. I mean, we're spoiling something that actually happened. History. Yeah, yeah. Let's go a little big picture, a little vague.

So I think the way you did it was the right way to do it. But keep going. Yeah, just episode one comes in kind of hard. You know, like, it's a Ryan Murphy show. And Ryan Murphy doesn't shy away from. gory details. He's been preoccupied with serial killers for a while on his American Horror Story stuff that he did for FX. This is, though, much more, even more, I think, creepy and unhinged just because the Netflix rating system is different, so he can go even goryer. And episode one,

just make sure that you're on board for the amount of goar that you're going to have to, you know, go through for the whole episode. Are you at all squeamish about Gore, or were you just like give it to me give it like I'm on board I'm ready I'm a lifelong hard person I just realized anyone who's listening to this is probably seen it so we could talk about it okay he goes all in episode one yeah and what was weird about it was you think is this the whole show are we gonna this is gonna be this super graphic gory like this is just going to be murder by murder with domer right and then all start we're going backwards and what'd you think of that choice so you like that choice how to do the first episode, how they did it?

I think it was a good way to sort of weed out anyone who might be squeamish about the gorge. Just sort of like, listen, if you can't hang with this, you're not going to be able to hang with a show. So you can exit now. We're not going to surprise you with this later. We're to let you know right away what we're about. The structure of it reminded me a lot of American Crime Story Versace, another Ryan Murphy show about Andrew Cananan. And, like, I think that did a similar thing where you start now and then you go back. and you go through.

This one is a little even less straightforward in the timeline. You know, I felt like we were hopping back and forth a bunch, and there are Kairns to let you know what you're in, but it was like a little disoriented sometimes. But I thought there was a really interesting way to structure it. And I like the way that it spreads out beyond Jeff, who like Evan Peters is amazing, but Jeff is a tough hang, right? So to give us Niecy Nash's character, Glenda, the neighbor and these other characters to sort of latch on to and spend time with, I thought was a really smart way to put it all together.

Yeah, so I've always enjoyed the serial killer genre. And Dahmer, I thought, was one of the worst hangs of all the serial color. Like the idea of a 10 episode, by all counts, horrible hang, horrible neighbor, really inconsiderate. obviously a terrible murderer and a cannibal. Like there's nothing fun about his crimes. It's just like as dark as human behavior can go. And it's like, I don't want to be in this world. I don't want to be with him.

I was pretty transfixed in that first episode. I think it was the Wisconsin accent. I think it was the actor. But they made something compelling about Dahmer. And I'd be interested to know if he was actually compelling in real life like that earth this was the Hollywooded up version. I mean, I think it's definitely, you know, like Evan Peters is definitely, you know, he's a movie star, he's a TV star at least, you know, and I mean a war winner TV star.

Like, he's a good looking kid. And not that like Jeffrey Dahmer wasn't, but, um, and I think like having done some light, I'm not a Jeffrey Dahmer expert by any stretch, but when I watch a show like this, I'm also constantly on Wikipedia being like, wait, what's real, what's not real, what happened? And, you know, there's all these cases where Jeffrey Dahmer lured people to his shithole apartment. And I feel like you have to have some kind of charm and allure to you in order to be able to make that happen. So I think there has to be something to that sort of creepy but compelling charisma that he has

and this like sort of nice boy attitude that he can adopt before things get really, really scary and creepy, you know? Yeah. You know, when that story came and went in the 90s and it just seemed like the media didn't cover it until the cannibal piece came in. That was when it got really sensationalized. And they have it in one of the later episodes, a cover of people, all that stuff.

But in the 90s, it was this, you know, somebody who was killing all of these different gay minority victims. And it just wasn't covered the same way. I feel like it would be covered now, where if he was, like Ted Bundy went into a sorority house and killed college girls. and that was like, oh my God, like this is, and that was covered like this huge, huge thing. This was a little underground.

It was also the era, right? This is right when magic got HIV. And it was just the way there were certain things, the mainstream media just kind of, they would tap, but they wouldn't go into. And I think that was one of the reasons I felt like Ryan Murphy wanted to make this, because you watch this and you're like, why didn't more people care? Why didn't the cops care? Why didn't they listen to the neighbor? how do people not realize that this was like a legitimate serial killer

praying on a specific type of person? Why weren't they getting the message out in the gay bars and the clubs that watch out for this? All of it you're just watching going, what the hell was everybody doing back then? And like that's a similar story as in Versace because like all the victims were gay. And so then it's like the police don't care enough to connect them and figure out that this guy's going on a crime like killing spree. It wasn't until he killed someone super famous, that they were like, oh, let's put it all together. I think that's the best thing this show does is because I don't really feel like I understand the mind of Jeffrey Dahmer on the other side of this.

And I don't know that the show is really trying to get me to understand the mind of Jeffrey Dahmer. But it is trying to expose the police force and the general attitudes of the era that enabled this blonde, reasonably good-looking white boy to get away with, like, what he got away with. And I think that the first episode starts with, you know, when the police come to his door, Jeffrey Dahmer's like, oh, we're just in here doing gay stuff. You know how gay people, you know, and he's like actively trying to get the cops away by just being like, you know, gay stuff. You don't want to look into that, right? You just want to go home, you know. Right.

Leave us alone. We're over here. Yeah, you don't want to see this. Yeah. So that that's his like protective shell of like, I know you're disgusted by what gay people do behind doors. So that's what I'm going on here to keep you out of fear. And I thought that was really an interesting, damning aspect of all of this. And also like the whole Nisi Nash's character, Glenda, this neighbor,

the idea of like black women and who won't listen to black women. And she's like, literally I can smell it and I can hear it or I can see that that's a child. My favorite interaction was when the cops, when she said that there was an altercation going on next door and one of the cops suggested that you go look, can you go check and see what's going on? And she's like, no. Yeah, I'm not leaving my house. I believe that's your job, I think.

So, yeah, it's, I thought that was a really smart part of the whole series. So the, you know, I was right out of college when the Dahmer stuff really broke out. And I just knew, like, I knew like the types of people he targeted and I knew the types of things that he did, right? And I knew he had food and food in the fridge

that was human remains and that he ate. That's all I really knew. I didn't realize how close they came to catching him all these different times because, again, Jeff Dahmer, bad hang. You don't want to be like, oh, cool, I'm going to read this 600-page Jeff Dahmer book. Like, I just was kind of in and out. I never really thought about him again. So that piece and, you know, the policeman not getting penalized for screwing stuff up,

but you mentioned the neighbor, that was the haunting thing. And like my daughter, like my daughter said trouble sleep. been the last two nights because she watched this. And she's just like, she's like, the neighbor part freaked me out. Like hearing these sounds and knowing it's probably something horrible, I'm not being 100% sure, but 90% sure. Like that was the worst. And you have that haunting scene.

I think it was the ninth episode when he barters the money that he's getting because people are milling of money. And he gets like whale sounds. And he's just listening to these crazy whale sounds because they, I guess, sound like human squealing. and one of the prison guards is like, hey, man, I'm taking the tape. He's like, what?

This helps me sleep. And it's like, oh, this person is a 10 out of 10 all time psycho that we have ever produced. You can't be crazier than this, but he was. And I think a big part, a big piece that helps, because I can't latch on to Jeffrey Dahmer, for me, the best episode is episode six, silence, which is from the point of view of one of his victims. And then you see, similar to, there's a similar story in Versace, you're watching it and you

maybe get kind of sucked in because, again, Evan Peters is very charismatic and you're like, oh, could this all have gone another way for this guy? If, if a million, you know, if his dad had never taught him about a taxidermy roadkill, if, if, if, if, like, could this have gone a different way? But other than that episode, Jeff Dahmer is like a really hard person to latch onto emotionally. So that's why I think a character like his dad, played by Richard Jenkins, Lionel Dahmer, like, you know, I have a lot of questions for Jeffrey Dahmer's parents, but I think because Richard Jenkins is such a sensitive actor, I was, I really felt for him, even as I watched him make mistake after mistake with his kid. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah, I'm with you. Episode six is great. Like, I actually wouldn't be surprised that that gets nominated for an Emmy, and I wouldn't be surprised. that the actor who plays the death victim and that will get nominated because I thought that guy was great. The scene when they tell Richard Jenkins, the cops are like, hey, here's what we found. And they lay it out. And it's like there's 15 victims. And he's just sitting there. And he's just like, he's trying to process it.

But he's also not 100% surprised, which I think is important. Right. So he's like, this is the worst thing I've ever heard. I'm also not completely shocked. and was some of this my fault. You can see him think of all these things because he's a great actor. And there's this pause.

And the cops like, but wait, there's one more thing. And you're thinking like, but wait, there's one more thing. You just told me my son murdered 15 people and it was Syracco. There's another thing. And he's like,

we came to believe by some of the stuff on the utensils and whatever that he was also eating the victims. And then they cut to Richard Crenner. It's just like, is there a gun? Can I just kill myself? This is the worst thing I've ever heard. He did a great job.

So the show had a lot of moments like that that I think is what kept me hook. Like a lot of really, this is the Ryan Murphy thing, right? A lot of really high level, just good TV. Performance. Good TV scenes. Good performances, good episodes. So I don't know. I thought it was an above average show.

He hooks in incredible actors. And I don't like, I don't always love every choice he makes in, in terms of, of like the storytelling or how sensational to go is like that. But he always has these incredible actors and his projects. And so it's always worth watching to me to watch them navigate them and whether they go big like Jessica Lang did and every single Ryan Murphy show she ever did or what Richard Jenkins is doing here, which is like a much smaller, more emotionally impactful performance. For me, it was that sequence.

There's a sequence where he's talking to his wife played by Molly Ringwald. and he's like going, remembering all these moments that Jeff has sort of brushed off as, oh, it was just a joke or, oh, I got fired for this, you know, like making all his excuses and really sort of putting together the pieces that like at some point I really have to reckon with the fact that my kid is the common denominator here. And I can't just swallow these, like I've been swallowing these really flimsy excuses that he's been giving me when I find, you know, chemical remains of something in the drain of his grandmother's basement floor. And I'm like, oh, yes, we'll clean up after yourself better, Jeff, like, all that sort of stuff.

I thought that was really, really strong, really powerful. And the way they treated the Dahmer character where he's got to Wisconsin accident, and I can't do Wisconsin accent. That was a bad attempt. And he's a little blank-faced and dorky and, you know, like just socially awkward. but he did have the switch. Like when he starts screaming at his grandmother that one time because she got rid of the mannequin.

That whole mannequin section, I forget what episode that was where he has kind of the wherewithal to be like, I'm going to go in that dressing room and I'm just going to stay there completely still for like seven hours because I want that fucking mannequin. And then they cut to him later and he's in the same spot not moving. You're like, oh, this guy is a 10 out of 10 lunatic

takes the mannequin home. God knows what happens with the mannequin. And the grandmother finds it and throws it out. And it's probably the maddest he gets in 10 episodes to this poor old lady who's like, yeah, the mannequin was fucking weird. I threw it out. Why did you have that? Run, you throw out my mannequin.

And it's stuff like that. I thought the hitchhiker scene was another one when he picks up that hitchhiker and they're lifting weights. Yeah. And they're having a good time. And the guy's like, all right, it's time taking the concert. And he's like, I thought we'd hang up more. guys like, no, we're going to the concert and it's just kind of escalates and you know where it's going.

They do, there's moments like this where it's like, wow, that's really, really, really well done. Then there's other stuff that felt very 1990 TV movie-ish that I felt like they could have dumped. I felt like, what do you think, eight episodes? Could this spend eight episodes instead of 10? Easy, right? Yeah, six to eight. I think the last one especially, like all the John Wayne Gacy stuff I felt like didn't really, whatever connection they were trying to make there didn't really work at all.

The last episode's a throwaway. Like, you could have had him get murdered. I got to be honest, Dahmer in prison could have been like six episodes. Like, if we had really gone into Dahmer in prison and some of the other inmates and how they related to having the serial killer, I was really interested in that world.

We didn't really spend a lot of time there, but we spent a lot of time with people over and over again going to the police and being like, you know, complaining about whatever. Domber in the clubs. Yeah, we kind of had the point at some. Yeah, I think I would say, I think you're right, six to eight episodes. And the neighbor, I think the neighbor's going to get nominated potentially. Yeah, Nisi Nash is incredible.

She's always good and everything that she does. And I thought she was, like, she's always really funny. And so to have her here be really serious, in a really serious context was, I thought she was incredible in that. And I think, I mean, Evan Peters, too. Evan Peters has played like an unhinged killer for writing. That's how he started, right? Like in the first season of American Horror Story Murder House, he plays like a school shooter.

And then he's played serial killers and other American Horror Story installments for Ryan Murphy. Ryan Murphy just, like, loves to make Evan Peters a serial killer because I think it's exactly what you were describing that switch. He's so disarming and charismatic and there's just something about him where you want to be protective of him. I felt that way about him on Mary of East Town, too. Like you're just so protective of him.

And then the switch flips and you're like, oh, right, oh, God. You know, and like that seductive quality that Evan Peters has, I think Ryan Murphy knows that not only does a serial killer need something like that in order to lure victims in, but then at the end, when it examines, like, all those, like, fan girls who are sending Jeffrey Dahmer, like, love letters and naked photos of themselves and stuff like that, you know, and the general frenzy around. Zero Killers and Dahmer specifically. I think you need someone like Peters who is like, you get drawn in.

And then you're like, and then he's pouring acid into a teenager's head. And you're like, oh, right. This is absolutely stomach churning stuff. So yeah, it's a really interesting back and forth. I don't think it works without that performance, though, you know. Yeah, he kills the hitchhiker. And then he has to get super creepy and put his face next to his face and all that. The sandwich scene is the single best scene, at least for me, when he goes to the neighbor.

With the neighbor, yeah. I made you a sandwich. She's like, yeah, I'm not going to eat that, Jeff. And she's like, eat the sandwich. And he's just like, what is happening? Please don't eat the sandwich. What's in the sandwich? It was like right out of like silence of the lamps.

Well, and apparently, so I was looking up the, I think it's called the Milwaukee Gazette. Like, if you're going to look up like fact versus fiction, which I love to do after watching a show like this. I think it's the Milwaukee Gazette because they were doing all the like boots on the ground local reporting about Jeff Dahmer at the time. They have some great analysis of what's real and what's not. And I think the sandwich thing was real that he would give sandwiches out to his neighbors in that apartment building with who knows what in it, you know?

Jesus. Yeah. Yeah. I visited my college roommate in Milwaukee like right after the Dahmer murders. It was like 93-94 range. And he took us over there. Because we were like, we got to see the dom. Yeah, because we were like, we just couldn't believe it was like in the city.

You know, normally these kind of things, it's like silence of the lambs. You're in the middle of nowhere, right? You're driving 40 minutes in Pennsylvania. And we were like, can't believe it's like take two rights and a left. And so we went and it was knocked down. It was like, yeah, the attitude. in Milwaukee was like, let's try to pretend this never happened, which was, you know, I thought they didn't really land the plane in the last episode, but it was interesting, like, that theme of

a city, either remembering victims or basically saying, let's just move on from this and pretend it never happened, which is basically where they landed. And again, I think to your, like, really original point that you can chalk a lot of that up to who are the victims. And it's young, black and brown gay men. And so the city was not that interested in memorializing them and giving them, you know. The better version of this from a premise standpoint was the Atlanta child murders,

which HBO did that, I forget how many episodes it was, but it was an even worse, worse version of this where he killed, I don't know, 40, 50 kids and it just wasn't covered in any sort of mainstream way because of who the victims were, which when you think back, that was only, I don't know,

less than 50 years ago, pretty fucked up. But yeah, I feel like with the Dahmer thing, Bundy had the cachet because of who some of the murders were and because he was this handsome guy who would kind of lure hitchhakers and whoever.

And so he always, there was always an appeal with him. They've made multiple Bundy movies. They've made a docuseries about him, all that stuff. The Zodiac Killer was another one. Because that was a mischief. The Zodiac Killer, I think,'s been romanticized because we don't know who it was.

It's super creepy. It's really random. Son of Sam was another one. They've tackled a few times because that ties into the summer of 77 and in New York. But the two that they've never figured out really until this is Dahmer and John Wayne Gasey. John Wayne Gasey is like a crazy SNL sketch version of Dahmer and he's dressed like a clown. and it's like, I don't think anyone's figured out how to approach that from a pop culture standpoint. Are you looking for support in your weight management journey?

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That's fine if it is. But like, or is it trying to tell us something? I think this really awkwardly titled show Dahmer hyphen monster colon, the Jeffrey Dahmer story, is trying to tell us about like the community and, and, the police force and there's a lot that it's trying to say. I think sometimes with the serial killer stuff it just feels

like it wants to get as depraved as possible without a point of view. Do you know what you mean? Yeah. Well, it's like the Dahmer movie was like that, which I stopped watching after 10 minutes. I was like, oh, they're just they don't know what they're trying to do with this. I don't want to spend time with this movie. Netflix has coming out after this. They've got a docu series that is like

the Dahmer Confession tapes. So they're going to ride the wave of this. This is super popular for Netflix. And then they've got a docuseries that they're dropping. It's either a docu-series or just a documentary. That's like, I think, just going to be the raw audio of his confession tapes to like sort of continue your Dahmer education, I guess. Yeah, I was talking to a friend who works for a competitor. And he was like, the Dahmer thing, is this good?

And I was like, you know, this is kind of the type of project you'd want. as a streamer because it's good, it's not great. There's 10 episodes. You don't really have to concentrate the entire time. You can kind of float in and out. There's scenes. You can just be like, I'll look through some emails or whatever.

It tries to pretend it cares about the topic in like this new way, but it really doesn't. It's exploitative. And it's like, this one's about the family and we're going to take you under the hood with the victims. like, nah, you're making a serial kill or a 10-part thing. And I think, I guess that's what I didn't like about it is there's a little bit of hypocrisy where it's like, we're going to take you all

the people around him that were affected. But then you're also making it a saw movie. So it's like, what is it? What do you want to do? Yeah. Would you rather they not try with that, like, because we agree that the best episode is one from one of the victim's point of view and their family's point of view, would you rather they just do saw or would you rather they do less saw and more of, you know, this other stuff? Like, well, what's your ideal balance in a show like this? Well, if you're trying to make the greatest version of this, you're picking 10 people that were involved in his life, right? And you're telling each episode is about one of the people, right? But that's, that's not going to keep people sucked in for 10 episodes. This is why shows like

this are a little dishonest because they can ride on episode six and they can be like, well, that, and that was, yeah, but then you also did these other episodes where this happened. Did you need to do this? And did you need to cross the line with that? And so I think they throw shit against the wall with a bunch of different strategies and hope some stick, some don't. But like, I took a quick look at, you know, you knew this was going to get think pieces, which is another piece of these where it's like, for Netflix, this is great.

huge viewing hours and then people just writing about it and talking about it for two weeks. But the think piece is a lot of them were like, well, wait a second, this exploited the victims too. How is this any different? And then some of the victims came out were like, hey, you're talking about why didn't they build a park? Like, what about the proceeds for the documentary or any of those going to the victims? So it's like this, I don't know. I don't know how you navigate that one. The bar I'm using to judge this particular show is the Ryan Murphy Netflix stuff.

And I would say this is far and away the best Ryan Murphy. Biggest success easily, right? Collaboration. They paid him an enormous amount of money to, you know, lure him away from FX, which had been his creative home for so long. And he's done a bunch of stuff at Netflix that I just didn't think worked at all. And this goes a long way towards working. But I think always a Ryan Murphy show loses the plot.

Like I've never watched a single season. maybe OJ, people versus OJ, is the one that feels like the most tightly controlled. That was awesome. Yeah. That was an incredible TV show.

Yeah, it was so good. And Versace is pretty good too, but I think overall, like his stuff, especially the horror, tends to get away from him because he's like a pop, he's a pop guy,

and he gets just sort of lost in the visuals and the gore and all of that. And then you lose your point, and then you end up making something, I think you're exactly right, that wants it both ways, that wants to be virtuous and exploitative at the same time. Don't you think out of anybody we've had who's had success the last 12, 15 years, he's the one who bit off more than he could chew?

Yes. And I just don't, you never feel like he's crafting, all right, here's my one project that I'm throwing my entire heart and soul into for two years. He's juggling like three, four, five things at the same time. And it's just, you know, that's why there's a dissatisfaction. This is probably the closest he's come in a while. I really liked the Kununan show. I didn't think it was as good as the OJ show, but I thought it was really good.

I only saw it once. I remember not being pumped about the last episode. Like it was another one where they didn't land the plane. But in general, the whole concept of an imposter coming in and trying to infiltrate this crazy, rich Miami world in Versa? Like, I was really interested in. I thought that was a good premise. Darren Chris was super good in that role.

And again, it did a lot of exploration of late 80s, early 90s, gay culture. And what, like, it was, we were at a point in our culture where we weren't pretending homosexuality didn't exist. And there were plenty of people who weren't shunning, like, you know, gay men. and gay love, and then there were plenty of people who were, and there was the AIDS, HIV crisis, and all the fear around that. And all of that's in the mix in a way that lets someone truly sick get away with a lot of damage, you know? Well, you ask me, why do they keep making these things? Yeah. And the answer is they keep making these because people keep watching them and listen to them. I mean, in podcasts, we're basically out of true crimes now.

We've done all the crimes. They're done. We're going to have to make up new crimes. Oh, no. False crimes. It's only false crimes. No, no more true crimes. Okay.

With the TV stuff, we were in Sundance a couple years ago when that Bundy show came out. And nephew Kyle and I, I was like, I just want to watch one. I want to see if it's good. We watched the whole thing. We never went out the whole afternoon. He's like, I can't believe this is what we're doing at Sundance. And I was like, all I want to do is watch this. I don't care where I am.

I'm in. So I do think there's a lot of people out there that just, you know, I think there's a direct correlation of between people who like horror movies and people like Syracos because Syracores are scarier than horror movies because they actually happened. Whereas like Michael Myers didn't happen. Like he's kind of cartooned Syracur. When I watch some of these, I'm like, God damn, this is so.

And I think that's why my daughter was probably freaked out this week because this actually happen. It's a real thing. It was so funny. There's that interesting exchange between Dahmer and the priest who is like sort of helping him on that end and he's like, you know, why do you think there are so many serial killers right now? Like what's going on? And the priest starts listing of things and I'm like, oh, I know, I know the list. It's interstate highways. It's, you know, this, that, and the other thing. It's, it's pornography. It's like, I was like, yeah, I know the list of why. And I realized that I've ingested, I think, more serial killer content that I thought I had.

And I think that for me, something like this turns my stomach because it is hard to watch because it is so gruesome and then also because of that extra, there are real people involved in this and how do the victim's families feel. Something like Mind Hunter, I don't know how you felt about Mind Hunter, but that was sort of the ideal for me because it was fictional. but not at the same time. It was so close to reality, but there was that comforting layer of fiction on top of it

that made me feel like I wasn't watching, you know, the exploitation of something that actually happened. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Well, I think one of the things with the serial killer, why it always works and why it's going to continue to work, is because it's somebody who's decided, this is my thing. I'm going to murder people.

I kind of have a type, too. Like for the most part, serial killers aren't random. They have some sort of profile, right? Right. Yeah. And then the question is, how long can they get away with this? What are their tricks to keep getting away with this? And how can these fucking police and FBI not catch this person?

So as you're watching this, you're juggling all these things in a weird way. It's not like you're rooting for the guy not to get caught, but you're fascinated by all the ways he's not getting caught. and you know it's this cat and mouse game where at some point they gain too much confidence and that's usually you know they like by the time you get the double digits they're just like all right this is old hat to me it's like they're playing pickup basketball and that's usually when they make a mistake finally but i think those beats they just work for for tv and for pods and they're going to keep working do you have a favorite serial killer uh show or? Oh, Bundy's, Bundy's the best one. Because Bundy, Bundy escapes, I think twice,

but, um, and defended himself and, you know, he's, I thought he was the most interesting of all of them. Why? Do you have a favorite one? Or not a favorite, but you know what I mean? The most, fascinated by. Like the serial killer I'm most fascinated by. Um, I thought the night stalker was pretty good because of the time he was in. It was like late 70s, early 80s, L.A. Yeah. And I think in general, late 70s was like the heyday for serial killers and all this stuff because there was no DNA stuff. The police weren't competent. Everyone's hitchhiking. So you had this whole kind of talent pool for whatever you wanted to do. And the media coverage was terrible. So I think you look back like if we were doing advanced metrics, that was probably like the day day for if you were a sewer killer.

a time you wanted to be in. Now I think it would be a lot harder. I think the Zodiac Killer, for the reason that you mentioned, the idea that like we don't fully know who the Zodiac Killer was. We have our theories. We don't know. The fact that there's this like that the media is so closely involved. It's local to where I grew up. You know, ciphers and all that sort of stuff. And then I think, you know, the best piece of serial killer media is Zodiac, that film. Yes. agree. So I think that's the one that most captures my imagination. And especially that film, we're not necessarily, we're not watching.

There's like a few crime scenes in that film, but it's not about the crime. It's about the people who are caught up in this chase. It's about what Downey and Ruffalo and all of them are doing in order to try to chase down this killer. I was like around 10-ish when Jeffrey Dahmer happened, but also around that time a little later. Polly Class was kidnapped and she was kidnapped like right near where I grew up. And that stuff just that just haunts you forever, you know, because like this stuff is real. It's often, you know, it's local to somebody. And, you know, you just have to, you think about what if forever.

You think about what if forever was something like that. And I think that's the haunting power of this because like what if Jeffrey Dahmer kept getting away with it. Like, what if they had caught him when they should have, which is like the first time they arrested him? But like, what if he kept getting away with it? What if any of these guys? The smells are the craziest thing.

And I always thought it was the craziest when it happened. It's the craziest in the show. And he has all these little pet excuses. Like, what the hell is that smell? And it's like, oh. The pork chops. My family sent some pork chops and my refrigerators in work. And so it went bad.

And then they're like, so why didn't you throw it out? Like, oh. You know, but people just bought the excuses. We had, I had somebody, I was talking to Dahmer about the Dahmer show with somebody who said they knew these two people that Dahmer tried to give a ride home to. Holy. And bring back to his house. And they were kind of freaked out by him and they ended up not going back to his house. Like within seven, eight months of when he got caught.

And I was thinking, like, can you imagine being in the car with Dahmer and getting out? the rest of your life you think about that all the time like oh my God I could have ended up like in the fucking fridge right and does that like does that mean you learn to appreciate life like every second that you have

maybe out of Jeffrey Dahmer's car God yeah can you think of a worse car to be in and then a better car to get out of than the Dahmer car also was he keeping like body parts of the trunk Like, you said Zodiac's the best serial cover content. I actually think it's Silence of the Lambs.

I would have that 1A, 1B. I think I would have Silence of Lambs over Zodiac. I think Zodiac based on a true story, Silence of the Lambs. Oh, good point. You know, fiction. So they each get the title. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I mean, Silence of the Lambs.

Like, and again, like, Silence of Lambs comes out. I watched that way too young and just thought about it forever, forever. Huge mistake. You know. So, and that was just like in the water in like the 90s, like jokes about Jeffrey Dahmer and like, you know, like heads in the freezer and all this sort of stuff. That was just like the commonplace jokes that we made all the time growing up. And that is, you know, odd to think about the way in which tabloid culture just like really ran our lives in a way that we didn't examine at all. And then so like now we're in this era where we're like, let's dig into what was going on everywhere else that.

contributed to all of this. And I wonder what the next phase is. Like, is the phase, like, your argument is that this is never going to go out of style. We're always going to be interested in serial killer content because. Well, because that's what all the attention patterns have shown. Yeah. Remember there was that stretch with podcast where it was just top 20 and like 17 of them were some sort of true crime?

Like, so that was a boom and it seems like that's over and maybe this will be the next boom are these eight to ten episodes. But the thing is, like, there's two ways to approach it. Either you treat the Syracodolo almost like he's the shark from jaws. Like you don't really see him ever. And then at the tail end you do. The other way is you're with them immediately. Or her, I guess, with the Wernos, whatever her name was.

Yeah, Eileen Wernos. Eileen Wernos. Yeah, Monster. But you're with them immediately and they become a character. And the bottom line is these Cirocores are not fun to hang out with first. 10 episodes. That was why I couldn't believe that they made Dahmer at least like watchable for 10 hours because I never would have thought that was possible. He really seemed like just the worst hang ever. I just never seen a bad Evan Peters performance. Yeah. Like it works every time,

you know? Do you know it would be a good idea? What? This would be a good idea, Joanna. Okay. Ryan Murphy's next thing is about it's meta. It's Evan Peters actually because becomes a serial killer because he's played he's played murderers in so many different shows he actually has a disassociation and all the sudden now he's the murderer and it's like is this real is this not real i think that could work get on it ryan murphy make it one of your seven projects okay so call it evan peters hyphen monster colon the evan peters yeah gone too far or method acting gone wrong or something like yeah i I think he was great in the show.

I do want Evan Peters to do fewer serial killer roles for Ryan Murphy. That's what I... Yeah, about a rom-com, Evan. Yeah. Yeah. Keep it light. Come on. Can you just be in a love triangle

where you're at work and somebody likes you, but you're already engaged and you got to figure it out? Like, just do that. And then neither of them get killed. That'd be great. That'd be great. You just did love. It was just really interesting when he, I was rewatching his ME acceptance

specialty gay from Mervis Town where he did his like, hoogies, accent in that speech, but he thanked Ryan Murphy. Ryan Murphy has nothing to do with Mary Vee Sound, but he was like, thank you Mr. Murphy because he credits Ryan Murphy for his entire career, which like maybe he should. But at the same time, he's one of those guys where I'm like, but I'd like to see you, you know, hook up with a bunch of other creators and see what else you can do, you know. Well, hopefully this will be the last one.

All right, so we both, I'm sure anyone who's listening to this has already watched it. But I think this is a thumbs up from both of us, right? I think it's definitely worth a watch, especially if you want to know what people are. Like, it's one of those things where, like, you're going to want to know what people are talking about. And so many people are watching this that, like, you know, it's one of those Netflix phenomenons, like Tiger King or whatever where you'll just fill out of the loop if you haven't watched it. And I think there's enough good here, especially like Peter, is Richard Jenkins, Nisi Nash. Like, there's enough good there that even if you get scoosh about the other stuff, you can, that's when you should.

check your emails, right, Bill? Right, right. Or do some of VA prep or something like that. So, yeah. Well, whenever we're in the same room together, who knows when that's going to happen. But because we started working together in the pandemic, I'm definitely just giving you a sandwich and telling you to eat it. And I'll say, I'm just going to be like, no, no, I made this for you, Joanna. I'm going to call HR right now and see what they say about that.

It's like a pulled pork. You'll really like it. It'll be great. What's that smell, Bill? Like, what is that smell? I made you a sandwich coming from the neighbor who had screams from his apartment and the most horrible smells you can imagine is the worst offer anyone's ever gotten, I think. Here's my sandwich. I can't believe she let him in her apartment at all.

I was like, keep the chain on the door. Don't let him in what he's doing. Seriously. All right, that's it for the prestige TV podcast. We have Atlanta. We have Van and Charles covering that. This is the final season of that. So that's coming up later.

Thanks to Chris Sutton for producing. Thanks to Joanna. Stay away from those sandwiches and we'll see you next time.