Natalia Grace · Mormon Manson · Golden Globes
Your weekend watching runneth over
the true crime that's worth your time
All the true crime that broadcasters and streamers held through the holidays is starting to drop, and I’m feeling a little overwhelmed. Do I start with an interview with the kid seemingly abused by her adoptive family or the kid abused by her biological one? OR do I switch gears and hear from the kids raised in an —obviously, abusive — cult?
It seems a little on the post-holiday nose that the biggest true crime on our screens this weekend illustrates toxic family dynamics and generational trauma, but I’m not complaining. Here we go:
The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard
The first two parts of this six-parter on Blanchard drops on Lifetime Friday night at 8/7 CT; it was produced while she was in prison but — conveniently — will air just after her release. (I wrote a blog about this for Vanity Fair last weekend, and suspect that timing its release to the Peak Blanchard in which we now live is not a coincidence.) It’ll stream wherever you can get A+E content on Saturday, expect two-hour drops of subsequent episodes on January 6 and 7.
Lifetime isn’t always my most anticipated producer of true crime, but I do think this is notable because it makes a point of noting that this is the first property in which Blanchard has controlled the narrative to any degree. If this were another convicted criminal who was just released — for example, Oscar Pistorius, who was officially paroled today after seven years in prison for killing Reeva Steenkamp — I’d be grossed out at that as a selling point. But Blanchard’s case, with her lifetime of abuse at the hands of mother Dee Dee Blanchard, who she admittedly conspired to kill, has a level of complexity that makes me want to hear straight from her. — EB
Daughters of the Cult
This ABC News five-parter dropped on Hulu on Thursday, January 4 with all episodes, if you’re in the mood for a Mormon fundamentalist cult binge. The latest entry in the current wave of cult survivor stories is about the followers of Ervil Morrell LeBaron, the eventual leader of the Church of the First Born of the Lamb of God. LeBaron was arrested in 1979 and was accused of ordering slews of deaths, including members of his own family. (Which was pretty big, as these folks practiced male polygamy!)
A few of LeBaron’s 50-plus kids speak in the series, as do “law enforcement who worked on the murder cases,” the latter of whom must be pretty old given the long-ago nature of the crimes. One wonders what makes this case especially relevant to today’s audiences, at least, relevant enough that ABC is on the story. I also wonder how we are supposed to keep all these recent cult shows straight! Do I need to make a mnemonic or something? — EB
The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: Natalia Speaks
Ostensibly the second season of the ID show that aired last year, this five-parter kicked off on New Year’s Day. I was content to wait to see what you all said about it before I watched, but the bombshell-claiming headlines I saw yesterday (its final episode aired on Wednesday) made me a lot more interested — but not for the reason you might think.
According to the coverage, we learn Natalia’s “biological age” via genetic testing from a lab called TruDiagnostic, which determined her to be 22 at this time. If so, that certainly supports the allegations that her adoptive family were wrong to claim she was an adult when they took her in! But, as anyone who follows fitness knows, biological and chronological age can be very different, so this isn’t the smoking gun that a lot of reblog seems to make it out to be. I’m super interested in how the show presents this concept of DNA testing for age, not least because this is another of those startup-heavy industries (like Theranos) packed with companies that are poorly regulated and may or may not be feeding us a line of shenanigans. — EB
The 81st Golden Globe Awards
Actor Lily Gladstone is the runaway favorite in her category at Sunday’s awards; many folks also believe the movie she starred in — Killers of the Flower Moon, as you of course know — could win the best motion picture/drama award. If so, expect acknowledgement of the real-life crimes depicted in the film, as well as a nod to Mollie Kyle, the Reign of Terror survivor Gladstone played in the film. (Kyle, who remarried after the events of the movie, died in 1937.) — EB
Monday on Best Evidence: It’s hard to find a better opening line than “Last night I helped bury a body in a snowbank.”
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