The Synanon Fix's slow-boil
the true crime that's worth your time
I always feel bad for projects that drop on April 1 — there’s always that search for the joke when the press release arrives, or that forward to colleagues to make sure you didn’t miss an obvious prank. New HBO and Max docuseries The Synanon Fix, which premieres tonight, could easily have been misdiagnosed by media as a Batsh*t Valley-style parody, with its groovy archival footage, shaved-head congregants, and undeniably chic uniforms that will send you to eBay with search strings like “hickory stripe overall” and “small bandana scarf.”
But Synanon, a real-life California rehab program turned alternative community that rose in the late 1950s and spun out in the early ’90s, was far less batshit than Wild Wild Country‘s similar compound that so inspired Documentary Now!. And it can’t even approach its far-more-documented contemporary, Jonestown. That means that though the cult was easy to find in the pop culture of the ’60s and ’70s, on shows like Mannix and in books by folks like Philip K. Dick, it was all but forgotten until the current era of true crime content churn brought it back to the surface.
Read Eve's review in full at Reality Blurred.