If O.J. Simpson hadn’t been charged in a double murder case, the Menendez murder case would’ve been the trial of the century. The case had so much going for it that it seemed to attract the sensationalized infotainment world that had erupted in the last quarter of the 20th Century.
In Dumb and Dumber, people watch A Current Affair spoofing themselves as someone says the next show will be inside the home of the Menendez Brothers’ attorney. It just seemed like the stuff you would find on that show as well as Hard Copy and Inside Edition. Tabloid journalism of check-out lane magazines and papers had people interested in stuff they really didn’t care about a generation earlier. The internet wasn’t in mass use and people were growing drunk on celebrity life.
The murders had a connection somewhat to the entertainment world as Jose Menendez was connected to LIVE Entertainment, a former media company that would fold into Artisan Entertainment, and RCA. It encapsulated the decadence of the 1980s where greed was good, as Gordon Gekko said in Wall Street. After their murders, Lyle and Erik Menendez, went on a spending spree as if they had won the lottery. They said that since they had been raised in an affluent life, there weren’t accustom to being frugal even with their parents dead. (I mean, let’s face it, when a loved one dies, it seems some go looking for whatever they can find. I knew a guy who used to rent property and got into a disagreement with the police because he felt he was entitled to his late tenant’s TV, DVD player and stereo.)
It’s no surprise Ryan Murphy would be behind Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story. It just seems to fit his style. It’s like he realized criticism over the first season which focused on Jeffrey Dahmer was warranted as it went too far. Here, he goes very far. But it doesn’t matter. Dahmer’s victims were unfortunate victims of his lust and madness. You’re left to wonder in this season if Jose (Javier Bardem) and Mary Louise, also known as Kitty, (Chloe Sevigny) deserved it. I say that because there were accusations both Lyle (Nicholas Alexander Chavez) and Erik (Cooper Koch) were sexually molested and raped by Jose for years. There’s even hints that Jose and Kitty were both homophobic as they felt Erik was gay and forced him to find a girlfriend by a deadline.
Murphy and Ian Brennan, who is a co-show runner and co-writer of all episodes, haven’t been the first to bring their story to the small screen. In 2017, Law and Order True Crime: Menendez Brothers did it. However, the True Crime spinoff has yet to have a second season. Then, there was Menendez: Blood Brothers with Courtney Love as Kitty that same year. In May 1994, Edward James Olmos and Beverly D’Angelo played Jose and Kitty in Menendez: A Killing in Beverly Hills was aired following the mistrial of the first trial which was aired on Court TV. It was a precursor to the O.J. Simpson trial.
There are nine episodes totaling 470 minutes of run time. If you take out the credits it’s about seven-and-a-half hours. Without a doubt, it’s very exploitive. But it’s like a multi-car pile-up. You can’t help but not look at it and be glad you’re not in it. The episodes are also shaped in such a way that we never know who to trust or believe. You can understand why the first trial ending in hung juries.
Koch as the younger Erik portrays a boyish frailty. He was pushed around his whole life by Jose, Kitty and even Lyle. When he gets a new lawyer in Leslie Abramson (an amazing performance by Ari Graynor), she becomes his surrogate mother that he needs. Erik was only 18 at the time of the murders and Graynor manages to extend that motherly affection he needed. The fifth episode is the shortest at about half an hour but it’s mostly just Erik and Abramson talking in a room at the jail center. The camera is constantly fixed on Erik as it slowly pans in on him as he recounts the abuse to gradually growing in its intensity.
During another scene in Erik is on the witness stand, she calmly and pleasantly gets him to sit a certain distant from the microphone that is problematic. It’s obviously a ploy to show how Erik is incapable of doing certain things. He’s nervous and traumatized by the abuse.
And Chavez knocks it out of the park as Lyle. He’s cocky and angry and an all-around sociopath. He had previously only appeared on General Hospital for which he won a Daytime Emmy for and I’m sure this role will definitely bring him more roles. Anyone who has listened to his audio recordings can sense he thinks highly of himself. His main vice is vanity as he wanted to live the extravagant life. Yet, he had started growing bald at a young age and wore a special hairpiece. There’s a good chance that if Lyle hadn’t been suspended from Princeton University, Jose and Kitty would’ve still been alive.
Lyle was obviously the ringleader of the murders. Yet there’s a good bet nothing would’ve happened had Kitty stepped up. But it was the 1980s and most women were expected to stand by their husbands even if there were reports of child abuse. I mean, let’s face it, just about everyone born before the 21st Century has a child molester/rapist in their family who the others don’t talk about or just gaslight others by saying he’s going to get help and the victim was just mad about not getting something for their birthday or Christmas.
Sevigny plays Kitty with the mentality that many WWII era born parents had. They were too old to be part of the Baby Boomer generation and too young to be part of the Silent Generation that struggled through the Great Depression. I’m almost certain her parents were upset that she was dating a man named Jose as a college student. She was expected to be the perfect WASP wife for a nice white-collar working man.
The only problem is with a lot of money comes a lot of work. With Jose gone most of the time, Kitty didn’t need to work. But her resentment toward Lyle, Erik and Jose is shown in her performance. During a scene with a therapist, she calls children parasites as they suck the calcium out of mothers. She’s willing to accept the alleged abuse mainly because she knows she won’t get much in the divorce. I mean look at how Camille Cosby or Bijou Phillips continue to support their respective husbands despite their convictions.
Sevigny is far better than D’Angelo or Lolita Davidovich, who was in the Law and Order True Crime series. But it’s likely because she has more material to work with as Jose and Kitty were underused. But the story has so much sordid tales, it’s hard to know what to believe. The real-life Menendez and their family have criticized the accusations that Kitty walked in on Erik and Lyle in the shower together as well as maybe having an incestuous relationships.
They have also criticized the allegations that Kitty was involved in the sexual abuse demanding at one point that Erik show her his penis so she can make sure he doesn’t have any sexually-transmitted diseases. With Murphy involved, he’s going to push the envelope. There’s a suspicion that Erik has while in the county jail he’s going to get raped but he strikes up a relationship with another inmate as they shower together.
And of course, there’s no way to tell this story with focusing on Dr. Jerome Oziel (Dallas Roberts) and his mistress, Judalon Smyth (Leslie Grossman). Oziel was Erik’s psychologist and he was told about how the brothers murdered their parents. Rather than contact authorities, Oziel taped the sessions and told Smyth, who was a former patient. However, when Oziel dumped her, she went to the police.
It seems like a soap opera but the truth is stranger than fiction. The Beverly Hills Police Department was getting criticized for their lack of progress. And yes, Zsa Zsa Gabor did slap a Beverly Hills police officer but it happened two months before their murders. Strangely it was an odd time all around. Not only did one of the jurors have a heart attack during deliberations but another went into premature labor.
The series doesn’t work at times. But I feel Murphy and Brennan decided to focus more on the abuse the Brothers say they endured. One of the criticism during jury deliberations is that it’s believed their fabrication the abuse. In this era, male-on-male sexual abuse was still something most people didn’t want to believe could happen. The vicious of Bardem to play a father who expected 150 percent from his kids shows us a man who felt he owned his wife and children. Therefore, he could do whatever he wanted.
Bardem has played many bad guys over the years, winning an Oscar for his role as Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men. Jose has never been portrayed as a likeable person in previous adaptations and this one tries to add some three-dimension character to him. When Erik and Lyle are arrested for burglaries and robberies they did, you can tell Jose is not only angry at the fact they’re stealing but how it’s really going to make him look.
Murphy and Brennan don’t play the race card, but it’s there lingering around. The real Jose could’ve “passed” for a white person only if his name was Joseph Mendelson, he might have been able to Lyle a better pass when he was caught cheating at Princeton. And when the brothers were caught stealing stuff from Calabasas, Calif., Jose moved the family to Beverly Hills because they couldn’t stay as he knew the people would paint them as Chicano thugs.
It’s a safe bet that if the public was more informed and aware of sexual abuse back in the early 1990s as they are now, Erik and Lyle would’ve probably just been convicted of manslaughter and already released from prison. Or they may have even been acquitted.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 