Ten years ago, Netflix hit paydirt with their phenomenal and very detailed Making a Murderer docuseries that raised questions on if a man was framed for murder because the local law enforcement had framed him for a previous unrelated murder.
Since then, their docuseries have been the equivalent of what the King Kong ride used to be at Universal Studios. I remember when I went there back in 1994, they had done everything to make the line look like you had been taken back to 1976 when the remake was in theaters. Standing in line can be boring but at least the presentation was great. Yet, when we got on the official ride, the animatronic giant ape looked great.
But we could’ve sat outside in the charter bus and rocked it for 45 seconds and gotten the same effect.
I was very let down especially after the Jaws and Back to the Future ride. I even shook hands with some Blues Brothers impersonators and saw an amazing special effects (all practical) at dusk. Not every thing is going to be a winner. But I got my money’s worth.
Now that Netflix is increasing its rates, once again, a docuseries like Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action could’ve been better. But it’s appropriate for the steaming service as the show ran out of pizzazz when its novelty and gimmick became dull. The two-part documentary which could’ve easily been one movie with its run time mainly focuses on the beginning of the talk show which started out as a dull, almost canceled talk show and then exploded when it turned to outrageous stories involving family fighting that made the Hatfields and McCoys look like the Bradys and the Waltons.
And the show took on some wild and crazy stories that involved incest and bestiality. Yes, you heard that one. There was supposed to be a show about a man who had begun a sexual relationship with a Shetland pony. However, many TV station affiliates refused to broadcast it. I remember seeing it advertised when I was in college and waiting to see it, only to see a rerun. The bestiality show was controversial as it had the man talking about having sex with the pony and even getting too frisky on stage.
Snippets of the infamous episode are shown in the documentary. You can probably see the entire episode online. But like most things, you just wonder was The Jerry Springer Show just giving people what they want. I remember watching it with so much enthusiasm as it just seemed odd as the crowd cheered “Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!” When the show hit its peak, it was still taking forever to even download a few minutes of a video.
Jerry Springer was just doing what John Waters and Troma Entertainment had already put in their movies. And it was just proving that the people who were being satirized in the classic Network were more real than people thought. Springer died on April 27, 2023 from complication to pancreatic cancer. This feels like it was greenlit immediately after his death to capitalize as Springer wouldn’t be able to question what others say.
In many ways, Jerry Springer was the real-life version of the joke where a woman customer at a circus sees an elderly man cleaning up elephant feces. When she asks him why he continues to do it at his age, he looks at her and replies, “And give up show business?” The people associated with Jerry Springer knew they were making trash and they did it.
People make porno movies because they want to. And in Japan where they make hentai, which is anime porn, they do it willingly. The reason disgraced writer Stephen Glass falsified the vast majority of his stories is because he wanted the prestige of covering something that was better than the others he worked with. And the interviewees here have that same type of gung-ho style of having to be the best.
Sadly, it’s a wasted opportunity in a current world of disinformation being spread by elected officials and world leaders. The documentary also focuses on the murder of Nancy Campbell-Panitz who was killed by her ex-husband Raif Panitz two months after the episode aired. Camobell-Panitz had appeared on the show under false pretenses according to the the documentary.
However, most of what’s detailed in the documentary lacks any real spark aside from talking heads giving the same interviews from different settings. It’s basically a by-the-numbers documentary which like the show itself has become repetitive.
You can only watch a geek bite the head off a chicken so many times before you’re not surprised anymore.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 