The Menendez Brothers, Netflix’s new hit show, has captivated audiences worldwide, soaring to fame after seven successive weeks on Netflix’s top ten since its release on September 19 this year. The nine-episode drama is the second season of the Monsters anthology, director Ryan Murphy’s controversial adaptations of some of the most brutal true crimes in recent history. Its first season, Dahmer, follows the private life of the prolific cannibal serial killer, Jeffery Dahmer, and was a wild success. This time, he took on another 90s horror: the millionaire Menendez brothers’ gruesome double parricide.
The show takes audiences through the nearly seven years, depicting the planning of the murders, the boys’ arrest, and the two trials that ultimately left Lyle and Erik Menendez serving double life sentences without the possibility of parole. A combination of the high profile of its perpetrators and the contentious defense tactics of their attorneys—what made the case one of the most media swamped trials of its time—resurfaces as the center point of the production.
When the brothers were first tried in 1993 for the firing 16 shotgun rounds into their unarmed parents inside their Beverly Hills home in 1989, their case rested on an flawed self-defense theory: due to a childhood of horrific sexual and physical abuse at the hands of their parents, Lyle and Erik acted out of fear for their own lives on that horrifying Sunday night. At the time, these allegations were met with significant backlash and coined the “abuse excuse” by the media. In flashbacks to the boys’ childhood, these memories are frequently reenacted in the show, giving viewers a glimpse into the fearful household the Menendez brothers describe growing up in.
In one chilling episode, shot in a single take with one camera, Erik recounts the abuse in terrible detail to his attorney Leslie Abramson. Watching the show, it is almost undeniable the amount of empathy it garners for the siblings.That fact alone is what makes the murder’s dramatization so controversial.
Despite all this, the adaptation is forever memorialized under one label: monsters. The irony behind the build up of compassion for the brothers and then their final presentation under those degrading terms is perhaps why the show barely touched on the massive media influence that surrounded the Menendez trials.
Another thing that is difficult to perceive about the show is its abrupt ending, in which the brothers are shuttled off to their respective prisons. Yes, it fully covers the trial and the Menendez case, leading viewers into their perpetual incarceration. But it depicts prison as the end of their lives, even though the Menendez lives are not over. The show does not allow them to escape this murder. If anything, it reignites a flame over the most horrible moment of their lives, one the brothers have worked tirelessly in prison to heal from and reflect on. Behind bars, Lyle graduated with higher education and Erik unearthed a passion for art. Notably, both of the men have abstained from almost any rule-breaking, have been elected as leaders within their prison blocks, and have counseled countless sexual abuse survivors in prison. All this may have stemmed from their brutally violent act, but it has certainly branched out into a larger movement that reflects, as Lyle describes in The Menendez Brothers documentary, “a shift in societal attitude toward the case.” Yet, it is a movement that the show does not do any justice. Instead, it sucks audiences back to that violent night and despite procuring sympathy for Lyle and Erik, ultimately works against them in their fight for change. Prison already exists to recenter one’s life around their crime as punishment, so why must the media further villainize criminals by constantly reproducing that narrative to the public?
In the end, the show feels out of touch, almost surreal. I finished watching it and found it very difficult to conceptualize, the fact that not only that this had happened at all but that it was still happening. The Menendez brothers still live everyday behind bars and have done so since before I was born and will continue to until the end of their lives is such a shocking fact for me. To put something so current, so real, of that degree of severity, and then even attempt to encapsulate it in a single dramatized TV show is unethical. The show depicts a horrendous murder, one that happened because of alleged horrific abuse toward the murderers. Now, that story is simply something people watch with ice cream before they go to bed.
