The fifth episode of Monster: The Story of Lyle and Erik Menendez is a formal wonder, bold in its simplicity. We observe how Erik Menendez (Cooper Cook), who is awaiting trial in prison for the murder of his parents, reveals a story of brutal sexual abuse by his father. His lawyer, Leslie Abramson (Ari Graynor), stands with his back to the camera, nodding and pressing for more details while Erik tries to pull himself together. The camera zooms in very slowly, ending the 35-minute episode in a single shot with a close-up of the tormented subject.

One wonders whether perhaps those behind the camera – director Michael Uppendahl, Writer-Creator Ian Brennan And Robert F. Kennedy—saw the 2020 film Never Rarely Sometimes Always, The centrepiece of this is an unbroken shot of a young woman filling out a sexual health questionnaire while attempting to have an abortion. In this stark framing, a whole tense story is laid bare. It is refreshing not to ignore – as is episode five of Menendez, The film is called “The Hurt Man.” Koch, a relatively new actor on the screen, is full of pain and anger and tells the story of how a young man’s trauma causes him to become detached from himself and reality.

This was possibly the decisive episode of Menendez– a statement of intent, the oral defense of a thesis. Here, it seems, Brennan and Murphy tone down the darkly comic momentum of the series’ previous episodes – caustic, prurient, nihilistic – to put actual humanity, howling in pain, at the center of the series. Suddenly compassion is earned, understanding is turned on its head. How could anyone watch this horrific testimony and not be persuaded to show mercy?

But then the rest of the season happens, and Brennan and Murphy leave episode five in strange doubt. Was it all just a hoax? Is Erik perhaps an even bigger fraud than his preening, scheming brother? The superficial tone of Menendez seems to suggest this. The brothers’ case falls apart; lies and omissions are exposed; Brennan and Murphy’s portrait of spoiled offspring sharpens into outright condemnation. What, then, was the purpose of “The Hurt Man,” a standalone marvel that withers in its larger context?

On a charitably level, deception was the goal. We’re meant to be completely convinced by this sad, hurt, handsome guy, only for us to be horribly wrong. The argument might be that our ever-changing view of this case reflects the opinions of real Americans in the mid-1990s, when the Menendez trials were at the center of the true-crime fascination. (Until OJ Simpson came along and did or didn’t do what he did or didn’t do.) Brennan and Murphy may be conducting a clever meta-experiment to test how audiences justify their prurient interest in gory details with expressions of sympathy. The uglier the details, the more likely we are to believe them. The show is playing the same deception on us that the Menendez brothers played on their first jury. It’s all a ruse, carefully calculated and insidiously clever.

The less generous interpretation is that Menendez doesn’t know what it’s trying to say. Its wild oscillations between credibility and blatant sensationalism are not a sign of high-minded ambiguity, but of insecurity. This is a show that often blurs the line between taboo eroticism and disgust. For example, it strongly suggests that there was some kind of sexual relationship between the brothers, but then coyly suggests that this is just sensationalist speculation. Essentially, it wants to grimly excite its audience and also reprimand them.

So “The Hurt Man” exists both to earn the kind of praise it already has—as a discreet, well-made episode of television that movingly confronts the reality of sexual abuse and is fit for Emmy purposes—and to stand as the series’ prime example of enormous falsehood. It exudes an irritating kind of ambivalence, self-serving and vacuously cynical. As Menendez By the time I reached the end, I was at a loss as to what we were supposed to take away from it. Perhaps especially from “The Hurt Man,” which the series seems simultaneously proud of and disdainful of.

On the whole, Menendez has few coherent thoughts about Lyle and Erik. It is attracted to them, annoyed by them. It gasps and sneers and shakes its head. Some tonal inconsistencies are understandable; how else could a show capture both the ridiculousness of this story and its horrific, deadly dimensions? But Brennan and Murphy go beyond that and enter the realm of incoherence. “The Hurt Man” is the show’s most focused episode. The rest wanders all over the place, jumping from the brothers to Dominick Dunne (Nathan Lane) – then a Vanity Fair Author who reports on the case, including Abramson’s personal life. Menendez jumps forward and backward through time in arbitrary segmentation. It makes fun of everything and then demands serious consideration in the blink of an eye.

One would like to see in all this the master plan to Menendez the kinder interpretation is that the variability is deliberate. But while Lyle and Erik don’t have to earn our trust, the show itself should. Brennan and Murphy, on the other hand, betray the loyalty they have fostered; they are too busy changing their minds about what they want to say, what the big idea of ​​the project might be.

The problem with “The Hurt Man” might simply be its placement. Had it been the show’s premiere, a shocking challenge to those who had hoped to open with a grisly murder—an appeal to compassion that the series would then carefully dissect—it might have worked. But putting it right in the middle—as an anchor, as a clarification or distraction, as a qualitative climax—warps the shape of Menendez. We are as frustrated with the show as we are with Lyle and Erik’s threatening, childish demands. Have these boys been hurt? Are they dangerous, sociopathic fabulists? It doesn’t really matter, because the weather of Menendez changes with every whim of its creators. Brennan and Murphy are themselves a jury whose verdict is not fixed; Menendez ends with some kind of mistrial.