YMMV / Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story

• Complete Monster: "God of Forgiveness, God of Vengeance": John Wayne Gacy is a sadistic Serial Killer and Serial Rapist. Enjoying feeling like a god to his victims, Gacy brutally beats, rapes, and kills one young man, doing the same to dozens more.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Tony, the deaf man who gets the most narrative focus out of any of Dahmer's victims, is among the more well-liked performances in the series. His episode, "Silenced", is often cited as the best episode of the miniseries for this reason.
• Memetic Mutation: "I told you, we're just going to watch X, then you can leave".
• Misaimed Fandom: The show, despite its attempt at showing the brutality, perversion and horror Jeffrey Dahmer inflicted, even going out of its way to focus on his victims and neighbors, was welcomed a bit too positively by the numerous Internet "fangirls" of the real-life Jeffrey Dahmer. The fact he was played by Evan Peters, a fan-favorite actor and Internet sex-symbol known for his devoted fanbase that invokes Draco in Leather Pants every time Peters plays an evil character, no matter how disturbed or dangerous (see American Horror Story), is usually brought up as one of the elements of this problem.
• No Such Thing as Bad Publicity: Despite being immensely controversial on social media, the series became one of the most-watched shows on Netflix ever.
• One-Scene Wonder: The intro to Episode 10 had a brief scene of John Wayne Gacy murdering one of his victims which some fans have pointed out how terrifying of a performance Dominic Burgess and started to suggest having him play in a series on Gacy's life in a similar format to this one.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: Despite becoming the number one show of Netflix worldwide and making an effort to not romanticize the character of Dahmer by focusing on the pain and suffering he inflicted, the show still got a pretty big backlash for its perceived indecence, lack of respect or "thirst for nominations". Two points are commonly brought up:
  • The choice of Evan Peters as Jeffrey Dahmer. Evan Peters is well-known as a "sexy" actor adored by a wide fanbase no matter what role he plays, to the point that his fans tend to always sympathize with his characters no matter how awful they are, as it was proven by the success of his previous serial-killer characters in other Ryan Murphy productions.
  • The refusal of the families of the victims to participate, collaborate or help with this project, forcing Ryan Murphy, according to his own words, to rely on a "team of experts" to depict the story of said victims. Many people pointed out that, if for three years you contact regularly twenty families and they refuse to answer back, it might be a sign that they are not really appreciative of your project. In fact, upon the release of the show, families of the victims claimed that the show only served to revive their trauma of the murders.
  • While not related to the creation of the show itself, a second backlash has formed itself over the Memetic Mutation of numerous scenes involving the victims of Dahmer on social media.
• The Woobie:
  • Jeff himself starts his story off as this, ultimately being a neglected and troubled boy desperate for any kind of affection. By adulthood however he's a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds at best…
  • All of Jeff's victims and their families deserve mentioning but Konerak Sinthasomphone and his family really take the cake!
  • Lionel counts as one too as he really tries his best to help Jeff, only to tragically find out that he didn’t do enough.
  • Glenda anyone? Properly Paranoid doesn’t even come close to describing her situation!

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