Series A Wild Trainwreck
Tiger King is absolutely a trainwreck of a documentary, with the 5 years of filmmaking and everything else. The feud between Joe Exotic and Carole Baskin seems to escalated seriously over the years, and Joe’s bizarre personality as a gay, gun-toting hillbilly probably explains the Internet memes popping up around the globe. The entire series is great, but strange, as in the story of Don Lewis supposedly being eaten by tigers. Nevertheless, it’s a wild ride worth watching.
Series Episode 2: Hoo Boy
I think it was around this episode that it stated to hit me what the principal figures in this story were like.
Joe pay his employees starvation wages- I make more in one day at my own blue-collar job than they do in a week- that leaves them reliant on taking not-quite spoiled meat from the supply for the tigers to survive. One of his employees had his arm torn off and his response was the he was going to lose money on it.
Doc who already looked kind of nuts is basically running a sex cult with his female employees.
Carole relies on volunteers to run her zoo, overstates the quality of her facilities, and is suspecting to have murdered her second husband.
And all of them overcharge for their zoos.
In between those three we have another redneck zookeeper and the guy who inspired Tony Montana, who says he had almost nothing to do with those guys who murdered a DEA informant and hacked up his body on his property.
This feels like the true crime equivalent of an episode of Jerry Springer.
In conclusion, when we can leave our houses again, we should not go to zoos that abuse animals and are run by nutjobs , but go to wholesome facilities like botanic gardens*.
Series Vaguely enjoyable sensationalist trash
Tiger King is without doubt an global sensation at this point, if only because everyone is currently stuck indoors with nothing better to do or watch. If you're active on any social media, you already know everything there is to know about Tiger King: Joe Eck-jotic, "Bitch" Baskin Robbins, total madness, blah blah. The bleak world of eccentric American big cat owners is undeniably fascinating - as one journalist interviewee aptly put it, it's hard to look away from a total trainwreck. However, as with all overhyped media, it fails to live up to exaggerated expectations.
On a seriously critical note, the series has distracting flaws. The show often seems to lack focus. None of the footage is allowed to breathe. We're constantly cutting between various interviewees, many of whom add nothing to the narrative. The editors are like hyperactive kids and believe we must be as well, yet ironically, this frenetic style only makes some episodes more boring and tedious than they otherwise would be. Maybe show the actual tigers a bit more, ya know?
The low point in the series for me is definitely Episode 3, the one that focuses on the "Carole Baskin murdered Don Lewis" allegations. What does this really have to do with anything? There's absolutely no substantiation in this limp The Thin Blue Line rip-off. Do the filmmakers really believe all these bogus hearsay testimonies and want some kind of correction of justice against Baskin like Errol Morris did for David Ray Harris? This episode embodies the worst sensationalist themes of Tiger King better than any other, but luckily, the series improves afterwards and builds to a strong, haunting conclusion.
Speaking of the filmmakers, I don't think the participatory style with Eric Goode is very consistent or necessary. There's no way he can hold his own against these cat-crazed kooks.