Netflix Monsters Season 2 aka Monsters: The Lyle and Eric Menendez Story is out and this is the second season of the crime-drama anthology series Monsters. You don’t have to watch this docudrama to know who the real monster is. It’s Ryan Murphy, the creator of the show. Murphy has done a lot of terrible things in life, and his angle for telling the story of the Menendez Brothers has to be one of the top ones.
I have done some reviews for Deshi Geek in the past namely – Pet Kata Shaw, Mishti Kichu, Loke Bole, Barbie 2023, Dead Boy Detectives, and The Boys Season 4. I have bashed the negative aspects of these shows and celebrated the positives. However, this is the first time I’m furious and disgusted while writing a review and the credit goes to Ryan Murphy & Netflix Monsters Season 2.
Why I Watched Netflix Monsters Season 2!
When Netflix Monsters Season 2 was first announced, I was highly intrigued. As a true crime enthusiast, I was already aware of the Menendez case. I had just finished watching Dahmer the year before, the first installment of Ryan Murphy’s anthology series Monster, and was wondering who’d be the next “monster”.
I wouldn’t consider the Menendez brothers “Monsters”. Yet I have been looking forward to the Netflix Monsters Season 2 since last year’s announcement. It was announced right around the time ex-Menudo singer Roy Roselló exposed Jose Menéndez in the documentary “Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed”, claiming he was sexually abused by Jose. The announcement just felt right with that revelation.
I hoped that the story would be told from a different angle, maybe this will make people think about the case thoroughly again, which might lead to a change much needed. My faith was higher because of Ryan Murphy’s position in La La Land. I believed that he’d be able to uncover some truth about Jose Menendez’s reality, or could be that he already knew something that non-LA people aren’t aware of.
I was wrong. And I’m ashamed of it. After watching so many of his shows, studying his work for years, and spotting many of his quirks and red flags, I should’ve known better. If not anything else before this, the fact that this man is a certified scab who completely ignored the struggles of the writers during the WGA strike should’ve been enough to see through the empty shell of the person he is.
Anyway, his red flags completely flew over my head, and I was waiting for the Netflix Monsters Season 2 to drop. And after it did, watched it within two days of release, and have been cursing Murphy since then.
Did He Just… Sexualize Victims Of Sexual Abuse?
Even if you don’t follow the Hollywood gossip or keep up with the blind items about Ryan Murphy, his productions make it pretty clear that the man is all about his love for boys. Yeah, I get that you like hot guys being their hottest, and you want your work to reflect that. An artist has the creative freedom of pouring their passion any way they want. But can you, for the love of everything good, read the room for once?
It’s evident from several observations and records, not to mention the direct testimony, that Lyle and Eric Menendez were victims of sexual abuse from their childhood. They [allegedly] were the subject of photographs that can count as CP, taken by their parents, which only focused on their nether regions and not the face or top part of the body. And then there were actual sexual misconducts [allegedly] going on at home.
Lyle and Erik were so traumatized and ashamed of that, it affected them psychologically. While describing the incidents, they broke into tears in court on several different occasions and became emotional during interviews. While people in the ’90s refused to accept that as a plausible reason for the brothers being so messed up, we now live in a time where we’re well aware if everything they said is true, that can do a number on anybody.
The problem of inappropriate gaze, objectification, and messed up sexual behavior without consent was a huge part of the Menendez brothers’ tragedy. And Ryan Murphy decided to use THEIR STORY to ‘please’ the gals and the gays? Yeah, let that sink in! I was APPALLED, and disgusted beyond my limits throughout the first three episodes of the Netflix Monsters Season 2 as it made a mockery of a tragedy.
There are way too many (even one is too many, these are real people with real stories and trauma) shots of the boys who portrayed Lyle and Eric in a “gimme some glimpse of that hawt body aah” way. Shots that will make the night of many sugar daddies, mommies, and twinks. And that would be okay if this weren’t supposed to be a dramatic portrayal of people, who killed parents after being sexually molested by one of them for years.
I hate to break it to you, Murphy, but you’re a scum on the face of the earth for using this docudrama as a thirst trap for miserable sickos. Nobody in a healthy mind sexualizes people who’re [allegedly] victims of sexual abuse. You did with the show’s first season (Dahmer) as well, and some of your other productions but you took it too far in Netflix Monsters Season 2.
Who Gave Him The Right To Distort Someone’s Identity?
I think Ryan Murphy legit considers himself as the white knight of the LGBTQIA+ community and that was on show in Netflix Monsters Season 2. He really thinks whatever he does or says in the name of gay rights is okay because he’s a gay man himself. I’m sorry, but no, being part of the LGBTQIA+ community doesn’t make you any less different than ten other horrible human beings out there.
Netflix Monsters Season 2 portrayed Erik as a queer-coded person. They tried to show him as a guy who’s interested in guys and confused about his orientation because of the [alleged] abuse he endured from another man from a very young age. This is outrageous because the real Erik is out there, still living and breathing his truth. He has admitted to being confused by the abuse; but later in interviews, he denied being gay.
The whole sexuality debate started because, tragic as it is, in the 90s, most people couldn’t fathom the reality of men being sexually abused or talking about being abused. It was the prosecutor who speculated that Erik could be gay because he described his father’s [alleged] atrocities graphically. Ryan what you deliberately missed is Erik’s story is not the situation to preach “it’s okay to be gay”.
The Way He Represented Lyle Is Cruel & Misleading
It’s almost as if Ryan Murphy has some sort of beef with the real Lyle Menendez, or he’s just too blind and ignorant to understand how lies can hurt someone. Lyle already has ghosts of his actions that have been haunting him forever, Murphy didn’t need to mislead us anymore. Yet the Queen of Lies couldn’t resist and that fact was put on full showcase in Netflix Monsters Season 2.
Netflix Monsters Season 2 showed Lyle as the irredeemable brat who snorted cokes to chill and threatened to beat kids for mentioning unpleasant stuff. And just always screaming and throwing fits. But according to people who’ve known him, Lyle has been a reserved individual all his life and more collected, contradicting the on-screen persona.
That coke-snorting scene was an exaggeration. Why would you exaggerate something like that and portray a real person as if everything is his fault because he’s beyond control? The Norma tape thing happened, and Lyle confessed about moving the jury too, but not in the style the show presented. If you listen to the real tapes, Lyle was actually a lot more genuine while talking about this and everything else.
Lyle started losing hair during his teen years because of immense pressure at home, enough to realize that the guy might not have had an upbringing like us. Yet Murphy did him so dirty in Netflix Monsters Season 2, and that’s something only a mean person would do.
Murphy Fabricated “Truth” And That’s Not Okay
Replacing facts with own fabricated truth should be a serious crime. In “Monsters”, they showed that the people testifying were talking only in favor of Jose Menendez. But that wasn’t true. During the trials, many people testifying for the case only had negative things to say about the guy. Some of the people who’d worked with him previously said so many horrible things that it made Jose seem less credible as a mere victim.
And then, Ryan Murphy did the most unforgivable thing. He decided to ‘humanize’ Jose’s [alleged] horrible acts with his children by making it look like a habit influenced by generational trauma. And tried to imply that Jose’s mother sexually assaulted him as a child, resulting in him becoming an abuser himself. There’s no factual basis or proof of that, yet he saw nothing wrong in formulating such a heinous story.
Are Lyle & Erik ‘Monsters’?
I know, to a lot of people, they are. And most of them have a decent argument about that perspective. Although on the counts of what the brothers have [allegedly] been through, I fail to agree with them; yet I get it. However, if I speak dramatization-wise (even the story), the Menendez case was not “Monster” material. Lyle and Erik’s actions can’t be compared to Dahmer’s.
Murphy created another true crime anthology docudrama show in the last decade titled “American Crime Story”, which has covered the cases of OJ Simpson, Andrew Cunanan, and Clinton-Lewinsky in three separate seasons. The Menendez story in Netflix Monsters Season 2 fits that show more than the one that’s supposed to be about ‘Monsters’.
Since at first, I didn’t know what to expect, I hoped the monstrosity here would be the abuse Lyle and Erik had endured; which led to the tragedy of August 20, 1989. I expected them to get a fair portrayal from a creator who managed to find ways to sympathize with serial killers even, though the Menendez brothers weren’t half as morbid or terrible of criminals. But I was wrong, and I regret giving this series a chance.
Is There Anything To Like About Netflix Monsters Season 2?
Hate how they handled the story in Netflix Monsters Season 2, but it’s the showrunner’s fault. The cast had to work with what they were given, and they still managed to do a decent job. I was impressed with Ari Graynor’s Leslie Abramson, the empathy of the real Leslie was visible in her dialogue delivery and expressions.
Lyle was disappointing at many points, but it’s not Nicolas Alexander Chavez’s fault. He portrayed Lyle the way the script indicated him to. Also, the fact that Chavez looked like a baby-faced version of Vivek Oberoi, didn’t make it easier for me to take him seriously as all I could see was Vivek screaming.
Javier Bardem and Chloe Sevigny felt a perfect amount of disturbing yet tragic characters. I want to applaud the decision to try to humanize Jose and Kitty on different occasions, but I can’t. If the allegations are true, they don’t deserve the story to be told from their angle as people who just made some silly mistakes in their lives. Their sons weren’t favored the same by the storytelling and this is a tragic imbalance of “fair portrayal”.
Cooper Koch’s Erik was benign. He understood the assignment (per script), tried his best to portray the man’s vulnerability, and delivered. At many points, it did feel like this was a real person struggling and opening up about his experiences.
While Netflix Monsters Season 2 is horrible with too many problematic aspects, two scenes stood out for me. The fifth episode titled “The Hurt Man” was brilliant. A one-take episode that focuses solely on a hurt man reflecting on his haunted past, only to discover how tragic his life is. I don’t have words to describe how spot-on the direction was. It allowed the viewers to experience that vulnerability.
And then the scene at the end of Netflix Monsters Season 2 when their paths part on the road, was heartbreaking, to say the least. It’s bound to make you feel sorry for Lyle and Erik if you aren’t already pissed with them for their crime. At least, the brothers are now living in the same correctional facility in San Diego.
Ryan Murphy’s Response To The Backlash
People have been angry since Friday (September 20), and the anger just kept fueling over the last week, because nobody is having this nonsense Ryan Murphy is trying to pass as a “well-researched” show that tried to “focus” on “all perspectives” instead of giving the limelight to one single narrative.
In response to Erik Menendez’s statement, our boss babe Ryan Murphy chose to gaslight the brother. According to Murphy, he’s upset without having watched Netflix Monsters Season 2. He believes if Erik watched the show, he would see how 60-65% (oh babe has a number!) of the show evolves around what the brothers “claimed” happened to them. It’s almost as if Murphy is biased and doesn’t believe them.
Murphy tried to excuse his pathetic storytelling with the “obligation” he had to the parents to tell their story fairly on their behalf because they couldn’t. So much empathy, yet that couldn’t stop him from telling lies without any basis. Also, his claim of being “fair” would be admissible if he: didn’t try to sexualize real people who claim to be victims of sexual assault as minors, and for a significant portion of their lives.
Moreover, the extended family released a statement claiming his so-called ‘research’ is irrelevant because they were never consulted. And formulating fictional scenarios from ‘different perspectives’ isn’t justified either, because many members of the family were well aware that the brothers were being abused. So, trying to treat the brothers’ claims as possible exaggeration to be ‘fair’ to all ‘perspectives’ is a bit of a stretch.
After all this, any explanation Ryan Murphy gives doesn’t matter really. It’s not like he doesn’t have a history of going to any length to do what serves HIS best interest, exactly what he did in Netflix Monsters Season 2.
Lastly…
I have been a big Murphy fan for a good portion of my life. Dude is a legit ‘Drama’ queen. He knows what he wants and goes for it. He has some niche interests (Hollywood, Queer Culture, Tabloid Scandal, Horror, and True Crimes) and I’ve always been here for it. Because when he puts his 100%, you’re up for some entertaining television.
But me enjoying some good drama doesn’t excuse the fact that he’s been less supportive of small writers during the strike despite being a writer himself. And now the Netflix Monsters Season 2, this was quite horrible on his end; and I feel, I’m no longer a fan of the person Ryan Murphy. And I definitely won’t be looking forward to any future season of “Monster”.
Rating the Netflix Monsters Season 2 1 out of 5. 0 based on the points mentioned above, and 1 for episode 5 because that was the only episode that did their story justice. I’m sorry Cooper, Nicholas, Javier, Chloë, Ari, and the rest of the cast, you guys didn’t deserve this for your performance. But it’s just not okay.
If you’re curious about the story of the Menendez brothers, don’t watch this. Instead, wait for the documentary Netflix is bringing on October 7; “The Menendez Brothers” is the title.
