In case you havenโt heard, Dirty John is back on Netflix for another season.
Far removed from season oneโs gritty source material โ the Dirty John podcast from LA Times reporter Christopher Goffard – season two of the anthology tells the story of scorned suburban wife, Betty Broderick.
After meeting in Indiana during their college years, Betty (Amanda Peet) and Dan Broderick (Christian Slater) married in April of 1969.
The Netflix series follows the couple from their humble beginnings, Betty in the โheroicโ role of working mum, parenting alone and feeding her children using food stamps, and Dan as the absentee father dedicated to his studies at both medical school and law school, through to their successful, affluent life in San Diego.
As their four kids grow, Dan builds a successful law practice, and Betty enjoys a day-drinking, socialite lifestyle.
But their life, heavy in materialism and 1880s glamour, takes a turn when Dan has an affair, leaves Betty and marries his secretary, Linda Kolkena.
Then, things get messy and โrevengeyโ.
Despite Bettyโs early depiction as a loving wife and mother, the subtle hints of a marriage lacking love devolves into a five-year legal battle over money, property and custody, which is interlaced with Bettyโs self-destruction.
Her obsession with her ex-husband and his new wife sees her excluded from her friendship group and her mental health deteriorates to the point of a psychiatric ward session.
Her increasingly abusive behaviour includes threatening phone messages, vandalism, breaking and entering, and burning Danโs clothes, and climaxes in Betty shooting Dan and Linda.
The depiction of Dan is problematic; the series toys with victim blaming and hints his โgas-lightingโ contributed to his death in a way that would enrage feminists (myself included) if the genders were reversed.
Betty Broderick receives encouragement from other women who send her letters of support in prison.
This is not the first time Betty Broderickโs story has been told on the small screen.
The murders were the subject of a 1992 tele-movie and she and her grown children were interviewed by Oprah Winfrey that same year.
In the interview, Betty Broderick claimed she had the โthe perfect marriage.โ
However, her daughter Kim, who testified against her at trial, told the Los Angeles Times her mum got mad at her dad all the time.
โOnce, Mom picked up the stereo and threw it at Dad,โ she said.
โAnd she locked him out constantly and heโd come around to my window and whisper, โKim, let me inโ.โ
Itโs another Hollywood true crime story and itโs super watchable, with some problematic underlying tones of โhe might have deserved itโ.
Now streaming on Netflix.
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