Dirty John Season 2: Betty: Truth Stranger than Fiction but Not Quite as Compelling

My wife and I just finished binging Dirty John Season 2: Betty on the USA Network.  It was a powerful season, brilliantly acted by Amanda Peet in the title role, but not as good as the first season.

The first season told the story of John Meehan (hence Dirty John), who actually was a character far more familiar to television drama than Betty Broderick.  John is a sweet-talking con-man killer, who ensnares Debra, superbly played by Connie Britton, who has delivered masterful performances in at least two other television series, Friday Night Lights and Nashville.  Britton on the screen, as well as Eric Bana as John, as well as the mounting, almost excruciating tension of whether Debra will realize what John is, and escape with her life, was an irresistible combination.

The acting was equally strong in the second season.  I already mentioned Peet as Betty, and Christian Slater was equally effective as her husband Dan.  But the story of Betty, a woman so devoted to Dan that, when he leaves her to be with and eventually marry Linda, Betty eventually kills them, is bizarre more than frightening, a study of a woman scorned becoming a woman insane, to the point of acting against her own self-interests, since by killing Dan and Linda, she loses any chance to be with her four kids whom she very much loves. 

I know that this a true story, with the typical docudrama  proviso that a few characters and scenes have been changed.  And they say the truth can be stranger than fiction, which is true enough.  But that doesn't mean such stranger truth can make for as gripping a story as an outright fiction, or, in this case of the second season of Dirty John, as gripping a story as the stranger truth of the first season.

But the second season was enjoyable and nonetheless worth viewing, if only for the sterling performances of the leads, especially Amanda Peet.

See also: Dirty John 1.1: Hunter and Hunted ... Dirty John 1.2: Motives and Plans ... Dirty John 1.4: The Forgiveness Gene ... Dirty John 1.5: John's Family ... Dirty John 1.6: Getting Wise ... Dirty John Season One Finale: Truth Stranger than Fiction

 

Dirty John Season 1 Finale: Truth Stranger than Fiction

Dirty John wrapped up its first season last night - there's supposed to be a second season, I assume with a completely different story - with an episode that seals this first season as a sterling example of truth stranger than fiction.  (I didn't review last week's episode 1.7 because it was mostly rehash.)

John comes close to killing Debra's daughter, Terra.  Her instincts with a knife save her, and she fatally stabs John.  As he's laying there in the hospital, waiting only for permission of his family to take him off life support, Debra says she can't do it.  Fortunately, John's sister is there, and she has no problem at all sending this monster to whatever hell awaits him.

But Debra ... she's good to the last drop.  After all of this, including the near-killing of her daughter, she can't bring herself to give the ok for John to be taken off life support?   She obviously inherited that insane forgiveness gene from her mother, to a grievous fault.

If this were purely a piece of fiction, I would find it too unbelievable to enjoy.  I would be utterly unable, in Coleridge's apt terms, to suspend my disbelief.  But since this is based on a true story, what are we to make of it?   For me, the lesson is that Debra in her own way is as crazy as John.  She doesn't hurt people, but she enables someone who does.

The acting in this series was excellent.  But since the storyline defies belief, even though it is true, and that is even more disturbing, I can't say I was enhanced by watching the series.  Nonetheless, glutton for punishment that I am, I'll no doubt watch season 2.

See also: Dirty John 1.1: Hunter and Hunted ... Dirty John 1.2: Motives and Plans ... Dirty John 1.4: The Forgiveness Gene ... Dirty John 1.5: John's Family ... Dirty John 1.6: Getting Wise

 

Dirty John 1.6: Getting Wise

One last review for 2018 - but I'll be back in the next few says with reviews of Vikings, The Orville, and who knows what else.   But this review is of another episode of one of the strangest stories, also based on true events, ever on television: Dirty John.

The good news in episode 1.6 is Debra is finally getting wise to John.  Actually, she's been wise to him before, but came back to him, while we've been seeing the horrible things he did to people in the past, and is doing to Debra's family in the present.  In 1.6 we see him sent to jail in the past, but let out too soon.  In the present, he spits on Ronnie's passport, and scares a divorce lawyer half to death.

Debra gets a new lawyer who has chops in both divorce and criminal cases.  She tells Ronnie and then John that she wants a divorce, and (somewhat uncharacteristically) he lets her walk out of their house.  It's hard to predict what's in his mind or what he'll do next.

John is clearly a sociopath, resourceful, and quick on his feet.  What it will take to bring him down for good is not clear at all.  Since this story is based on real life - indeed, not only real life, but a podcast about that - lots of people (presumably) already know what happened.   Just two more episodes left, so we should know soon, too.

I'm hoping - for Debra's sake, her family's sake, for the world's sake - that John's behind bars.  But given his cunning, nothing would surprise me.  See you next year.

See also: Dirty John 1.1: Hunter and Hunted ... Dirty John 1.2: Motives and Plans ... Dirty John 1.4: The Forgiveness Gene ... Dirty John 1.5: John's Family

 

Dirty John 1.5: John's Family

Other than a trenchant scene in which Ronnie (again) tells Debra off about John - which (of course) leads her to get even closer to John - episode 1.5 focuses on John's upbringing, by way of his father, who is as much a sociopath and swindler as John.

First of all, you couldn't ask for a better actor to play John's father than Shea Whigham.  Tina and I just saw him in Homecoming, where he was equally effective.  And of course he was unforgettable as Nucky's brother Eli in Boardwalk Empire.  The thing is, he plays radically different characters in each of these series, and brings home his character with searing, understated style in each of them.

In Dirty John, he's interested in earning money - by doing such things, for example, as getting his son John to eat a little glass in a restaurant, so he can extort some money from the owner.   John learns the hard way how he can play on people's vulnerabilities to not just to make money, but improve his position in this world.

Given what his father has done to him - not in terms of his school of hard knocks education, but in terms of the hardness of the knocks - it's not completely surprising that John puts his father out of his misery when he's already in bad shape in the hospital.  But this also shows that John has gone beyond his father in depravity - as far as we have seen, his father wasn't a killer.   And John has taken his father's advice to go after the families of people who oppose him to the level of threatening his own sister.

Debra doesn't (yet) know about John's murderous propensities, but how on Earth can she start taking him back, in view of what she indeed does already know about him? We got part of the story last week - she inherited her mother's insanely deep well of forgiveness - but there's something else that's deeply not quite right about Debra.

Again, I have no idea how this story turned out in reality, but I'm keenly interested in seeing how it turns out in this bizarre and compelling little series.

See also: Dirty John 1.1: Hunter and Hunted ... Dirty John 1.2: Motives and Plans ... Dirty John 1.4: The Forgiveness Gene

 

Dirty John 1.4: The Forgiveness Gene

Dirty John 1.4, on Sunday night, was even more a case study in insanity than the earlier episodes, which had some of that, too.  Indeed, there are at least two insane people in this episode, and neither one is Dirty John (at least, not so much in this episode),

The more conventional psycho in this hour is Debra's erstwhile brother-in-law, who for no apparent reason puts a bullet in the head of Debra's sister, while she's working on the computer, her back turned to him.  This, one would think, is about as depraved as it gets.  But the reaction of Debra and her sister's mother is, at least to my sensibilities, even crazier.

She forgives the man who killed her daughter.  Not just in a general, psychological sense.  She actually testifies on behalf of the killer at his trial.   This goes well beyond any religious ideal of forgiveness.   How on Earth could she want this miscreant killer to go free?

But all of this explains something very important in that family, something that explains why Debra is quick to forgive John.  Although she detests the man who killed her sister, and, unlike her mother, won't even talk to him, Debra has inherited some of her mother's insane penchant to forgive.  That in itself explains why she has put up with so much from John, and is now on the verge of taking him back.

Fortunately, her two daughters have no inherited this forgiveness gene.  But, as we've seen, Debra's not especially inclined to listen to them.   Which makes for compelling continuing story, about which I'll be back here next week with another report.

See also: Dirty John 1.1: Hunter and Hunted ... Dirty John 1.2: Motives and Plans

 

Dirty John 1.3: The Earlier Wife

Episode 1.3 of Dirty John brought us an historical portrayal of John and his earlier wife, a nurse in Dayton, Ohio.  The upshot is we see what a well-practiced con-man, psycho, or whatever John really is.

Which leaves Debra in an even worse position.   By pairing her finally becoming aware of the peril John is putting her in, with a stark tableau of what John was like before he met/seduced Debra, the result is Debra seems in even more dire straits than before we knew about John's earlier life and wife.

This leaves open two questions:  How bad is John, really?  And how will Debra get out of this?  I'm pretty sure we don't know what ultimately became of John's Dayton wife.  If she's dead, that means Debra's indeed in danger of losing her life.  If the nurse is still alive, that suggests there are limits to John's deception - it may not lead to the death of his victims.

As I've mentioned before, I don't know the true story behind this, nor have I listened to the podcast.  This means I'm approaching Dirty John as a straight-up mystery, in which I'm looking for clues and trying to grok the outcome.  On that level, Dirty John (the series) is doing a pretty good job of keeping us on our toes.   I have no idea what the outcome will be, and the death of anyone - including John (via Debra or one of her kids or nephew) or Debra (via John) are still real possibilities.

I'll see you here next week, when we know more.

See also: Dirty John 1.1: Hunter and Hunted ... Dirty John 1.2: Motives and Plans

 

Dirty John 1.2: Motives and Plans

Well, Debra'a finally beginning to get wise to John in episode 1.2 of Dirty John, though she certainly took long enough.

A second indication that he's not really a doctor didn't get Debra there.  Nor did the insensitive
comment he made to Debra's nephew Toby (good acting by Kevin Zegers).  But Ronnie unfazed.  She puts a tracker on John's car, which so far turns up nothing untoward, and hires a private detective, who finds the trailer park where John had been living.   Toby and Debra go there, and find a woman who knows John all too well, and tells them he's never been to Iraq.

And just when we'd be justified in giving up all hope for Debra, she grows suspicious when John gets a letter from someone in prison, and he gets defensive and hostile when Debra questions him about it.  Finally!

But what is John really up to?  To somehow get all of Debra's money?  To kill her?  The answer resides in just how much of a psycho he really is.  At this point, anything is possible, and the episode ends with only Debra's mother having anything good to say about John, because she "loves" the way he treats her daughter.

Back to Debra's money: the two got married without (as far as we know) a pre-nuptial agreement, so if they got divorced now he'd be entitled to half of her money (and property, etc).  But if that's all he wanted, he could have filed for divorce already.   (By the way, I know this limited series is based on a podcast and a true story, but I'm familiar with neither, and I'm actually glad about that, because it makes the series more fun.)

What will John do when he learns Debra is on to him?  Will he change his plans (whatever they are) and do something worse, or just try to cash in and get out of there?  I''ll definitely be along for the ride, and back here with more reviews.

See also: Dirty John 1.1: Hunter and Hunted

 

Dirty John 1.1: Hunter and Hunted

Well, how can you resist watching a series starring Connie Britton and Eric Bana?  Tina and I couldn't, and we were glad.  At least so far as the debut episode, on Bravo last night.

Debra Newall (Britton) has been married four times.  She has two daughters (Ronnie, played by Juno Temple, excellent in Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams) and Terra (played by Julia Garner, who was so good in Ozark) to show for it.  That, and, against all odds, an apparently open, questing heart.

John Meehan (Banner) is some kind of anesthesiologist (maybe a doctor, maybe a nurse, maybe both? not clear).   He's incredibly attentive and apparently caring of Debra.  But there's something not quite right about him.   After a first date in which he jumps in Debra's bed - he leaves when she asks him to get up and go into another, less intimate room with her - he and Debra strike up a relationship.  But he shows up late to an important event, with she dressed to the nines, and he in scrubs.  And neither daughter can stand him.

Nonetheless, she marries him.  And that's where the first episode ends, leaving us certain that some kind of serious no good is going to come from this.  And part of that is what Debra is up to.  Is she in some sense leading John on, for some purpose as yet unrevealed to us?  She seems too smart to be taken in by whatever his game is.  And her siding with John against her daughters doesn't quite add up, either.

There's clearly something evil lurking behind this, and it will be fun to see from whom, and on whom it's inflicted.