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Dirty John




Domestic violence in all its forms is kind of the subject ‘of the hour’ in my country due to a series of unbelievable court decisions regarding it and cases involving it. Maybe because of that, I had some sort of expectations about this show that weren’t totally fulfilled by what it’s really about.

The way I saw it, the show wasn’t very entertaining as it was too slow, Debra was a tedious, monotonous character and John wasn’t very convincing as a villain. As I hadn’t heard of this particular case before, it was only by the end of the first episode that I knew it was based on real facts and people, but that just made the whole thing seem… even more shallow.

After a couple of episodes, however, I realized that some of that vibe, of that feeling it was evoking, how fake it all seemed, might all be on purpose and this apparent ‘not-so-great’ ability of John for manipulation was actually a genius master scheme to show us what a truly manipulative person should look like and how even the viewer that has a pretty good idea that John was “bad news” can be surprised about how deceiving he truly is. 

After watching this interpretation of this fiction show, I was advised to watch the documentary and I really liked it. It’s so sad and almost scary that such a person actually existed, but somehow, after that, the whole show started to make more sense for me.

I don’t think that it’s a great piece of entertainment, as it stands, but it is, undoubtedly, interesting to watch, especially if you pair it with the full documentary on John as well.

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