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With its new season centered around Lizzy Borden, Ryan Murphy, and Ian Brennan A monster The anthology has already reached its fourth chapter. Following Jeffrey Dahmer, the Menendez brothers and Ed Gein, the series puts a female assassin center stage for the first time.
Four seasons, four notorious cases, and enough murder, bloodshed, and misery to give even the most seasoned true crime fan a few sleepless nights. But which season left the biggest mark? Which one stands head and shoulders above the rest? And where was it done? A monster First formula starting to show some cracks? Here are our rankings for all four seasons A monsterFrom weakest to strongest.
4
The Lizzie Borden Story
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Someone has to finish last, and that dubious honor goes to the newest installment, The Lizzie Borden Story. That certainly doesn’t make it a bad season. Far from it. There are plenty of powerful moments, and this time Murphy and Brennan include several notorious female killers in the mix. Aileen Wuornos It appears, as does Elizabeth Bathory.
Like a lot Ed Gein storythe season takes a lot of creative liberties with the facts. Instead of just telling the story of Lizzie Borden, it also attempts to explore the impact of her case on serial killer Aileen Wuornos.
Wuornos ends up playing a surprisingly prominent role in the season, and ironically, her story is one of its strongest. A lot of that goes to Sarah Paulson, who was fantastic in the role. The only problem? It has nothing to do with Lizzie Borden. In fact, by the time these scenes begin, you begin to wonder if that’s the case A monster Wuornos should simply have been given a season of its own. Judging by what we got here, there’s definitely enough material for one person.
As a result, the whole thing doesn’t always tie together as neatly as it should. The series sometimes seems a little too desperate to connect every dot on the kill board, whether or not those dots really need to be connected. In doing so, it loses some of the immediacy that made the first two seasons so effective.
still, A monster Clearly, he’s nowhere near running out of steam. Even when it misses the mark, there’s enough craft here to place it comfortably above much of Netflix’s output. Pioneering, though? Not this time.
3
Ed Gein story
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with Ed Gein storyIt seemed like the writers decided that reality simply wasn’t weird enough. The story of Ed Gein, the notorious “Butcher of Plainfield,” takes several big creative turns. These choices sparked a lot of controversy when the season arrived, but there’s one thing that’s hard to argue with: Charlie Hunnam is great as Jane.
Even his strange vocal performance became a talking point, but Hunnam manages to make Jin extremely uncomfortable to watch. In this particular case, that’s a huge compliment.
Season 3 is also less concerned with Jane’s crimes themselves than with the enormous shadow they cast on popular culture and cinema. from mental patient and Texas chain saw massacre For Alfred Hitchcock, the series draws all sorts of connections between Jane and the horror that follows.
It makes for great television, but it also means that the season sometimes strays away from the man whose name is on the tin. The true story of Ed Gein is already terrifying enough without a lot of embellishment, and there are scenes here that really grab you. However, this season never landed with the same harsh blow as the previous two seasons. strong? definitely. Don’t forget? not quite.
2
The story of Lyle and Eric Menendez
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After the tremendous success it achieved DahmerIt was hardly possible to set the bar higher than that. The story of Lyle and Eric Menendez It scans with amazing ease. Season 2 proved to be a remarkably strong follow-up and generated a lot of buzz outside of Netflix itself. The case of Lyle and Eric Menendez has been thrust firmly back into the spotlight; Netflix released a separate documentary about the brothers, and the controversy surrounding their convictions and potential release has erupted once again.
However, strip away all that outside attention, and it’s the acting that really pushes this season to another level. Cooper Koch and Nicholas Alexandre Chavez carry the series effortlessly. Koch, in particular, gets one episode in which he’s allowed to throw it all out on screen. The lengthy conversation between Eric and his lawyer Leslie Abramson, played by Ari Graynor, unfolds largely in one very long take and ranks among the most impressive scenes. A monster produced.
where Dahmer It can make you feel almost physically uncomfortable, and Season 2 approaches things differently. It’s less gruesome, less obvious, less concerned with outright horror, and yet it hits just as hard emotionally. The performance was exceptional, with almost every episode bringing something worthwhile to the table, and the series once again managed to pull a decades-old issue into the center of public debate.
Most importantly, it never feels like an attempt to simply do it Dahmer once again. He finds his own identity. Exactly what A monster necessary.
1
The story of Jeffrey Dahmer
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The story of Jeffrey Dahmer The season remains in every subsequent chapter of A monster You may try to measure up to. Rarely has a series left you feeling so desperate to do literally anything else after an episode. Put on a mindless skit. Walking the dog. Stare blankly out the window for twenty minutes. It didn’t really matter, as long as it no longer involved Jeffrey Dahmer at all. That’s how hard he’s hitting this season.
The series went remarkably far in depicting Dahmer’s crimes and, more importantly, their consequences. Not because every other scene involved buckets of blood splattered on the walls, but because of the stifling atmosphere and the constant awareness that there are real victims and grieving families behind this nightmare.
Perhaps most importantly, the story has remained relatively focused. There were no endless detours involving other serial killers, no increasingly elaborate flights of fancy, no desperate attempts to connect everything to everything else. Dahmer It felt raw, restrained, and awfully close to home.
Evan Peters was exceptional. His performance was extremely creepy and unsettling, and served as another reminder of his range as an actor. Richard Jenkins also impressed as Lionel Dahmer, Jeffrey’s father, while Niecy Nash gave one of the season’s standout performances as his neighbor Glenda Cleveland. Through her view, the series made clear how many warning signs there were, and how many of them were not taken seriously enough. The result is television that you probably wouldn’t choose to stick around for dinner, but that stayed with you long after the credits rolled. This is something subsequent seasons have managed to do less and less.
He is A monster Starting to crack?
A monster It’s still very much alive and kicking, but after four seasons, some cracks are starting to appear in the formula.
from Ed Gein story Onward in particular, Ryan Murphy, Ian Brennan and their team seem increasingly determined to think beyond the issue itself. more Creative liberties are takenDifferent assassins and periods are stitched together, and the boundaries between fact, interpretation and outright invention become increasingly blurred.
Sometimes that results in great television. Other times, it’s as if someone in the writers’ room discovered an empty space on the canvas and simply couldn’t resist adding another piece of string. That’s why the first two seasons still stand above the rest for me. It was more primal, more direct and, above all, more poignant. Dahmer The Netflix phenomenon is real The story of Lyle and Eric Menendez He proved that his success was not a one-off.
This certainly doesn’t mean that seasons three and four are bad TV. Not even close. Even when A monster Operating below its best, it remains the kind of series that Netflix can comfortably put front and center. But this huge noise? Office conversations? That weird feeling that it seems like everyone you know was watching the same extremely annoying series at the exact same time? A monster He has not reached these heights again since the Menendez Brothers.
Now we wait to see what a potential fifth season will bring out of the murder drawer. Whoever gets their turn next, hopefully Murphy and his team will stick a little closer to the facts. Because if it’s four seasons A monster It taught us something, which is that reality is usually weird, terrifying, and wonderful enough without much help from the writers’ room.