Tiger King:Murder, Mayhem and Madness

I had been hearing about this show for the last couple of weeks, and decided to give it a try. After all, in these pandemic times, I had no where better to be. What I was expecting was a fictional movie with cheap special effects and bad acting, a Sharknado if you will. If only! What I got instead was a documentary about some sleazy people who have no redeeming qualities. The story follows Joe Exotic (you will not be surprised to hear that is not his real name) who owns, well, owned, a big cat park in Oklahoma. You might describe him as a mullett wearing, gun toting, gay polygamist. He exploits these big cats shamelessly. Since people love to be photographed with the cats’ babies (you can pay 100’s of dollars to get your picture taken with one), I wondered almost immediately what happens to the cats as they get older and are no longer able to “pull their weight,” so to speak. He is surrounded by a gang of the most skeevy people you’d never want to associate with, including a pervert child sex abuser. And the people visiting his ‘park,’ and attending his shows are nearly as bad. Low lifes is too kind a description of the whole bunch. On the other side of the coin, we find Carol Baskin. She purports to be an animal activist who wants to shut down Joe Exotic and keep him from exploting the tigers. Good intentions; but as the documentary progresses, it is easy to put her in the same unscrupulous category as Joe himself. Not only that, but it is more than likely that she had something to do with the murder of her first husband (the millionaire whose estate left her the money to carry on her crusade). These are both evil and reprehensible people. So you may be wondering, why did I watch all 7 episodes? Partly out of boredom, but mainly because I was hoping that somewhere in this mess were good people. I am a hopeful kind of person. I honestly believe most people are truly good at heart. Despite the people depicted in this series, I would like to believe that most animal sanctuaries are indeed just that. Next up, good people who rescue tigers. It might not get stellar ratings – but I will be there watching!!