I’m sure everyone has heard a joke about “pulling a Menendez.” The story of two brothers who brutally murdered their parents with shotguns is not one you forget. And if you watch crime documentaries and 20/20 episodes with your mom like I do, then you’ve heard this one. Which brings me to Ryan Murphy and the new series collection of “Monsters,” called “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story.”
Murphy has had a hand in well-known television shows like “Glee” and “American Horror Story.” More recently, he co-created and produced “Monsters,” with Ian Brennan, featuring the gruesome true stories of Jeffrey Dahmer and the Menendez brothers.
Needless to say, with Murphy’s net worth of over $150 million, he can afford to cross lines and make controversial statements. And he certainly did that with “Monsters” season two.
The first episode, “Blame It on the Rain,” opens with Lyle and Erik Menendez inside a hearse dressed in funeral attire. Erik realizes that Lyle is wearing their father’s shoes and breaks down into tears, causing an argument between them. The interesting dynamic right off the bat pulls you into their clearly messed up heads.
“It’s up to us now, right? And they would be proud of us. They would be proud of us,” Erik says.
The story continues showing the aftermath of the murder, the crippling anxiety of Erik, and the psychotic rage episodes of Lyle. The details of the actual premeditation were done justice, which is surprising considering this was made for entertainment purposes. Hollywood is not known for its honesty.
But, the first episode does a great job of depicting what is said to have happened after the killings. Erik confides in therapist L. Jerome Oziel in October 1989, that he and Lyle were responsible for the murders. However, it wasn’t until Oziel’s mistress Judalon Smyth ran to the authorities after their nasty breakup in March 1990 and told them that Oziel had tapes of the brother’s confession, leading to their arrest.
The real mystery you might be wondering: Who were these boys truly, and why would they kill their parents? In all honesty, the “why” is something we will never have a clear answer to.
As far as the boys go, we know they were rich kids living in mansions and buying whatever they wanted with daddy’s money. Their father, Jose Menendez, immigrated from Cuba at 16- years-old and made a name for himself in America by working his way up the ladder. He worked within the music industry at RCA Records. Jose is said to have been a ruthless businessman, which is how Murphy portrays him.
In the show, Jose had a very controlling, obsessive, and abusive nature with the boys. Whether it was tennis practice or their girlfriends, Jose needed to control every aspect of his son’s lives. Not only was Jose horrible to the boys, but he was also just as bad to his wife, Kitty. He was having multiple affairs, which drove Kitty to start taking pills, obsessively drink, and contemplate suicide.
Erik and Lyle later confess that their father had been sexually abusing them since they were little. After many detailed conversations with the lawyers about the father’s actions, the brothers are visibly shaken. Episode five, “The Hurt Man,” the viewer can expect to sit and watch 36 minutes of a detailed sexual assault encounter of Erik, who is telling his lawyer in jail; I have never been so uncomfortable in my life. Not only are the details so chilling and graphic, but the camera angle of the interview never changes. Stuck in a one-shot wide angle looking over the shoulder of Erik’s attorney as he sits across the table in a dull jail room.
During the trial, Erik and Lyle tell their side of the story on the witness stand. However, the jury was not all convinced by Erik’s performance. The jury ends in a deadlock, leading to a mistrial. In the end, none of it mattered: the sexual abuse, mental struggles, the broken Menendez family, because both brothers get life imprisonment without the possibility of parole and are separated. They had been separated until 2018, when they saw each other for the first time in 22 years.
The real problem with the show was Murphy’s added homoerotic and incest plotlines. There is no actual evidence that the brothers were ever romantically involved. Murphy must have forgotten that these aren’t fictional characters. They are real people who are currently sitting behind bars and were abused as children, leading to their mental breakdowns. If Murphy wanted to create a show about brothers who kill their parents because they have a thing for each other, then he should’ve just created a new story. That plotline took away from the abuse victim narrative and painted them as devious and sociopathic criminals. There were also many scenes about Erik Menendez being a closeted homosexual. In an interview with Barbara Walters, Erik explains that he is not gay, but felt confused for a long time because of his father’s abuse. Another thing Murphy decided to ignore.
Outlets have reported that Erik Menendez released a statement the day after the show was released saying, “dishonest portrayal of the tragedies surrounding our crime have taken the painful truths several steps backward — back through time to an era when the prosecution built a narrative on a belief system that males were not sexually abused, and that males experienced rape trauma differently than women.”
The Menendez family have all come out with a statement calling the show “repulsive” and “character assassination of Erik and Lyle.” We will never have a full picture of the Menendez motive, but if even half of what was said in the show, interviews, and court documents; then these men were subjected to enough as young adults, we don’t need their story for entertainment.
