Ryan Murphy loves portraits of complicated people, both fictional and nonfictional. In one realm, he created shows about horror stories and theatre kids, and in the other, he’s crafted portraits of O.J. Simpson, Jeffrey Dahmer, and the Menendez brothers. He often has a penchant for sensationalizing, but that’s usually balanced by a blunt portrayal of how horrific acts affect everyone in a community.
However, in the latest iteration of his Monster anthology series, Monster: The Ed Gein Story, the writer’s penchant for going larger than life spirals out of control. The entire series blurs the line between true crime and myth with the hopes of holding a mirror up to the entire industry, but only ends up making the problem even worse.
