The Blotter Presents

Latest Episodes:

Episode 50: 043: The Trade And Alcatraz Revisited Feb 07, 2018

Show notes

Showtime enters an already tragically crowded field with The Trade, a comprehensive look at the business of heroin from poppy to police intervention -- and Eve Batey returns to the podcast to talk about the show's bleak effectiveness. If you've watched any combination of Live PD, Intervention, and any number of recent HBO documentaries, The Trade won't tell you anything new, but it's still a thought-provoking and well-built story about families, frustration, and how far the toxic effects of substance abuse can spread.
Later, with one of the escapees from Alcatraz back in the Bay-Area news, we discuss two takes on America's most famous prison break: one from Mythbusters, and one from Secrets Of The Dead. We also mull what makes the story -- and that of DB Cooper, not for nothing -- so appealing after so many years, whether we'll ever know what really happened, and the importance of pestering Tim's husband to make an Alcatraz Triathlon t-shirt. Inflate your podcast app and float on over to our latest episode of The Blotter Presents.
SHOW NOTES

Behind the scenes of The Trade with producer Brent Kunkle
The Anglin letter in the news
Watch the Mythbusters segment
Watch Secrets Of The Dead
Twin Peaks Monorail shirts and more at Avenues Dry Goods

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Episode 49: 042: Two Waco Projects And Marjoe Jan 31, 2018

Show notes

The twenty-fifth anniversary of the standoff at the Branch Davidian compound is approaching, and with it comes a veritable barrage of material on Waco, David Koresh, and how it all went pear-shaped. Toby Ball and I selected two of the higher-profile, A&E's documentary event Waco: Madman Or Messiah and the just-born Paramount Network's big-splash mini-series starring Taylor Kitsch, Waco. Does either project make sense of the tragedy that took place in Texas in 1993? Do you need to watch both -- or either? And do projects devoted to the events need to pick a side?
Toby suggested that we use our Cold Case time to look back at a Best Documentary winner from 1973: Marjoe, a peek behind the Pentecostal curtain with former child-prodigy preacher, (then-)current cheerful whistle-blower Marjoe Gortner. And you thought YOU were cynical about religious fund-raising...
SHOW NOTES

Watch Waco: Madman Or Messiah on A&E
Watch Waco on Paramount
Watch excerpts from Marjoe (full film available for rental/purchase on Amazon)

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Episode 48: 041: Jodi Arias: An American Murder Mystery And 1980s: The Deadliest Decade Jan 24, 2018

Show notes

As we approach the tenth anniversary of Travis Alexander's murder, Jodi Arias is back on our teevees in ID's Jodi Arias: An American Murder Mystery. It isn't really a mystery, and neither is the pervasive misogyny and black-and-white narrative manipulation that turned a confused and off-putting young girl into a scheming black widow, but returning guest Kevin Smokler and I found it very watchable, in the workmanlike way of this series.
Later, we go back almost thirty years to the murder of Rebecca Schaeffer, an already unimaginable crime that seems even more remote to us today, as it led to anti-stalking legislation and protections -- but The Deadliest Decade's take on Schaeffer is no more progressive than you'd expect. Why do TV newsmags have to underline the saintliness of the victims? What illusion of control might these nuance-free characterizations give to viewers? And can we stop misusing the term "Brat Pack"? All this plus some reading and pod recs in The Blotter Presents.
SHOW NOTES

Watch Jodi Arias: An American Murder Mystery AND this ep of Deadliest Decade on ID's website
The Blotter's Arias coverage
Karina Longworth's You Must Remember This podcast on Dead Blondes
Kevin's book, Brat Pack America: A Love Letter To '80s Teen Movies

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Episode 47: 040: The Assassination Of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story And The Chad Boushell Interview Jan 17, 2018

Show notes

American Crime Story returns after a triumphant first season with an all-new mid-nineties crime, and Tara Ariano returns to discuss it, and whether, after 20 years, we should accept that sometimes there is no "why." We'll also be discussing whether Sarah's the only one who thinks Édgar Ramirez as Versace looks AND sounds like Enrico Colantoni; if it's appropriate to covet a character's clothing if that character is a spree killer; and the question of The Nose in Penelope Cruz's portrayal of Donatella.
In our Cold Case section, Sarah sits down with Chad Boushell -- the unlucky Rob McKernan in the Bride Killa ep we looked at for Episode 39 -- to ask what's the hardest thing about playing the body, and the responsibility actors feel to real victims.
SHOW NOTES
- Chad Boushell on Twitter
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039: Final Appeal And There's Something Wrong With Aunt Diane Jan 10, 2018

Show notes

Oxygen starts 2018 with Final Appeal, which is basically MTV's Unlocking The Truth with different personnel and slower pacing. Did Patty Prewitt kill her husband? What's going on with the threatening phone calls? And was key evidence seriously just sitting in a sheriff's office storage locker for nearly 35 years?
We had a lot of questions about the Prewitt case, but not nearly as many as we still have after we've each watched legendarily unsettling HBO doc There's Something Wrong With Aunt Diane several times. What exactly prompted supermom and cable exec Diane Schuler to down 10 shots and drive the wrong way on a highway? How does her avenging sister-in-law get her hair to do that thing it does? And is the fact that we'll never know for sure what makes this case so compelling?
Like Loni Coombs says up top, sometimes you don't get answers, but we're asking anyway in the latest The Blotter Presents.
SHOW NOTES

Watch Final Appeal
More background on the Prewitt case
Watch There's Something Wrong With Aunt Diane
Steve Fishman's piece on the Schuler tragedy for New York

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038: True Conviction And Bride Killa Jan 03, 2018

Show notes

Investigation Discovery kicked off 2018 with an afternoon of premieres, and returning guest/enduring spouse Dan Brady and I took a look at two of them. True Conviction has an interesting premise -- but doesn't stick to it closely enough, falling into some crime-tabloid structural cliches instead of focusing on prosecutors and their work, plus host Anna-Sigga Nicolazzi keeps, well, leading the witnesses in talking-head interviews. Dan thinks it's good enough to fall asleep to...
...but had no use for the tackily named Bride Killa, while I thought it had major problems (and some baked-in sexism about what women "should be like" in a marriage) but delightfully balls-out commitment from the re-enactors, and unusually vernacular shade from some of the experts. "Because she's a big ol' bitch" is not a great look in terms of explaining motive, but Lord knows the show doubled down on proving it.
No need to spend YOUR whole haircut budget (...you'll see) on the year's first TBP; it's free!
SHOW NOTES
- Watch True Conviction
- Watch Bride Killa
- The Blotter bingo card
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Episode 44: 037: The Best Of 2017 In TV True Crime Dec 27, 2017

Show notes

Looking to kill an afternoon with the fam -- or a whole holiday-hammock week with your crime-nut in-laws? Recs ahoy, as Sarah D. Bunting runs down her top tens for both movies and series that aired on TV in 2017. Strong showings as usual from Netflix (The Keepers; American Vandal) and HBO (Mommy Dead And Dearest), a comeback in progress for Investigation Discovery, the overlooked highlights from Showtime and Spike, and honorable-mention listener favorites, all in a special year-in-review podcast on the year's best and bingeworthiest.
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Episode 43: 036: The Family I Had And Killer Kids Dec 20, 2017

Show notes

At this time of year, thoughts turn to family...unfortunately. Kevin Flynn of Crime Writers On... and Law & Order pod These Are Their Stories joins Sarah D. Bunting for a discussion of the spare, bleak, thought-provoking documentary The Family I Had, a stripped-down look at the family destroyed, then rebuilt, by and around Charity Bennett after her 13-year-old son murdered her 4-year-old daughter. True, there's no mystery here, no whodunnit, but the ellipses left by the filmmakers, and by the fundamental unknowability of human beings at times (even to themselves), makes this a very good sit.
Not good, at all, but still entertaining: Killer Kids S01.E05, whose committed re-enactments and oddly affectless narration make the episode inadvertently hilarious -- and quite possibly offensive. Strange pronunciations, inappropriate adverbs, and the implication that nagging teenagers to do chores or observe curfew could lead to parental figures' untimely deaths had Sarah and Kevin scratching their heads. And giggling, because settle down, Strings Of Imminent Doom.
SHOW NOTES

Kevin Flynn's Amazon author page
Watch Killer Kids
The "Amaro-sode" that caused such resentment

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035: Final Vision And Murder In A College Town Dec 13, 2017

Show notes

I'd hoped to have John Ramos join me to talk about Final Vision, with Scott Foley as Jeffrey MacDonald, since MacDonald is a fellow college alum and Felicity is a show we both are very fond of...but Time Warner Cable wasn't having it, so I took John's notes and forged ahead on my own. I didn't get any answers to questions like "Who is this movie for?" and "Why did they put that angry Brillo pad on the back of John Doman's head like a graduation mortar?", but that's the gig sometimes. I hope you'll investigate those mysteries with me on the forums.
In keeping with the theme, I dug up a TV movie called Murder In A College Town -- or, sometimes, What Happened To Bobby Earl? -- and made John watch it solely because it contained, for a single scene, Scott Speedman. It also contained Rufus from Gossip Girl, acting so derpy it makes Teddy Dunn look like Olivier, terrible writing for Kate Jackson's character, and some of the most offensive beer-pouring we've ever seen onscreen. TILT THE CUP, KID, JEEZ.
Should you bother with either of them? Or is the time-travel sequence on Felicity a better use of your time? I'll let you know in the latest episode of The Blotter Presents.
Show Notes

Watch Final Vision
Watch Murder In A College Town
Some background on Butch Pratt's death
Leah Kwan talks the original Fatal Vision with Gary Cole in Episode 003

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Episode 41: 034: Homicide For The Holidays And Guilty Rich Dec 06, 2017

Show notes

It's the mooooost murderous tiiiiime of the yeeeeear -- and if you think that's crass, wait until you hear Homicide For The Holidays's episode-naming conventions. Stephanie Cangro pulls up a (polished) chair to talk about HFTH's second-season premiere, "Thanks-Killing," and how soon we guessed whodunnit without Googling the murders of Earl and Terry Robertson in 1997. I was a little creeped out that two suspects shared the names of my uncles...
...who went to school with our Cold Case section's subject, John du Pont. Remembered by my dad as an odd duck, du Pont has had a lot of celluloid devoted to him in the years since his death, but we took another run at the topic with S01.E03 of Guilty Rich. Why is du Pont still such a compelling topic? Does Guilty Rich's narrative take too much pity on him? And why didn't his overbearing mother teach him how to smile uncreepily?
I'm not sure we answer those questions...but we do have DVR recommendations for both shows, so take a break from that pre-holiday yard work and listen to an all-new The Blotter Presents.
Show Notes

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