J0SCH

Was a huge fan of her first special, her second one was decent, but this was horrendous: sixty minutes of an unfunny rant about how desperate she is to get laid in full vulgar detail with nothing funny about it. Nothing clever, nothing funny, just nauseating vulgarity in a failed bid at entertainment. Save the time and skip, or at least give it 10 minutes and give up like everyone else I know who attempted to watch, including many comedy fans and women and/or Asians who otherwise deeply supported her. It seems like she went from clever to clever/raunchy to full raunch with nothing clever at all.

This isn't the most complicated or intellectual thriller out there but it was surprisingly entertaining and enjoyable. I had seen a few negative soundbites out there, but there wasn't much in general given I saw one of the first screenings and I was trying to avoid reading much before watching. The soundtrack was great, some scenes had great camera play, and the way the story revolved around a small handful of characters was great -- the writing was good enough but the acting/characters was well done. Some things were very predictable but there were smaller twists and turns that made it fun. The only major irritation, common in some thrillers, was the outrageous stupidity/recklessness of the main chsracter, with some particularly dumb actions/writing. Not a must see by any means but fun and interesting enough to add to your list.

This series brings to light a really important and disturbing topic and series of stories all around child abuse, neglect, and massive fraud in segments of the expensive boarding school / behavioral program industry. However as some others have pointed out, Katherine's heavy on-screen presence really detracted from the bigger story. Yes, she is the director and has other key roles in production, but there were so many other compelling student stories that felt rushed or less included as part of the broader narrative. It felt like 2.5 episodes of focusing mostly on her, with a fascinating first half of the final episode really getting into the meat of the real story of those responsible and how they operated. That was by far the most interesting and compelling part of the story, and should have been more of a focus. Overall the narrative was very disjointed, repetitive, and was unclear in what the purpose was of this project... was it to bring the perpetrators to justice? Was it to tell stories of victims? Was it to shed a light to push for investigations and legislative change? They are sitting on all of this evidence, some of which gets tossed in a bonfire at the end, yet seem to be doing nothing with it. What did she want? What was her goal? What are others doing besides her? Her and many of these former students suffered greatly for sure, but there was way too much emotion and involvement in this project by those really close to what happened. Balancing this closeness with more professional and distant individuals could have elevated this project's focus, narrative, and impact.