Love Has Won: O Culto da Mãe Deusa

I love watching these crazy cult shows. It baffles my mind how someone can be completely insane and yet they find others who look to them for leadership! This cult is definitely up there on the "dumba**" scale. A brain-fried alcoholic McDonald's worker decides to proclaim she is god and, through the power of the internet, manages to gather a following of other emotionally broken, mouth-breathing layabouts to help her fund her Amazon addiction. This chick is (was) part Team Swan, part Marshall Applewhite and maybe a little part Manson. She claimed she was god, cleopatra, Marilyn Monroe, and Quanon....oh, and also Robin Williams psychically guided her! You can't make up this level of bat-s**t!

There were several times I had to ask, is this a spoof series? Like 'This is Spinal Tap' for cults. It's sad that these are real people living life so poorly.

But, somehow, it's compelling to watch. How? How do people get this lost? I hope the rest of the series takes a dive into these lives (rather than the crazy clips) and how they became so broken. Trauma, obviously, but it's got to be more than just that.

As a parent it's a nightmare to think your kids might end up so astray in their lives. We'd like to think we'll be there for them and have given them enough tools. Sometimes it's still not enough. It's easy to call these people absolute morons. Outliers. Anomalies. Freaks. Is that in any way helpful, or preventative? I hope the rest of the series veers a little more in that direction.

As Episode 1 of "Love Has Won" (2023 release; 3 episodes ranging from 54 to 58 min. Each) opens, it is "Creston, CO, April 29, 2021" and the cops are descending on the home of a small cult group, where they find the mummified body of Amy Carlson, a/k/a Mother God. We then go back in time as we learn of Amy's upbringing, a young mom with 2 kids and managing a McDonald's in Dallas. How did that turn into becoming a cult leader? At this point we are 10 minutes into Episode 1.

Couple of comments: this is the latest documentary from director Hannah Olson ("Baby God", "The Last Cruise"). Here she reassesses the life and times of a woman who at age 30 decides to leave her existence as she knew it then, and ends up proclaiming herself Mother God: "God is on the planet and she is a woman!", as the group called Love Has Won proclaims. Of course Love Has Won is awash in multiple conspiracy theories. And then just when you think that things can't get any weirder, they do. Olson mostly lets the members of Love Has Won tell the story. No need for Olson to correct anyone, I mean you can't make this stuff up! Bottom line: this is fascinating viewing, and these 3 episodes just flew by. Over the end titles of the last episode, we hear "Love Is Strange", the original 1957 version by Lonnie Donegan, which I had not heard before (I am familiar with the 1972 version by Paul McCartney & Wings). Great tune. Last but not least: the correct title of this mini-series is "Love Has Won", period. No sign anywhere in the series of "The Cult of Mother God" that many sources have added to the original title for no apparent reason.

"Love Has Won" recently premiered on HBO and is now also streaming on Max, where I caught it. I watched all 3 episodes in a single setting. If you have any interest in how a seemingly very ordinary woman changes her life from being a manager at McDonald's to becoming the leader of a small cult, I'd readily suggest you check this out, and draw your own conclusion,

Sporadically interesting but it didn't really make any effort to tell me why I should care or why this is even interesting. Its almost completely devoid of insights. The cult was only around a dozen people at most, so its hard to argue it had any wider impact. 'Heaven's Gate: Cult of Cults' made a pretty good effort to delve into the psychology of cult members and why people join cults. There's nothing of that here. Much of it was just watching a sad collective of drug and alcohol addicts getting intoxicated and talking gibberish, with a leader who's clearly suffering from a mental illness. Am I supposed to be entertained by this? Clearly the idea is that crazy automatically means interesting. But without analysis the spectacle verges on voyeurism. There definitely should have been more non-LHW voices to give a more grounded and critical perspective.

A good way to make money, have a bunch of hippie chicks wait on me hand and foot. Don't need the Anthony Kedis wannabe cramping my style. Sorry this D-bag is a mental criminal who should be jailed n prison. These people are absolutely insane. All are broken people, grasping at anything to give themselves validation. You look at the interviews and just tell there is something not right.

I loved how the Hawaiian people we not putting up with this. A snapshot of what is wrong with people. All are making excuses and pointing fingers as who they s crazier. Here's an idea, drink a bunch of toxic materials to see if a space ship will pick you up.