‘Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story’ is Peak Ryan Murphy TV

We can never associate the Menendez surname with anything other than what happened on August 20, 1989: when Lyle and Erik killed their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez, in the mansion that Jose bought a year earlier for $4 million at 722 North Elm Drive in Beverly Hills. So the surname Menendez is synonymous with atrocity and that is precisely what we see in Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, the Netflix limited series, created by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan that has had great audience success but relegated by the critics, who expected something similar to Murphy’s previous work, The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. But here I totally disagree and I’m going to say that Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story is one of the best things Ryan Murphy has done in his career.

In real life, the tragedy of the Menendez family had everything to captivate (as it did) not only the United States, but the entire world. It was the late 80s, early 90s. The media framed the story in the horror of patricide but hung it on a wall built by all kinds of explanations, excuses and hypotheses. The good-looking boys, Lyle and Erik were supposedly victims of sexual abuse by their monstrous father and with the complicity of their also monstrous mother; the fear that they both had when thinking that those monstrous parents wanted to kill them led them to become monsters themselves. And although no one really knows what happened in that family, one thing was very clear: it was a horrible and sexy story. So when it came time for his trial, Court TV was there, live with the Menendez zoo.

Blame it on Murphy

Now, Netflix brings the Menendez story back again. Let’s start with the cast: Cooper Koch as Erik Menendez; Nicholas Alexander Chavez as Lyle Menendez; Javier Bardem as Jose Menéndez; Chloë Sevigny as Mary Louise “Kitty” Menendez; Nathan Lane as Vanity Fair’s Dominick Dunne, who provides the series with an air of focus and humanity,  himself the protagonist of a past tragedy–someone murdered his daughter but was out of jail after three years–and Ari Graynor as evil defense attorney, Leslie Abramson. Koch and Chavez give a masterful interpretation of the Menendez brothers. It’s so creepy that you can feel the evil in them, Darth Vader style. Murphy covers it all.

There are no loose ends in this series, it is like placing each and every one of the characters in a personal trial. Summarizing the plot would take an entire article but let’s say that Lyle and Erik, sons of businessman Jose and housewife Kitty, kill their parents. Erik then tells his therapist, to whom he never told about the alleged sexual abuse committed by his father for years. But that would later be the great issue of the defense of the two brothers.  Whether their father raped them or not, they are (by the time the series begins) nothing more than what Dominick Dunne (Nathan Lane) describes as sort of lost souls wandering a world full of money, excess, sociopathy and egomania.

We can always expect the great Chloë Sevigny to bring an immaculate performance to the table, just as she does here, but Javier Bardem breaks the league and exploits the best of himself in an absolutely stunning performance; Yes, sometimes the actions of a father go far beyond what one imagines; the level of yelling, scolding… let’s not touch on the sexual topic yet. But Bardem does it all and a little more. And Ari Graynor deserves a brief aside as the defense attorney. Applause, it’s been a while since I hated someone as much as I hated her.

Why did they commit this horrible crime? To keep all the family’s money? For fear that Jose and Kitty would kill them? Because of trauma? Or simply because two psychopaths disconnected from all human sense. It’s all there, on the screen and you, the audience, are the jury.

But what is it that Murphy does that has critics upset? Well, he doesn’t make it easy. The logical thing iss to tell the story as it (supposedly) happened: The murder, the trial, the defense allegations, the notoriety of the case, and the conviction. Play it linearly. But no, I applaud and reaffirm that it is one of the best things Murphy has done because he goes deep and becomes something like a deployed sniper team, each pointing to a different story’s angle, each with equal importance. The show goes back and forth looking for clues, comparing comments and making an effort to assimilate each character’s version.

So, what we have in the nine episodes (critics say it is very long and repetitive) is precisely an analysis of every detail that the trial revealed, along with other hypotheses that logically come to mind:  It features multiple versions of how family life developed. Then there’s the insane and sadistic scene of… well, there are several sadistic and insane scenes, but the murder of the parents. Yes, it is too strong and that is how it needs depiction. How the hell can you show this without the horror it represents?

The only truth is that both the Mendendez brothers will be in prison until they die. Also, it surprised me to read many comments on social media from people who support Erik and Lyle and who continue to pray for their freedom, something that will never happen. The series leaves many questions. bout the very fine line between good and evil, questions  about the extent to which parents shape the subsequent behavior of their children, questions that neither Jose nor Kitty Menéndez had time to answer,