How I Caught My Killer | Series Review

The title of Hulu’s How I Caught My Killer intrigued me. A lot. Like, what could that possibly mean? I knew it was a docu-series, meaning these were true stories. Were these stories where victims called their friends or loved ones and told them who killed them before they died? Sadly, no.

How I Caught My Killer is a nine episode series that tells nine separate stories of murder. In most of the stories, the killers were caught thanks to some clues from the victim’s cell phone GPS or diary entries or a conversation they had with someone in the days before their death.

Hulu has a lot of true crime documentaries on their roster. It seems like every time I try to watch one of them, I find myself disappointed. In this case, the series wants you to believe that the victims made a conscious decision to identify their attacker. Alas, that is not the case. While the victim’s cell phone or personal conversations have a hand in catching their killer, it’s nothing that the victim did on purpose. In a lot of these cases, it was the cell phone’s GPS that told the police where the victim’s body was or what their movements were before their death. Unless you are actively turning off your GPS, I wouldn’t count that information as you “finding” your killer.

Not only are the victims not “catching” their killer, in some of the stories, they had nothing to do with the arrest at all. In one of the stories, an ex-boyfriend who was already in jail told the police that the killer confessed to him and that is how she was apprehended. Now, I’ll admit that some of the stories had some awful police work but just as many of the stories relied totally on the police doing their job. Looking into a victim’s text history or Facebook chat history is basic policework. And none of those messages were “Hey, I’m going to murder you tomorrow.”

The only positive thing I can say about this series is that I was not familiar with a lot of the stories. I stopped consuming a lot of true crime media during the pandemic because it was doing bad things to my mental health. But it is still pretty rare for a docu-series like this to be filled with stories that I haven’t heard about. I just wish the series was a little more honest about it’s content.

Kaleidoscope | Series Review

Netflix is trying some new things with their original series. Kaleidoscope, released on January 1, 2023, can supposedly be watched in any order. Instead of the episodes being numbered, they are designated by color. It’s an interesting concept but does it work?

Leo (Giancarlo Esposito) is gathering his crew to pull off the biggest heist in the world. Together, the group of six plan on breaking into a vault owned by security expert Roger Salas (Rufus Sewell) in order to steal seven billion dollars worth of bonds. Meanwhile, FBI agent Nazan Abassi (Niousha Noor) is hot on their trail. Will the heist be a success or will they all end up in prison for life?

My husband and I had been looking forward to watching Kaleidoscope. We thought that the concept of a show that can be watched in any order was really cool. But it was only recently that we got the chance to sit down and actually watch it. Before I go further, let me tell you the order we were given by Netflix’s randomizer: Black, Yellow, Green, Orange, Violet, Blue, Red, Pink, and White. No matter who watches the show, Black will always be first and White will always be last. (Black isn’t really an episode. It just explains how the series works.)

While the randomization was really cool, it didn’t always work very well. For example, the last three episodes we had - Red, Pink, and White - took place The Day After The Heist, Six Months After The Heist, and The Heist, in that order. It made the ending a little confusing. We spent way too much time saying “But what about this guy?” or “Who is this person?” or “What is going on?”

The concept worked a little bit better when we saw Leo putting the team together then the next episode would be a flashback of how Leo met that person or you would see how Leo met that person then he would be putting together the team. It made a little more sense compared to seeing the aftermath of the heist before actually seeing the heist.

Despite the weirdness with the randomness of the episodes, we enjoyed a lot of it. Paz Vega, as lawyer Ava Mercer, was amazing; Jai Courtney made me hate Bob the safecracker (which I’m pretty sure was the goal. If you like Bob, you have issues.); and I am ecstatic to see Tati Gabrielle in more roles. I’m honestly not sure I enjoyed the story as much as I enjoyed the characters. I wish we got to see more of Hannah’s (Tati Gabrielle) story but she wasn’t meant to be a main character. Some of the episodes wanted Hannah to be relevant to the story but she was nothing more than a reason for Leo to do the things he did.

With all of that in mind, I do think the show is worth a try. I’m debating trying to watch the show in a different order to see if it changes my opinion any. My husband and I tried to envision what the show would have been like if we saw it in a different order but I’m not sure our imaginations were successful.

Death In The Dorms | Series Review

After watching so many movies in the last quarter of the year, I often don’t feel like watching very many movies in January. So I end up turning to true crime series and documentaries. Death In The Dorms showed up just in time.

Death In The Dorms is a 6-episode mini-series. Each episode tells the story of a college student murdered on or near their college campus.

While this series does hit a little close to home (my daughter is currently a college junior), I thought it did a good job of telling each student’s story. Unlike most true crime documentaries that focus on the killer, this series features the family and friends of the victims. Yes, we do still hear about the crime and how the murderer was caught but we hear more about how each student lived and how much they are missed.

I know that hearing the sordid details of the crime and the terrible history of the killer tends to get shows higher ratings. However, I think that the format Death In The Dorms uses should be the blueprint for future true crime documentaries. Let’s focus on the victims and their lives instead of glorifying the evil monsters that took those lives from them. Maybe people will be less willing to do terrible things if we stop plastering the bad guy’s name all over the place.