Shari Wolf

I like parts of this show. The parts I like I like a lot. It’s very artistic and poignant. The parts I don’t like make it hard for me to watch. It’s just too sexually graphic. It blows right past artistic and gets lewd. The story can be told better without watching people root and grunt and have sex without foreplay. I realize that this is a show about 3 women and an author’s sex lives, and I don’t have a problem with sex scenes when they contribute to the telling and unfolding of the plot and message. But more than 1/2 the streaming time is devoted to watching people have sex, and it gets boring. As I was watching episode 4 tonight, I decided I had enough and changed the channel long before the episode was over. I had no desire to continue watching a couple try to dig a lost condom out of the woman. Was that supposed to be amusing? The idea might have been funny if I didn’t have to watch it. I had already sat through over 5 straight minutes of watching and hearing them do the deed. I didn’t have to watch to know what was going on. It wasn’t even erotic, just noisy. I do wonder what will happen where Lina is concerned. The depiction of her environment and the attitudes she lives around are very realistic. And I feel genuine concern for Maggie and her story. I wish the sex scenes were blended into the story, not shoved in the viewers faces time after time after time. I have no idea at this point if I will finish watching the series.

I had trouble watching the first episode because it portrayed the negativity of the environment and situation so well! I could hardly make that out as something negative about the show, as it’s based on a true story. The emotions were true and factual. I grew more accustomed to it in the rest of the episodes. I do wish the series would have focused more on the fact that Tilly should not have been able to help these inmates escape. Security was lax, lots of people obviously cutting corners…how in the world was she able to smuggle hack saw blades inside a maximum security Prison?! Protocols needed to be in place to prevent that from happening, and if they were in place, then some one or some ones should have been enforcing them, and weren’t. The series seemed to focus on how Tilly helped the inmates escape, and glosses over the fact that she shouldn’t have been able to “help”.

SEASON 4: Well I finished it. It seemed really drug out to me. Too many storylines! There is the old retired detective with his issues built upon over all 4 seasons, then what are Meg’s boys hiding? What is Meg hiding. So many little details…I think they finally explained all of them but if they didn’t I really don’t care. I had to force myself to watch this til the end. I started out just mildly interested. Then by the 3rd/4th episode I was really liking it. By the time the last episode came around I had to force myself to watch it. It would have been better to shave off the last episode or 2. Wrapped it up sooner.

Loved it. Reminded me of an old black & white movie where guests were handpicked to spend the week at a remote country estate, and someone is murdered. Whodunnit. Ok, maybe not black and white…but a movie before our current technology. Instead of smoking cigarettes, everyone is on their laptops, since phones were checked on the plane. I am not tech-savvy at ALL! I had to look up a couple of words to keep up. I didn’t watch this movie when it first became available on Hulu for that reason. I’m not sure what drove me to eventually choose to start watching it, but I kept watching it for the great character development and chemistry between the actors. The romantic chemistry between Darby and Bill was without parallel, but also was the friendship chemistry, and the family relationships that were touched on. Mostly, there was intense chemistry, for lack of better description, between each actor and their character. I took it slow watching the first few episodes, no more than 1 per day. Today I binged the last 3 to finish the series. Time well spent! I did figure out whodunnit but not until close to the end. Now that I’ve seen the entire series, I’m thinking that I should have figured out a lot of the mysteries within the story, and long before the final episode. There was more than one answer to determine who, and why. I even learned some techie and non-techie terms by looking them up: doxxed, deepfake…and for the non-techie term of the day: bukkake. Ok, disgusting, wish I had left that one alone…but the series was great. Just as there were several questions to be answered within the story, there were also several different messages and morals of the story/series. I’m sure I will be reflecting on this show for days to come.

Very well done. Brought out a lot of emotions—anger and fear. Anger that led to outrage at how these people were treated by law enforcement. And fear, real fear that more than one police department refused to hear women’s stories. That the police department who stayed on it, who had an officer who stuck with it, are the exception and not the rule. We have not came out of the dark ages. It looks like it’s not much different now from how it was in generations past. I was reminded of another Netflix show, “Unbelievable”. That show gave a lot of facts and statistics about sexual assault and police investigations, but the actual storyline was fiction. In this documentary, however, the story is real. I fear police reactions nearly as much as I fear rapists and other criminals. What needs to be done so that we trust the people who are to enforce the law and protect us? I was incredulous that the Vallejo P D kept referring to a movie! They didn’t believe her because they saw a movie?! Then again, the woman that Muller decided not to rape 4 or 5 years earlier, though he did invade her home, was not believed either by her local P D. I appreciate that the victims were not portrayed like whiny self pitying people. There are a lot of tv shows to watch, a lot of documentaries. I start to watch a lot of them, but don’t finish. This one held my interest through all the episodes. It wasn’t over dramatized or sensationalized; it didn’t dwell on sordid details. Again: Very well done.

Ok, so I didn’t get it. I had to read reviews and explanations about this movie to get an inkling of what it might be about. Aliens? Well, ok I guess. Just not my cup of coffee. I like sci fi, usually. I love it when sci fi tells a moral story about human behavior. This, according to what I read about the movie, was what the film intended to do, but I don’t think it did a very snazzy job of it. I didn’t understand why the couple never questions what is going on and how they might get out of it. At the same time, they don’t decide to make the most of it. I suppose that was one of the “messages” in this movie, but I found it less than fascinating. I found it depressing. It didn’t make sense to me that this particular couple fell prey to this experiment and then their personalities seemed to change. They weren’t a couple who seemed to believe in keeping up, being like everyone else, etc etc. they didn’t even really wanna SEE the house. Yet, they didn’t talk about their situation at all once in it. They just moped and complained. Tried things on impulse. Didn’t talk to each other much. Became average and non thinking. I gave 2 stars because I DID finish the movie. It was one weird scene after another. Each mildly interesting on its own, but only mildly and they never did come together for me. Maybe it will come together for me in the next day or 2 but I doubt it. If I have any woke moments about it, I’ll come back and edit my review.

SPOILERS AHEAD: Inconsistent. Not in it’s storyline, but in it’s general way of viewing things. The story struggles to tell a story that exposes all kinds of bad guys and girls doing all manner of horrible things from systemic financial abuse to child abuse to really bad parenting…all to say “never mind” at the end. It was a good plot coming together til then. Then there is the thing about Abby’s retrograde amnesia. She’s accused, and she doesn’t deny or conform or apologize or explain. Never brought up again. There were less dramatic ways to explain why nobody believed her. If it was going to be THAT dramatic, then the moviegoer deserves more on it. I felt cheated by the ending. I was waiting to find out Charles III paid the guy off to say he was the dead kid. If the storyteller knew it would end like that, then why even tell the story? Good movie up til then, so I gave it a couple of stars.

I’m giving my opinion as a chronic pain patient, recovering addict, retired addiction counselor, and mother whose adult son just left rehab for heroin addiction. This series was very well done. It answered a question I had about why OxyContin made the news around or just before the year 2000, then wasn’t heard of again, or not much, until the more recent “opiate epidemic”. By the time it was deemed “epidemic” all opiates, not just oxy, were under fire. It’s been a crazy ride for chronic pain patients, especially those prescribed doses over 90m daily who were suddenly cut down very quickly, or dismissed from pain clinics as they were suddenly deemed addicts rather than pain patients by agencies unclear—I tried to find out who was behind it and could not. But that is information for another documentary. This movie was especially adept at showing the viewer the progression of the disease of addiction, and how it happens to an unbiased cross section of people. It made clear how difficult it is to stop using, and how not prescribing pain medication puts more addicts on the street buying heroin. It wasn’t dry, informative facts—it was about human beings who were made dopesick, and how hard a few people of very high integrity worked to try to stop greedy people who allowed the problem to become widespread. It showed how most people can be bought or frightened into collaboration or silence. It showed what was sacrificed by a few to do what they could. I was fascinated to learn where the 1-10 scale of pain originated, and I remember when terms like “breakthrough pain” and “pseudo addiction”; “individualize the dose” started being used like medical jargon. They were advertising from a pharmaceutical company! Because I first heard the terms from a physician when I was an addictions counselor, I thought they were new medical terms. Now I learn that M.D.s were coached by drug reps to use these terms. One conversation I had with a Dr. during that time was almost word for word what I heard in this movie. There are a lot of details in the movie that mirror my own experiences or that of someone I know. I’m glad it was done in 8 episodes so that we can see the way things unfolded over time. It was a bit difficult to follow the time line of events since a lot was done in flashbacks. That seems to be how scripts get a lot of information across in a manageable amount of time. If this were fiction, or a miniseries “based on fact”, it would have had a happier, more just, ending. The bad guys would have been caught and imprisoned. Lives would be saved, and truth would prevail! Instead, this series told the unvarnished truth of what they were up against and what they were able to accomplish. Our country then experienced a more widespread opiate epidemic, that OxyContin played a huge role in starting. But also started was awareness of the dangers of OxyContin, and the greed and corruption of Purdue Pharma and other entities. The story continues. We need investigation into why and how so many people were cut off addictive prescriptions with no supports in place for weaning, detoxing, and staying in recovery. Many midddle class, decent Americans have become outlaw addicts. I hope we see a series on that…and I hope the series is as enlightening, interesting, and truthful as this series “Dopesick” is.

Good movie. Much above average, held my interest. Carey Mulligan looked great as Cassie, very photogenic, and did an amazing job letting the audience see many sides of this loyal friend. Incredible balance of vulnerability and sociopathic tendencies in a character both intelligent and funny. All the characters were well cast. The movie moved along at a nice pace and there were some amusing moments and funny one-liners. But— POSSIBLE SPOILER: I really wish there had been a decent male in the story. They were all jerks, even the dad, by being non-supportive of Cassie. I was extremely disappointed that Ryan turned out to be a creep. There was the male attorney who felt remorse and did the right thing in the end, but he was a quivering, crying mess. No positive male roles at all. This lack of balance and realism made it hard to connect with the show and call it great, or even really good. It had the capacity to really send a message to remember, and do it with humor. Instead it just got silly and became another movie to forget. 3.5 Stars.

I was very into this movie until I wasn’t. Given my history, and so many loved ones’ histories, I am very touchy about how addiction and recovery are portrayed in movies. I was giving this one major kudos and accolades, until it got into the son going into the criminal world and his mom chasing after him. I just found it too dramatic. That’s fine if I’m just looking to be entertained, but as I said—my own history…so I don’t find addiction to be entertaining at all. The message sent is that addicts are stupidly hopeless liars and moms are dangerously stupid and even more hopeless. Everyone has a bottom and a breaking point, even mom’s, or nobody would get clean. I felt like the movie was showing things happening way too fast, her chasing him into the underbelly after his enormous lies. Now, the NEXT time he talked her into believing him if there was one…maybe. I’m also increasingly irritated with there movies where the addict ALWAYS o.d.’s the first time they use again. Sure, that happens, but not so often as it seems by watching these movies. Eventually, yeah…keep using and you’ll die or worse. I say the realities of addiction are dramatic enough, to add to it for a sensational movie sends false messages. Due to my own background, I want these movies to be responsible and tell a truthful story. To save lives and families, not to just make money and add to stigma and stereotype.