The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard

(Reviewed through the first four episodes)

It's difficult to separate a documentary from its subject matter, but I've tried to do that by basing my rating on the fact that so far this has basically been three hours of Gypsy & her supporters talking about Gypsy. It's all rather self-serving, and there's virtually no counterpoint given. If you want to feel sorry for her you'll find reasons to do so here... assuming you can believe such a practiced liar.

Being a true crime fan, I'm pretty familiar with the case. It was easy to sympathize with her early on because her mother was so very evil & manipulative. But hearing her words at length here reminds that she is a trained liar who has told so many stories about what went on that it's difficult to think that we're finally hearing the absolute truth here.

She does cop to some unpleasant things, so one could use that as evidence she's finally owning up. But in the last 20 minutes of episode 4 she says, "It feels like after everything that I have been through, why keep me here? It's not going to bring my mother back." That doesn't sound like someone with a conscience to me.

Believe her or not, this simply isn't much of a documentary, nor is it really "prison confessions". It's a one-sided platform for Gypsy to attempt to continue to control the narrative, without fear of contradiction. As a result, it fails as a documentary & deserves my rating of 5 stars.

On the other side of the coin, letting her and her supporters spin their own narrative for three solid hours does show a thoughtful viewer that Gypsy hasn't really changed much. She's still telling stories that suit her purpose, and we're still left wondering where the truth is and whether or not she understands her own culpability in all of this. Perhaps illustrating this by using her own words is what the producers had in mind all along, but with no other context provided that seems like a generous conclusion to draw.

In the end, this mess has in fact changed my view of Gypsy, but not in the way she obviously would have hoped. It's pretty clear from her own words that she learned very well from her master-manipulator mother, a skill that she has continued to hone in prison. Because to Gypsy, everything is all about Gypsy.