La desaparición de Morgan

It's heartbreaking stuff. Child abducted 24 years ago, family still hangs in there. Hope springs eternal.

I knew exactly what I was letting myself in for, and stories about abducted or abused children terrify me. Fiction or real-life. I usually give them a miss.

Still, I watched the first one, and then binged the other episodes the next day. It's extremely well done. Ridley Scott put his name to it, so that's unsurprising.

I thought Morgan was a boy. Soon as I saw she was a cute little blonde girl, my heart sank even lower. Not that the gender really matters.

I gave it 9/10. Well worth your time.

I'm not going to include any spoilers in my review. Maybe there was too much chatter from the police and FBI. Maybe this did drag on a bit and could have been 3 solid episodes. But watching Colleen Nick ( Morgan's Mom) and Patty Wetterling (Jacob Wetterling's Mom -look up that case if you are not familiar) try to articulate the pain of a missing child is heart stopping. Each woman expressed it in different terms but each woman knew they were in a sisterhood no one wants to be in. It was so touching to see them together. Only they could tell their story and that, I believe, is the beauty and tragedy of this documentary: Watching a Mom do whatever she could for their missing child and in the process, help other missing and exploited children. Warrior Moms stopping at nothing. My heart goes out to them. Their strength unmeasurable. Morgan and Jacob making a difference. I'm so glad I got to know them.

I've binged watch a couple of documentaries produced by Ridley Scott, and have been really disappointed in his exploration of true crime stories. I don't understand why you need 4 to 6 episodes that basically amount to nothing more than filler. It's clearly a big budget and there's lots of great camera work, but maybe it would be better suited to make fictional true crime movies instead of trying to cover documentaries of cases that you don't have enough information on. I also felt like this document Really beat up the former police chief from the small town that Morgan Nick was from and I thought that was really rude. I also also got the distinct impression that this project was controlled and dictated by the family and I think that's a bad idea.

The first episode, which told the story of a kidnapped little girl 25-30 years ago, seemed promising.

Decades later, the police is trying to look at the unsolved case with fresh eyes.

The parents' pain is excruciating, and time doesn't alleviate it. After every failed attempt to solve the case, the parents' hopes are dashed.

The rest of this documentary stretches with endless gabbing.

The viewer can skip the rest, there is nothing else to learn. And there is SO. MUCH. USELESS. TALK. From the police, mainly.

A whole army of local police, FBI, huge resources... and nothing comes out of it.

Honestly, I found this documentary a complete waste of time.

Do you remember when documentaries were single 60 or 90 minute shows? In the streaming era, seemingly every documentary is now stretched out to 4 plus episodes. This creates a snail's pace and redundancy of content. It's up to us viewers to push back on this.

Still Missing Morgan is the prototype for this stretched out phenomenon. This could've been a 60- or 90-minute show rather than 3+ hours. Thus, the documentary was repetitive and more tedious than it should've been.

Also, documentaries have devolved to put more work on the viewers by having unnarrated parts where the viewer is forced to read tiny print on the screen. I'm a multi tasker. I don't watch the screen 100% of the time. I suspect the majority of us are multi taskers. These written parts should at least be narrated so we don't have to try to read the small words.

I understand you're going for style points but it's not working. Documentaries in particular typically are interview-centric with little action compelling the viewer to watch; having these silent written sequences is at odds with the general premise and nature of a documentary.

The story is good but only watch if you have time to kill.

ABOUT MY REVIEWS:

I do not include a synopsis of the film/show -- you can get that anywhere and that does not constitute a meaningful review -- but rather my thoughts and feelings on the film that hopefully will be informative to you in deciding whether to invest 90-180 minutes of your life on it.

My scale: 1-5 decreasing degrees of "terrible", with 5 being "mediocre" 6- OK. Generally held my interest OR had reasonable cast and/or cinematography, might watch it again 7 - Good. My default rating for a movie I liked enough to watch again, but didn't rise to the upper echelons 8- Very good. Would watch again and recommend to others 9- Outstanding. Would watch over and over; top 10% of my ratings 10 - A classic. (Less than 2% receive this rating). For Lifetime Movies for Chicks (LMFC), drop the above scale by 3 notches. A 6 is excellent and 7 almost unattainable.