What a line that encapsulates the human parasites that walk amongst us wearing a veneer of normality. A tale as old as time is that of the snake oil salesperson and its numerous iterations across history, culminating in the 21st century in individuals, such as Belle Gibson, Anna Delvey (Inventing Anna) and Christopher Duntsch (Dr Death), to name a few whose notoriety resulted in their own Netflix series.
Do people learn from such examples of sociopathic creatures and the havoc they wreak, or are we helpless against the sweet empty promises of the cunning and beguiling? The one common thing about snake oil salespeople is that they target people's weaknesses and manipulate these insecurities to their advantage. The defense against them is knowing ourselves better than they do, but not everyone has that level of self-awareness.
Unlike the other two series, it can be difficult to discern in Apple Cider Vinegar what is real and what is derived from imagination of the writers, who deftly filled in the blanks to create a cohesive story about Gibson, who she was, how she came to be, and the unfortunate consequences of her ambition. What is certain is that she feigned brain cancer to garner sympathy and attention, fraudulently promoted herself as a survivor through natural remedies, leading her to provide false hope to countless cancer sufferers, some of whom could have survived if it weren't for her lies.
The story crosses between three main couples - Belle and her codependent partner, Clive; Milla, a fictitious social media influencer/cancer warrior
and her friend/business partner/whistle blower, Chanelle; and Lucy, another fictitious cancer patient who is swayed by the ideas of Milla and Belle, to the dismay of her journalist partner, Justin. Milla represents the misguided social media types who reject expert advice they don't agree with, and end up deceiving themselves and others in the attempt to minimise their cognitive dissonance. Lucy represents those that fall prey to types like Milla and Belle because they are facing abject despair and desperately clinging onto hope.
The series explores the origin of Belle's personality disorder as a combination of innate vulnerabilities and environmental factors, including her dismissive and self-serving mother, which probably isn't far from the truth. People aren't born with narcissistic and antisocial personality disorders, which Belle Gibson would most likely qualify for. Those like her often believe the lies they tell themselves to escape the excruciating shame they feel as a result of their upbringing and actions, and usually have no conscious awareness of their shame.
ACV is a thoughtful examination of desperation and hope, of opportunists and their unwitting prey, of broken children and their dysfunctional childhood, of anecdotal evidence vs scientific reasoning borne out of many years of arduous study and specialist training. Still it could have benefitted from sharper editing and storytelling; six episodes each spanning a full hour seemed overlong. But it does have a killer soundtrack.
