Trainwreck: Balloon Boy

The Train Wreck series is pretty cheesy. The documentaries and sensationalistic and tacky. This one, Balloon Boy, goes above and beyond.

The father is clearly manic and is basically a clone of Cody from Sister Wives in temperament and ego. He is screaming for attention 24/7, even whwn he already has it.

The mother is clueless in every way a person can be and is completely controlled by the father. I don't know what happened to her that makes her that subservient, but it's pathetic to witness.

The sons are misogynistic tools, programmed by daddy. Beware.

Watching the documentary, and especially the father, made my skin crawl.

I lived in Colorado when this happened as like many others that day I watched it all play out on TV news. When it all came out that the kid wasnt in there, people were not happy. And it quickly turned on the family when no one quiet believed the story. This guy was what would now be called a social media wannabe. That whole family was bred and raised to further his attempt to be TV famous. From the moment this guy got caught he did nothing but obfuscate, throw his kids under the bus, and outright lie. It was like if baby Jessica had been a hoax. People in Colorado immediately turned on him and the family. He got his 15 minutes but now one in that area will ever forgive this family for the hoax.

The episode isnt bad, but the first half is told from the family point of view, as if it was real. The dad is not likeable and the kids are only marginally better. I remember this but forgot the Larry King Live interview part. It was not as good as other episodes, but if you are too young to remember Ballon Boy or never heard of it, it is an interesting watch. I remember thinking it was a hoax at the time and after watching this, I still do. Hard to believe they are still going with their story, and they do try and sell it as it was real, but more likely it was all a set up for attention. I enjoyed the trip down memory lane, but they didn't convince me it was real.

The interviews with the family throughout were not useful in any way. They talked about this as if we already didn't know they were all bs artists. They were still sticking to the story that this was all true. It was bad and I am dumber for having watched it. One of the kids just swears constantly just to hear himself swear. The mother saying she didn't know what the word "hoax" meant just put this over the top. That her "confession" wasn't really a confession because the officers confused her. It was all silly. The conversations with the police and neighbors brought some information to the documentary. But that was about it.

Keep in mind, before seeing this documentary I knew NOTHING about this story, not one thing. So I went into this documentary the same way I try to go into a lot of them, with a neutral mind and I prefer not to immediately judge.

From the moment the 9-1-1 call started, I felt something was off. I'm not a parent but if my child snuck into a balloon that went up like that, I would be in hysterics. I know everyone reacts differently so I put that to my mind and gave Richard the benefit of the doubt. But when I saw the video of Falcon actually "going up" and the rest of the families reaction, particularly Richards when he was told Falcon was in there, that was some of the worst acting I've seen since I saw 2003's movie The Room. That's when I got major red flags in my mind but again, I wanted to see how this played out. There was also just something about the interviews from Mayumi and Richard that felt very disingenuous for some reason. Then I felt the same thing from Falcon when he came around. I found it interesting that they evidently couldn't afford cable but they could afford, as Richard stated himself, "Hundreds of dollars" to build that balloon. I found it interesting that Richard evidently didn't want to do anything with the media but he chose to do an interview with one of the biggest talk shows in the world, and I emphasize "the world" as Larry King Live was global. I'm sure he regrets that after what happened during that interview, let's just say "The cats out of the balloon".

I could go on about how full of it Richard is but I don't want to ruin it for those that want to watch this dumpster fire of a story. But for someone that knew nothing about the story and doesn't like to be too skeptical, its amazing how on point my feelings were about this. Shame on this family for wasting all those police resources and messing with the emotions of so many people that genuinely cared about Falcon's wellbeing. Also Netflix? Please stop giving fame seekers like this a stage to continue their fictional performance, it's beneath you.