Girls Gone Wild: The Untold Story

Still trying to find the part where I'm supposed to feel bad about women making adult decisions and exposing themselves. At no part did I see a camera man hold up a gun to their heads and force them to show their breasts. Per usual it's naive women who want to have a good time and only regret their decision because of embarrassment and or how they will be viewed by friends and loved ones. This is a tired old story everyone knows how it ends man bad women good. Eerie music and dark lighting makes it more sinister than actually is. Zero accountability or personal responsibility was very taken for the so called victims.

This is a heartfelt thoughtful expose of Girls Gone Wild and namely one man Joe Francis. How could one man cause such destruction to people's lives? He is diabolical. But there was just the right turn of events to enable him to ride a tsunami of celebrity, late night commercials, spring break foolishness and money into oblivion. That's why this documentary is useful and interesting. Maybe the tidal wave can happen again. I'm sure it will, taking innocent people under. The show is well done, well researched and shocking beyond belief. The nail in the coffin is his marriage, and how bad he was to his wife.

It seems as if this documentary mini series should have been made years ago. From this point in time, it does not seem to be much of an audience for those who genuinely care about this story. We remember there was a brief mini series episode in 2022 of the Rich & Shameless which briefly covered this.

Some of the newer revelations is that there were underaged girls on camera during the beginning stages of the franchise. It was clear the cameramen and overall team of the crew weren't experienced or else these problems wouldn't have happened. The girls themselves should have known better as well. This mini series is rather quite bias towards the women "victims" documenting some of these women roughly twenty or so years later.

This mini series also reminds us how big the franchise was during its peak days, with many celebrities supporting them with merchandise and with Joe Francis himself being close with a few of them. The main reason as to why this entire franchise ultimately failed was because of the rise of social media, easier access to free adult sites and also them using real girls as opposed to adult star actresses (however that is of course what made their foundation stand out and feel authentic).

In the end, it may be eye opening to those completely unfamiliar with the situation but for a majority of people, it doesn't cover too much new ground. It is a memory lane/ nostalgia type series.

As someone who didn't know much about GGW, I'm really curious around the conversation of shaping TV and porn today. Really fascinating. I think the filmmakers do a great job of portraying the negative side of this otherwise "consensual" fad, and how the exploitation of women can be skinned as empowerment. The line that stuck with me was pointing out that women might have been given confidence, but they were certainly not empowered / given power.

I agree the filmmakers are not very neutral but I think the whole damn point of this show is that we all KNOW the consensual side, of women who want to be taped. Let's talk about the coercion and criminal side.

Some reviews point out the sound mix - make sure the audio is set to STEREO not 5.1 in the Peacock app. It looks like they fixed the default but just in case you have this issue too...

Synopsis - Women are baring their breasts for the camera. Joe sees an opportunity to profit from this and subsequently makes a lot of money. I'm not going to defend any of the criminal acts that may have been committed, but it seems the majority of the women have a moment of clarity after the fact.

This could have easily been a 30 minute episode on Dateline or something similar. Why this material was expounded to 3 hour docuseries is quite perplexing. Who approved the audio mix for the final edit? To say it is subpar doesn't really do it justice. The background audio should never overpower the dialogue from your subject!!!

I gave up after the first episode and hope you will do the same. Read the Wikipedia article with a fireplace stream in the background. You'll save time and have a much more pleasant experience.

Do better next time Peacock.