MH370: The Plane That Disappeared

The story behind the disappearance of MH370 is a tragic mystery that deserves serious and careful analysis. Alas this three-episodes series devotes most of its time and attention to crackpots who are peddling moronic "double-agents in the CIA met with the Uzbekistani navy at Roswell to recruit Bigfoot to steal the plane" conspiracy theories; and, even worse, it gives a sympathetic platform to the cynical creeps who are exploiting the families of the passengers for fame and money. These people are disgusting, particularly a French "journalist" preying on the hope and denial of a grieving father and husband.

Although the series does also briefly present more rational perspectives, it never effectively challenges the crackpots and con-artists' sophistry.

The incredible bumbling and arrogance of the Malaysian government and Malaysian Airlines is undeniable.

This aviation writer, Jeff Wise, clearly wanted to break into Hollywood and Netflix gave him his chance. His multiple theories completely ignore most logical facts, like the other passengers on board saying, "hey, a Russian just opened the hatch and went down." This guy is guilty of confirmation bias who rode this crash to fame.

Meanwhile, all Wise can do is dismiss the debris finder, Blaine Gibson, as a part of a vast Russian plot.

Meanwhile, the woman who said, "look here is the plane. I can see the debris field exactly where it would be, in the South China Sea near Vietnam." If the catastrophic event happened when the plane went dark on radar, that's where it would be. Her story, rather than explored on its own, is wrapped into yet another wild conspiracy theory by the wholly unbelievable fantastical French journalist.

Fortunately, there is Mike Exner to bring sanity to all the wild theories.

What surprises me most is no one talks about golfer Paine Stewart's ill-fated flight wherein the planes pressurization failed and all were killed by hypoxia and then the ghost plane ran out of fuel and crashed. The Captain and co-pilot would have had more oxygen and could have tried to turn the plane back towards home.

I remember when MH370 went missing and the world going into a frenzy over what happened. I agreed with so many who said how could a Boeing Jet in todays world just disappear. With all the technology and satellites we have today, how could a plane on the grid, suddenly fall off the grid?

And that's what the documentary focused on, the unexplainable and all the conspiracy theories that unfolded. Now to be clear, the documentary does not endorse any theory. It presents all the theories, some bizarre ones, and the main personalities and authorities involved. If people wanted the solution as to what happened to the plane, they need to get their head checked. No one knows for sure what happened. The plane and all those people disappeared and it has been years. Speculation and yes some over the top theories is all we have. If you are frustrated about not having any concrete evidence, imagine how the families feel. I will stress that again, there is no concrete evidence to arrive at a credible theory or explanation. So not sure what some people expected with this mini-series.

I swear 9 out of 10 documentaries on Netflix follow the basic outline of:

1. Being way too long and could really be condensed into 90-120 min.

2. Start out ok but eventually drift into the unknown so they theorize what may have happened.

3. By the 3rd episode the conspiracy theories take precedence to what the actual documentary is about.

This story is a sad incident and it sucks that this documentary took this classic Netflix turn and got hijacked by that dude that talked way too much. Seriously, did they run out of people to interview? Instead you gave most of the screen time to the guy that suggested Russians hatched some elaborate scheme to bury a Russian invasion from the media? Wtf! Haha. I'm sorry but I really wanted to see this as the real story was odd but this was bad all around.

On March 8th 2014, Flight number 370 takes off from Malaysia, but disappears from the radar, 239 people on board vanished.

Episode one had me absolutely captivated, it was so moving, hearing from the loved ones of those missing people, very moving, a little mystery was suggested surrounding the bizarre disappearance.

Sadly, episodes 2 and 3 followed, and both were dismal, the sad, but intriguing story turns into a haven for conspiracy theories, and dare I say the words, but fanboy (and fangirl) theories, I watched in horror as this series played host to two people to have a dig at one another.

The Russians, The Chinese, those Australians, The Americans, The Pilot, nobody was safe from the theories, Finland and Nigeria fortunately didn't get blamed, they were about the only two nations that weren't.

This was very poor documentary making, you wonder who edits and signs off things like this, in this day and age, this just wasn't acceptable, the deaths are still relevant, still fresh for many, this was totally distasteful.

A few points for episode one, that was powerful, the rest was awful, over long, it didn't give voice to the relatives, it was quite frankly ridiculous.

4/10.