American Monster

I love the earlier episodes where the narrator had more prominence. It's interesting how this show has evolved over the years. The more recent episodes are still well done but I miss the heavy narration of the first six or seven seasons.

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.

I have watched a few episodes and it just drags on and on. Get to the point! I just watched one episode and it was 28 minutes in, before they even talked about a crime being committed. The first half was just introducing the members of the family. Lots of fast forwarding on this one.

I love this series and am glad that it has managed to stay on for a while now. However, this is one of those series where the narrator was the icing on the cake. For me, changing the narrator this past season really negatively impacted the show. It's similar to how I would feel if they changed the narrator on the series Snapped from the Oxygen channel. I'm not sure what the reasons are behind it but if it's possible to get the original narrator back I really wish you would.

This show spends most of the time telling you about people's lives, from as early in their lives as possible. I don't care about the unrelated sweet sixteen party that happened 20 years before the crime.

Overall: I understand the tactic of profiling the family and illustrating what a good father he is, but fully 2/3 of the episodes seem to be about family activities. Who really cares that they had a backyard barbecue, or went on a picnic? They could make these into 30-minute episodes and still cover all the relevant content.