What is it about the Tiger King that has the entire audience of pop culture enthralled? Sometimes, having lived out of the US for over 20 years now, I feel like I’m missing something. I mean, I’m gonna state the truth: the show is awful!
Yet… it’s been a rainy spring break that turned into a staycation the moment all travel stopped due to the pandemic. One cozy vacation day Kevin said mid-afternoon, “Let’s watch Tiger King.” Well, whether we wanted to be or not, we were uncomfortably IN. We seemed to be sucked in just like many others. Somehow the show is so awful and so unbelievable, before we knew it we had watched just one more episode. With only 7 episodes in the docuseries we were finished within 4 nights. It’s literally the National Enquirer of Netflix.
Could this show be real? In fact, I just googled to check to see if the story is even true. Turns out it actually is! It doesn’t seem plausible that people would own tigers and lions–not to mention breed them to continue the purchase of these exotic animals. This floored all of us. How is this even possible? Do other nations around the world also have exotic animals in their citizens’ backyards? This fact alone doesn’t even seem real.
When something becomes very, very mainstream in popular culture, I tend to notice how out of it I feel. Somehow I’ve missed the whole reality TV show genre. I’ve never seen the Kardashians, so I’ve never quite understood their fame. Nor have I ever seen any Real Housewives episodes–I just recently figured out that Bravo is a television network and Andy Cohen created the Real Housewives franchise. What I’m trying to get at is I don’t get reality TV shows, so I Tiger King was lost on me.
Did you get sucked into the Tiger King?
Truthfully, if you haven’t seen it, please do not bother. It’s a horrible, horrible show that shows a side of America that just doesn’t seem to give us much honor. Give this docuseries a hard pass. It’s a pretty awful scenario that’s more terrifying than anything.
*Please note: my love of all things animal print is thankfully still intact.
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