“Monsters: The Ed Gein Story” came out on Oct. 3 and in my opinion, it is not worth the time to watch at all. If you think that you learned anything about what he did, then you are wrong.
The Monsters series is created by Ryan Murphy, which features stories about real-life true crime stories. Some of the stories in the past have been “The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” or “The Menendez Brothers Story.” I personally believe that Ryan Murphy is more focused on dramatizing the stories than actually being accurate. He does not highlight Ed Gein’s true crimes and horrible actions and instead creates false narratives and made-up victims instead of focusing on the real ones.
The Ed Gein series is full of false events and details of what actually happened. The first lie is that he killed his brother, which has never been confirmed. Gein’s brother, Henry Gein, died due to a fire on their farm and had nothing to do with Ed at all. Ryan Murphy has also made up more than half of the victims in this series that Ed Gein had “killed”. One of the big ones was the character Evelyn Hartley. In the show, Evelyn is a babysitter who has just recovered from having Polio. In reality, Evelyn did not have polio and she was not killed by Ed Gein. It only takes a quick google search to see that Evelyn was actually abducted by two men and it was one of the biggest searches in Wisconsin at the time. It had nothing to do with Ed Gein.
The only parts that were not fabricated were the actual killings of Bernice Worden and Mary Hogan. I think personally that adding all of these fake murders takes away from the real victims and what actually happened to them. This is extremely harmful because their stories are pushed to the side.
Another lie in this series is his relationship that he has with Adeline Watkins. She was never confirmed to be in a relationship with him and the series painted her in a way that made her look like a partner-in-crime with Ed Gein. The series acted as if she were the same as her, even adding a scene of her killing a woman in New York, which never happened. Watkins, in reality, denied ever being in a relationship with him and she never knew about any of the killings that he did. This is not fair to her because she is no longer alive to defend herself and Murphy is twisting a negative narrative of her.
Murphy tries to make viewers gain sympathy for Ed Gein at the end of the series by showing him in a mental hospital after his crimes. Gein is diagnosed with schizophrenia. The scene shows him crying and realizing that he was hearing voices in his head. I don’t know why Murphy is trying to paint him as a victim, but then, in “The Menendez Brothers Story,” he paints Lyle and Erik Menendez as monsters and not as victims of abuse. I think Murphy is trying to make the viewers gain sympathy for Ed Gein, which is disgusting and problematic. Serial killers should not be painted as victims, especially after the crimes are committed.
In all, I believe that this series is not accurate at all and if someone comes out of this thinking that any of it is true, then they are wrong. Ryan Murphy does not focus on getting stories accurate and focuses more on how dramatic he can make them. I would rate this show a 2/5 and I would recommend doing your own research instead of watching a false show that paints victims as bad people and the real monster as the victim.
