Q Isaiah’s review published on Letterboxd:
i feel like i'm in between the two popular sides of this docuseries, those two sides being "dan schneider is the worst person in the world, this documentary brought so much to light, and we need this expose to bring better environments for child actors" and "this is exploitative, baiting television to try to get people to care about something that isn't THAT bad, but still awful, etc"
i only watched episode three and four, because after looking the show up, i saw that drake bell told his story. of course i expected it to be heavily edited (which it was), but my interest lied in giving people who have gone through intense legal charges a platform to tell their story
episode three was a very powerful watch, listening to bell and his dad talk about their experiences. i almost nearly forgot the goal of the documentary was about dan schneider (the price of watching only half of it, but from what i researched, DID see that it was about schneider). the entire time, i was convinced that the interview was conducted before bell's arrests, which the end of episode four brought to light tat it was after, which i really, really appreciated. i don't know how i feel about bell blaming misinformation, but people are always going to put themselves in the light
episode four was kind of pedantic- i feel like, other than the actors' testimonies, i didn't learn anything new about schneider that i hadn't already seen on twitter. i think there is a really big, and really deep, problem of people treating any bad, harmful, weird, or creepy behavior as illegal, indictable, evidence to being a sexual predator. sometimes people are weird creeps that should not be around children. that does not mean that dan schneider is a sexual predator. i don't understand how only 45 minutes of this documentary, from what i've gleaned, is about brian peck and the rape and abuse he inflicted on bell. if there is any justification for this very tabloid-esque docuseries to exist, it should be to talk about that fully, the end. not another buzzword piece about dan fucking schneider
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