Perhaps one of the reasons the previous few years appear to have gone on forever is because we keep hearing the same tale. Tiger King launched on Netflix in March 2020 and captivated 35 million viewers – a quirky true crime epic full of large cats, terrible hair, and poor decisions that felt like the ultimate lockdown 1.0 binge.
Then there were the sequels. Then there was another. Then there are the podcasts and TV specials. A rumored Rob Lowe film and a postponed Nicolas Cage event Now comes the next chapter of the narrative, which is essentially the same chapter you’ve previously read — Joe and Carole’s conflict rehashed in the guise of a comedic drama series.
Joe Vs. Carole is exactly what you expect it to be: a showy, occasionally humorous, but entirely pointless exercise in flogging a dead tiger.
Officially based on the second season of the real crime podcast Over My Dead Body, it’s difficult to shake the idea that Joe Vs Carole is doing everything in the shadow of Tiger King. Netflix’s original documentary was way too lengthy — a movie that seemed somewhat too smugly superior to its human zoo’s poor, misguided, pathetic victims – but it was still a fascinating watch because to the star power of its strange individuals.
Joe (John Cameron Mitchell from Girls) is a violent homosexual redneck Willy Wonka with a petting zoo full of hazardous and mistreated animals, while Carole (Kate McKinnon from SNL and Ghostbusters) is the polar opposite and the same. As their stories overlap, her peculiar obsessions and probable criminality are brought into question, and Joe Vs Carole jumps between time periods to try to wrap their bafflingly unusual relationship into something that sort of makes sense – beginning with Joe hiring a hitman to kill Carole.
Whereas the documentary’s humour was primarily inadvertent – a pantomime of insanity performed by individuals who were maybe too foolish to understand why they were becoming memes – the new show strives considerably harder for its chuckles. McKinnon and Mitchell appear to have seen every single series and spin-off conceivable to polish their cartoon personas, but they’re still in a show that feels tailor-made for that obnoxious buddy who dresses up as Joe Exotic for Halloween.
Some of the humor works (it’s easy to chuckle when all the animals are computer-generated), but it’s just too wide to sell the drama whenever it decides to become genuine. It’s well-made, and if you haven’t previously watched Tiger King, it could hold up as a semi-solid sitcom, but if you haven’t heard the narrative before, this isn’t the place to start.
“While this program is based on true events, certain parts have been fictionalized and are not meant to reflect on any actual person…” begins the opening scrawl of each episode, asking for another lawsuit. Why is it so difficult to trust that this isn’t the last we’ll hear from Joe and Carole?