Episode 614: What Is a Tiger? What Does That Even Mean?

On the Overthinking It Podcast we tackle Netflix’s new true-crime series “Tiger King.”

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Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matthew Wrather have strong feelings Netflix newest smash hit, Tiger King—and they’re not just about Carole Baskin.

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7 Comments on “Episode 614: What Is a Tiger? What Does That Even Mean?”

  1. Margo #

    There’s a William Blake peom in here someplace.

    Think I’m going to skip this Netflix offering. But I enjoyed your discourse nontheless.

    Reply

  2. Mark Lee OTI Staff #

    This is a nearly insignificant question on a show that is nothing but questions, but here goes: it’s clearly not Joe Exotic himself singing in the prerecorded music clips we see throughout the show (“I saw a tiger / and a tiger saw a man,” etc.), but who is that singing at (uh spoiler I guess) Travis’s funeral? Is that Joe lip-syncing to a prerecorded track or was he singing himself?

    I guess this does tie into the broader questions of authenticity of this show at every level: the people themselves and how they’re portrayed on screen.

    Reply

  3. Leigh #

    I first heard the joke about drugs being your only problem from the John Waters film “Cecil B. Demented”, which came out in 2000, the same year that Russell Brand first performed standup.

    Reply

  4. John C #

    This is one of the many shows I’m declaring not worth it in the face of so much else I could be watching in its place, but it’s interesting to see reactions from the outside. It has all the earmarks of one of Netflix’s data-driven creations, but without the ham-fistedness of a “House of Cards” remake. After all, it’s not every show that (basically) everyone on the Internet insists that they didn’t enjoy, then excitedly talk about it, then excitedly talk about what other people are excitedly saying about it.

    I kind of wish that the “criminals can also do really good things, but can also do really bad things” narratives were turned to something useful like criminal justice reform, though, instead of just melodramatic plot twists. On Netflix’s fiction side, “Orange Is the New Black” sometimes tried to do that, of course, but also tried to cram in a little bit of everything to its detriment.

    Reply

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