A private zoo. A public feud. A torn-off arm. A missing ex-husband. A copyright battle. A destroyed studio. A presidential campaign. A tragic death. Embezzlement. An alleged assassination plot. Eric Goode’s “Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem, and Madness” has all of this over the course of roughly seven hours detailing the life and exploits of a man named Joe Exotic, those around him, and his history with big cats such as lions, tigers and ligers.
The series starts out featuring a call with Exotic from prison, giving a small taste of things to come. The focus then jumps back a few years, giving a comparatively mundane overview of the Greater Wynnewood Zoo in Oklahoma and the beginning of Exotic’s partnership with producer Rick Kirkham.
Screentime is also given to Bhavagan “Doc” Antle, another private owner of big cats that worked on films like “Ace Ventura” and “Mighty Joe Young,” and Carole Baskin, an animal rights activist who has been in conflict with Exotic after his anti-drug shows began featuring wild cats and touring malls.
While this may sound boring at first glance, things escalate every episode, and any attempts to properly describe Exotic’s personality would end up reading like a character analysis written on a collective fever dream.
The man is basically a less subtle version of Revolver Ocelot from the “Metal Gear” video games, except instead of attempting to control nuclear weaponry and rambling about war economies, he tries to tame large animals and rants about “animal rights people.” Pretty much every major player in the saga of the G.W. Zoo comes off as insufferable, arrogant and manipulative, from Exotic to Baskin to individuals that don’t show up until later, like investor Jeff Lowe, and businessman James Garretson. By the end of the series, there was only one likable individual featured in the series that owned big cats: Mario Tabraue, a convicted drug trafficker who appears in one episode and was allegedly the inspiration for Tony Montana in the 1983 film “Scarface.”
That’s not to say that everyone featured in the series was toxic. Most of the people working at the zoo, like Erik Cowie, Saff and John Reinke, are very sympathetic and are mostly just passive observers that get caught in the escalating battle between Exotic and Baskin, as are Exotic’s husbands.
Each episode has the interviewees become more and more exasperated over the conflict, with accusations from and against just about everyone. Many of the more scandalous allegations are accompanied by dramatizations, helpfully identifiable by a shift to cinematic widescreen with a blockbuster-style color filter so viewers don’t confuse them with the standard documentary footage.
Episode eight, released on April 12, is a follow-up special that eschews the documentary style in favor of simple one-on-one interviews with many of the people featured in the series, asking them how their lives are now that the documentary has exploded in popularity. Needless to say, the production quality is much lower, with all the interviews taking place over webcam and the like due to COVID-19, but it functions as a very interesting and relaxed epilogue for viewers willing to tack on another forty minutes to their binge time.
However, the series is not without flaws. Notably, Saff is deadnamed and misgendered throughout much of the series, and while archival footage doing this is excusable, his name is stylized in a way that “Saff” is as much a nickname as “Doc” is for Antle. While Saff indicates that he was not particularly offended by this, it still seems irresponsible at best.
Exotic’s husbands are also portrayed as “straight men that went gay,” and while the circumstances of their relationships were unhealthy and involved Exotic allegedly using drugs as leverage, the idea that his husbands may simply be bisexual is never considered. Admittedly, “Tiger King” is about an increasingly ridiculous battle regarding the ideas of what should happen to big cats and not about the LGBT community, but a little more effort should have gone into the latter.
All in all, “Tiger King” is an absurd, vulgar and occasionally violent series that focuses on allegations of animal abuse, sexual exploitation and other criminal activities in the world of big cats. While it may not be for everyone, those who are even remotely interested and still haven’t seen it should do so.
“Tiger King” is available to stream on Netflix.
