S01.E04: The Good Boy Box

[PrincessPurrsALot]

Quote

From high school to the Army, Jeff struggles to find stability. While living in his grandmother's house, Jeff begins targeting young men at gay bars.

Original streaming date 2022.09.22

[ShadowHunter]

Evan really is good because the scene where he was trying to tell his Dad about himself and the Dad switched it up to him going to college and he was struggling to not cry cry and put on that smile was good. I didn't feel bad for Dahmer but Evan made me care. Then later when he was drugging his Army buddies I was disgusted again. Speaking of the Army I shuddered when that class he took showed him which pills were the best to knock someone out. 

[PrincessPurrsALot]

4 hours ago, ShadowHunter said:

Evan really is good because the scene where he was trying to tell his Dad about himself and the Dad switched it up to him going to college and he was struggling to not cry cry and put on that smile was good. I didn't feel bad for Dahmer but Evan made me care. Then later when he was drugging his Army buddies I was disgusted again. Speaking of the Army I shuddered when that class he took showed him which pills were the best to knock someone out. 

That was the scene for me that said give Evan the Emmy.  He has added so many layers to the character through his acting choices.

I could imagine his father not wanting to have the conversation in front of his new wife, but he did real harm in never having it.  Would Jeff have confessed about the hitchhiker if given the chance?

[Chaos Theory]

One of my pet peeves is when people use the “other people had it worse” card.  Of course they did.   That isn’t the point of the story .  Jeffrey Dahmer had health issues, a mother with mental health issues who abandoned him, and a father who showed him no emotional support.    It’s not (and I repeat NOT) an excuse for anything he did but if the story is even 1% true and I have seen enough true crime stuff to know enough that it is then Jeffrey Dahmer was a ticking time bomb from an early age but since he had no one in his life since his parents had a chaotic marriage while he was young and all but abandoned him in his teens and he had no friends there was really no one to see it until it was too late.  
 

if the scenes with Grandma actually went down even near like that i find it really sad.   Mostly because Grandma might  have been the one person to truly give him good advice but by throwing the mannequin away might have been what set Jeffrey off for good.

And it may seem really strange (and again I am NOT condoning his actions) but the irony is Jeffrey was actually trying to be a “good boy” by drugging his victims and not killing then.   Once he got blacklisted from the bathhouses and his father washed his hands of him it was only a matter of time before he took another life.  

Evan Peters is fantastic in the roll.  For me the scene was Jeffrey with the severed  head in plastic of his victim and the sigh of contentment after he kissed it.    It was just chilling.  

Edited September 26, 2022 by Chaos Theory

[gesundheit]

It's so depressing to watch these scenes where he's being fully accepted and embraced as the weirdo he's decided he comes off as to everyone else, and then he victimizes these people who accept him. There's no "the world was cruel to him," he's there over and over and over again being accepted into a community and brutalizing them for it. Outside of the obvious disgusting depravity of it all, it's just so freakin' sad. (For the victims, obviously.)

Is there any site doing a good breakdown of fact vs fiction for this show the way they do for a lot of true crime, does anyone know? I don't know if I have the stomach for it, but I'm just curious.

Edited to add: Found one!

Edited September 26, 2022 by gesundheit
Found was I was asking for

[hoodooznoodooz]

3 hours ago, gesundheit said:

It's so depressing to watch these scenes where he's being fully accepted and embraced as the weirdo he's decided he comes off as to everyone else, and then he victimizes these people who accept him. There's no "the world was cruel to him," he's there over and over and over again being accepted into a community and brutalizing them for it. Outside of the obvious disgusting depravity of it all, it's just so freakin' sad. (For the victims, obviously.)

Is there any site doing a good breakdown of fact vs fiction for this show the way they do for a lot of true crime, does anyone know? I don't know if I have the stomach for it, but I'm just curious.

Edited to add: Found one!

The 14-year-old Laotian boy, if that was a recent photo, looked MUCH younger than the actor portraying him!! It’s ridiculous that the police officers would not admit he was a child!!

[casachess]

On 9/24/2022 at 2:22 PM, ShadowHunter said:

Evan really is good because the scene where he was trying to tell his Dad about himself and the Dad switched it up to him going to college and he was struggling to not cry cry and put on that smile was good. I didn't feel bad for Dahmer but Evan made me care. Then later when he was drugging his Army buddies I was disgusted again. Speaking of the Army I shuddered when that class he took showed him which pills were the best to knock someone out. 

 
Yeah, that stood out to me too. Now, I have absolutely no clue if that happened in real life, but in the context of the show, just going with it... what if his dad had just let him talk? If he had let Dahmer say what he wanted to say? So many lives would have been saved. It came across to me like his dad knew Dahmer was about to drop a bombshell and changed the subject quickly because he didn't want to hear it.

[ShadowHunter]

9 hours ago, casachess said:

 
Yeah, that stood out to me too. Now, I have absolutely no clue if that happened in real life, but in the context of the show, just going with it... what if his dad had just let him talk? If he had let Dahmer say what he wanted to say? So many lives would have been saved. It came across to me like his dad knew Dahmer was about to drop a bombshell and changed the subject quickly because he didn't want to hear it.

Agreed. You could tell that maybe the Dad feared or suspected he was Gay but he didn't want to really know or hear about it.

[MaggieG]

Ricky for the win!

[NDW5332]

On 9/24/2022 at 1:22 PM, ShadowHunter said:

 Speaking of the Army I shuddered when that class he took showed him which pills were the best to knock someone out. 

Not knowing the full story at first I thought it was some kind of MK/Ultra type of training he was receiving, but then I remembered some conversations I had with a friend from high school that also trained as a medic in the army, since drug abuse was so prevalent, they had to learn about everything and their affects, and how to counteract them, but also what sedatives would be needed for various types of situations.

[Scarlett45]

On 9/24/2022 at 6:03 PM, PrincessPurrsALot said:

That was the scene for me that said give Evan the Emmy.  He has added so many layers to the character through his acting choices.

I could imagine his father not wanting to have the conversation in front of his new wife, but he did real harm in never having it.  Would Jeff have confessed about the hitchhiker if given the chance?

He may have, but he might have lost his nerve. 

On 9/26/2022 at 6:13 PM, ShadowHunter said:

Agreed. You could tell that maybe the Dad feared or suspected he was Gay but he didn't want to really know or hear about it.

Yes that’s likely. Again, it’s a big jump from thinking your child is gay and being uncomfortable with that idea to thinking they might be confessing to MURDER, or harming people or something like that. 
 

Lionel dropped the ball in many ways but he didn’t abandon his son, he did try to do what he thought was best for him. 

On 9/26/2022 at 8:40 AM, casachess said:

 
Yeah, that stood out to me too. Now, I have absolutely no clue if that happened in real life, but in the context of the show, just going with it... what if his dad had just let him talk? If he had let Dahmer say what he wanted to say? So many lives would have been saved. It came across to me like his dad knew Dahmer was about to drop a bombshell and changed the subject quickly because he didn't want to hear it.

I agree.