Although social distancing has made life difficult for everyone, the silver lining has come with the resurgence of steaming. Netflix has already found international success earlier this year when unique dating reality show Love Is Blind became a viral sensation and turned many of the contestants into reality stars overnight. Now, another new show on Netflix has come along that's even stranger than our current reality: Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem, and Madness, a documentary series that critics are calling "Making A Murderer meets Eastbound and Down."
The aptly named Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem, and Madness follows the sordid tale of Joseph Maldonado-Passage, better known as Joe Exotic. Referring to himself as a “gay, gun-toting cowboy with a mullet,” Exotic was a prolific breeder of tigers and the former operator of Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park in Oklahoma. In addition to being the most well-known big cat breeder in the United States of America, Exotic ran unorthodox campaigns for the president of the United States and for the governor of Oklahoma.
The show has generated buzz for drawing viewers into the eccentric and complex big-cat world, as well as the fascinating life of Exotic. Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem, and Madness, which is comprised of six episodes, showcases co-directors Eric Goode and Rebecca Chaiklin charting Exotic's strange life. Born in 1963, Joe Exotic and his brother Garold Wayne purchased a pet store in Texas in 1989. After Garold died in a car crash in 1997, Exotic used the money from a settlement to buy a ranch in Wynnewood, Oklahoma, and turn it into a zoo.
Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem, and Madness also gets into the life of Carole Baskin, Joe Exotic's fiercest nemesis. Baskin opened a sanctuary with her husband Don Lewis, a millionaire who disappeared in 1997. Years later, a lawsuit Baskin filed against Joe Exotic over trademark infringement led to him declaring bankruptcy. As a result, Exotic harassed Baskin for years by posting videos that allegedly showed proof that Baskin had murdered her husband, even leading an unsuccessful social media campaign to have her arrested.
In 2017, Joe Exotic's husband Travis Maldonado fatally shot himself, and later that same year, he hired an employee to murder Baskin. Unfortunately for Exotic, The employee ran off with the money. He tried for a second time to have Baskin murdered but ended up hiring an undercover FBI agent as a hitman. The FBI was already investigating Exotic for various allegations of animal abuse, so they used this as a springboard to nail him.
Then in 2019, Joe Exotic was convicted on seventeen charges of animal abuse, including eight violations of the Lacey Act and nine of the Endangered Species Act. He was also hit with two counts for hiring a hitman to murder Chief Executive Officer of Big Cat Rescue Carole Baskin, who had organized protests in Florida against Exotic's use of cubs in his shows. She won a million dollars in the trademark settlements while Exotic is currently serving twenty-two years in federal prison.
Baskin has slammed Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem, and Madness as “salacious and sensational," and complained that the documentary series focused too largely on her alleged role in the disappearance of her missing former husband Don Lewis. Baskin claimed that when the directors of the documentary approached her, they expressed their desire to focus on the exploitation of big cat cubs at roadside zoos and backyards. Exotic, on the other hand, has reportedly expressed his belief that Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem, and Madness will vindicate him and have him released from the Grady County Jail in Oklahoma.
Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem, and Madness is a bizarre tale that features murder, sex, drugs and violence, and shows just how easy it is to exploit animals, particularly big cats, for years in the United States without being punished by law enforcement. Far more strange than Netflix's biggest crime documentary series hit Making A Murderer, Tiger King is a compulsively watchable American crime tale that exposes the seedy underbelly of a world that is barely ever seen.