Happy Wednesday, Geekly Gang! Kyra Kyle here, and today, our writers share what they’ve been watching over the past month. This’ll be movies and shows. Anything goes. Feel free to share what you’ve been watching over the past month, because we’re all part of the Geekly Gang. I’ll get things started with what I’ve been watching over the past month.
Kyra’s Movies
I’m a true crime junkie, and the genre dominated the films I watched this past month. I’ll begin with The Murder of Rachel Nickell. Oh, boy. This one hurts. Rachel Nickell was slain in front of her toddler child, the one pictured above. I can’t even imagine the horror, the guilt, the fear, and the trauma that caused. Nickell bargained her life for her son’s. Nickell’s son has to live with that for the rest of his life. He blamed himself. He blamed his father for not protecting the family. It wasn’t until after the Bisset Murders (a mother and daughter killed by the same murderer, Robert Napper) trial and conviction that Nickell’s case was solved, and she found justice.
Again, I can’t imagine witnessing the murder of one’s mother at two and a half years old. The Murder of Rachel Nickell spends plenty of time interviewing André Hanscombe (Nickell’s partner and father of her son). We get a great window into his mindset, leaving the UK for France because he was scared the killer would return for his son. We don’t get as much of Alexander Louis, the pair’s son, but I may soon watch The Witness, which is a Netflix docudrama told from Alexander Louis’s perspective. Or I might not. The Murder of Rachel Nickell isn’t an easy watch. I took frequent breaks.
I’ve seen so many documentaries and docudramas on the Murdaugh family over the past year or so, and just when you think you’ve seen it all, Alex Murdaugh gets released by a technicality. Instadocs: Alex Murdaugh, Unconvicted deals primarily with disgraced county clerk Becky Hill. In short, Becky Hill was writing a novel about the Murdaugh family’s various scandals. With her ties as a county clerk, Hill had insider information. She also stood to gain from a guilty verdict. If Murdaugh was guilty, she’d sell more books. Instadocs: Alex Murdaugh, Unconvicted briefly describes what happens and shares a couple of viewpoints. Hill may have had a juror kicked off the case, and more likely, she told the jurors to beware of Alex Murdaugh because he lies. Regardless of what former county clerk Becky Hill did, she did enough to throw out Alex Murdaugh’s murder conviction.
Instadocs: Alex Murdaugh, Unconvicted is what the title suggests, it’s an instadoc, meaning a quickly made documentary in reaction to an event. It clocks in at thirty minutes. While I like the idea of a documentary of this type (especially for a follow-up or update to a larger documentary series like Netflix’s Murdaugh Murders, which I’ve also seen), this format doesn’t give the documentary enough time to flesh out either side of the argument. Hill denies most everything. The dismissed juror escalates the allegations against Hill. The truth is most likely in the middle, but the result is the same. Alex Murdaugh is “unconvicted” of the murders of his wife and son because of a mistrial.
Netflix’s The Crash has plenty of time to show multiple viewpoints. This documentary centers on Mackenzie Shirilla and whether she purposefully crashed her car into a building at 100 miles per hour to kill the other two occupants of her vehicle. Shirilla has been convicted, and her appeals have been denied. Two major pieces of evidence led to this conviction: automobile feedback and Shrilla mentioned killing her then boyfriend, Dominic Russo, by crashing her car a week before the event.
The latter piece of evidence is self-explanatory. Russo and Shirilla had a turbulent relationship. Russo even recorded Shirilla during a violent outburst. This wasn’t when Shirilla threatened to crash her car with Russo inside, but it illustrated the couple’s relationship. Numerous witnesses corroborated Shirilla threatened to kill Russo by crashing her car. Many of those same witnesses viewed it as an offhand comment, not one Shirilla would enact. But the former piece of evidence (automobile feedback) proves more compelling.
Newer automobiles have the equivalent of an airplane’s black box. Shirilla’s car shows she had her foot firmly on the gas pedal ten seconds before impact. Not once did she take her foot off the pedal. This most likely debunks her excuse that she blacked out. The prosecution argued that if Shirilla blacked out, she wouldn’t have been able to slam her foot on the gas. Shirilla wasn’t drunk. She did have THC in her system, but she had less than her usual amount and had plenty of practice driving while under the influence. Is The Crash a tragic accident? Or did Shirilla murder her boyfriend (who some say planned to break up with her) Death Proof style?
Kyra’s Show
I’m in the middle of compiling a deep dive on The Pitt’s autism representation (Dr. Mel King) for a future post. I won’t go into too much detail about that here. Simply put, Taylor Dearden does a phenomenal job of portraying a neurodivergent character. I can’t wait to share that post with you in November. Yikes! We still have some time, but not much. Anyway, I don’t mind rewatching The Pitt. It’s the most accurate medical drama. That’s not me saying it. I’ve heard medical professionals who worked in an ER sing The Pitt’s praises. So, I guess it shouldn’t come as a surprise that The Pitt also has great autism representation. Okay. I’m done with that aspect.
The Pitt plays out over a single twelve-hour shift, complete with heading in early for a shift handoff and staying late for the same thing. Each episode hops from one patient and their family to the next. Some build off each other in satisfying ways. All of them show different aspects of an emergency room worker’s job. I prefer the first season slightly more than the second because you’re flying into the series blind. I also watched the two seasons back-to-back. I may have been more surprised by the second season if I didn’t watch them immediately back-to-back. Still, love the characters. The pacing is on point. The frenetic pace drives The Pitt. And I didn’t know how The Pitt would attempt to keep up the energy from season one to season two. It accomplished that. Minor spoiler: the second season takes place on July Fourth.
Oh, boy! The fact that The Pitt chose July Fourth as the date for its second season proves it understands the ER better than most shows. More accidents occur on July Fourth than on any other day in the United States. Mrs. Geekly, a nurse, has worked plenty of July Fourths. Based on Mrs. Geekly’s tales, I wrote down all the injuries I expected to see, and The Pitt delivered. If you like medical dramas, you should watch The Pitt.
That’s all we have for this month. Season and Skye will join us next month. Thank you for reading, and wherever you are, I hope you’re having a great day.
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