*SPOILER ALERT*

“Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem, and Madness” has become one of the most watched shows on Netflix since it was released in March.

Over the course of roughly 5 years, a Netflix crew followed the story of “Joe Exotic” and his battle with Carol Baskin, his own business, and eventually, the law.

In the beginning of the series, Joe Exotic owned a well-known exotic animal zoo that primarily featured big cats such as lions and tigers. Because of this, he was targeted by an animal activist named Carol Baskin.

Instead of ignoring her, like most exotic zoo owners did, he called her a hypocrite for profiting off exotic animals caged on her own property. He also brought up the mysterious disappearance of her second husband, Don Lewis, and how he thought she killed him.

This bickering continued until it turned into an obsessive feud that made him bankrupt because of legal fees for copyrighting Baskin’s company logo.

Ultimately, two men, Jeff Lowe and James Garretson, came in to help Exotic and his business.

But this feud with Baskin had taken over Exotic’s life. He hired a hitman, the zoo’s handyman Allen Glover, to go to Florida to kill her. Glover accepted the money but ended up driving to South Carolina to start over.

While all of this was going on, Lowe and Garretson had been working with federal agencies, the FBI and Fish and Game, to collect voice recordings to indict Exotic.

Eventually the FBI had sufficient evidence to arrest him on murder for hire, and also charged him with multiple counts of animal abuse.

He was tried and found guilty on all counts of animal abuse and murder for hire, and is currently serving 22 years in prison.

All-in-all, this was another great documentary by Netflix. They kept it objective by talking to all different sides of all of the problems the documentary brought to life, and it was engaging.

It’s similar to past documentaries where they tell multiple stories in the series and have different viewpoints on the story, but there’s some differences.

Besides Exotic and Baskin, the main focus is on the lions, tigers, and the other exotic animals. Because of this, the documentary brings to light the animal cruelty problem which has steadily become more talked about. 

Also, this documentary has also gotten a lot of attention on social media and it’s mainly about Carol Baskin and the disappearance of her second husband, Don Lewis.

But, I have a problem with this documentary: it was pretty long. It takes roughly 6 hours to binge watch the whole series which is twice as long as they usually are.

I feel like it could’ve been shorter because some explanations were really drawn out when they shouldn’t have been.

Despite this, I still highly recommend watching this series.