Dahmer (series) finished: Get ready for 3 hours or racism training

This is a fantastic series that I think everyone should watch. I'm not going to take that away from it. I was thinking while I was watching it that it was very strange that Netflix wasn't trying, for once, to make a show that is all about educating the masses about racism, sexism, other social-justice things that they seem to just LOVE to do in nearly all of their shows.

Dahmer is a show about a gay man who decides to murder people. I am sure you know at least part of the story already but when you watch this series, you will almost certainly learn a lot more about what happened than you knew before since we didn't have access to information back in 1991 the way that we do now.

Unfortunately, it was short-lived though and Netflix went and devoted basically the entirety of the last 3 episodes into making the crimes of Jeffrey Dahmer at least in part be pinned on racist police officers. The preachiness that exists in this part of the show eludes to the claim that Jeff would have been caught earlier if the police had simply listened to the minorities that attempted to get him in trouble.

While that might be true, there is nothing to indicate that it would have been that way and I suppose you could say that I am disappointed, although not surprised, that Netflix would do this.

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Like I said before, Evan Peters is shockingly good in his portrayal of Jeff Dahmer and the rest of the cast does an exceptional job as well.

The thing that kind of irritates me is that this show is supposed to be about Jeff, his parents that may have been indirectly involved in shaping him to become the murderer that he was, and the victims. For 70% of the series they manage to pull this off wonderfully. Then starting in episode 7 the show shifts gears to be about what so many people believe Netflix' objective is in so many things that they do: Blaming things on racism.

Could have the situation been changed if a white person called the cops instead of Jeff's black neighbors? Maybe, but there is no evidence that this would have been the case. It is all just presumed with made up or recounted dialogue that was almost certainly mostly made up. It's not like they were recording it while it was going on.

In the entire series there is only one recorded police conversation that is presented and the police handled it pretty professionally if you ask me.

I don't think we need any more hatred to be directed at police officers than the current political climate has already made happen. Police officers already do not want their jobs and the country is having a really difficult time finding new people to replace them.

While there might have been some element of racism in the police response, there isn't really any actual proof that this is the case and this series simply puts dialogue into the mouths of people that were there, without any concern as to whether or not that actually was the way that things were at the time. I'm not saying that they are outright lying, but there is no record of what was said and to put 3 hours emphasis on this, is irresponsible and simply "stirs the pot" in a way that it definitely doesn't need right now.

I will say one thing that they must have deliberately misrepresented in the series and that is how Jeffrey Dahmer was killed and they portray the other inmate of being some sort of saintly hero. I don't think there are many people out there that are going to feel bad about a serial killer meeting an untimely death, but presenting the attacker as some sort of person that was interested in justice is just wrong. The person who did kill Dahmer was a very disturbed person who was in jail on a life sentence for murder.

He ended up getting two more life sentences for the murder of Dahmer, which is just kind of silly and a waste of money to make happen anyway.

Netflix also didn't even present that fact that Christopher Scarver, the man who beat Dahmer to death, also killed another man in the same room that day. Is it at all possible that Scarver wasn't really interested in justice but was just an extremely violent person? Did it matter than the other man that was beaten to death at the same time in the same room as Dahmer named Jesse Anderson, was also white?

Dahmer wanted to die, he didn't keep this a secret but Netflix has made a mistake in attempting to make his killer Christopher Scarver look like some sort of hero that was doing God's work.

I guess you could just say that I was hopeful that Netflix was going to abandon attempting to turn anything they can into a lesson in racism and up until that point in the show, it looked like they were going to.