The Real Bling Ring (series): Pretty good so far

This docuseries is something that just dropped on Netflix and while it may have been featured elsewhere this is the first I am seeing it. It features 3, 50-minute or so episodes and is about how a few teens that lived outside of Hollywood successfully targeted celebrity homes and robbed them while the stars were not at home.

It seems crazy that this was possible and the methods that the teens used weren't even very intelligent, but perhaps the simplicity of their tactics is why they were able to get away with it for as long as they did.

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Mostly the story focuses on the two kids at the center of it all, Nick and Rachel, who are just pretty normal teens in middle class families in Southern California. They go to school, they go to parties, they do all the things that regular people do but they also had a dark side that was rooted in theft. It starts out with stealing things out of unlocked cars at parties in richer neighborhoods and then extends into stealing the cars themselves. Later on they extended to hitting houses and robbing them but their tactics were ones of at least at first, only going after families or individuals that were so wealthy that the missing items wouldn't even notice that items had gone missing.

But just like most thieves who get away with whatever they are doing for a certain amount of time, they kept upping their game and got more and more ambitious until they got caught.

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If you are the type of person that follows Hollywood celebrity news, you may have already been aware of these things happening because they really did happen. Thus far I have made it through the section of the series where the duo had repeatedly robbed Paris Hilton's house and until they got greedy and cleaned out her jewelry things had gone just like I mentioned before. Paris didn't even notice that cash, individual jewelry and even clothes of hers had been taken from the house. I guess this is the life of a billionaire rich kid who gets everything given to her - until millions of dollars worth of jewelry went missing all at once, the Hollywood socialite didn't even know anyone had been entering her house and using it as a constant cash cow.

I suppose I should allow people to find out this information by watching the show so instead I'll focus on the presentation and how it is done very well.

The show is done with a combination of interviews, some dramatized re-enactments, and also actual news and CCTV camera footage that is from the real events. The way they directed the show keeps the flow of it moving very well and even though I am prone just like most people to getting distracted any time that a show starts to lull a bit, this didn't happen to me when I was watching this. That is always a sign of a good show in my mind, the flow of information happened quickly and effectively enough that I didn't look at my phone even once during the initial episode.

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_{It is really quite alarming how awful CCTV footage is on these multi-million dollar homes}

I find it to be extremely well made and apparently a film has already been made about these events called Bling Ring, hence the name of this documentary.

The various video montages are quite well put together and I think that most people will find this all very interesting because who among us hasn't wondered what the home life of a celebrity is actually like?

Should I watch it?

I'm a big fan of documentaries because of the fact that when you are finished watching them you end up actually knowing something that happened that you may have not known before. I wouldn't say that any of this is terribly useful information but at least it is something that actually happened. You also don't end up feeling terribly sorry for the victims of the crimes because they were all super wealthy individuals who did things like keep loads of cash and jewelry in unlocked room and sometimes, houses that weren't even locked either.

The length is perfect as well. With just 3 episodes at around an hour each, this series deviates from the usual Netflix system of stretching things out entirely too far in order to have 10-12 episodes unnecessarily. I think that most people would be able to tear through this entire series in an afternoon and not end up regretting it.