most outrageously horrible human being featured in netflix's TIGER KING: MURDER, MADNESS, and MAYHEM

episode 5 details his run for president (and pivot to governor)

He won 664 votes in the state’s libertarian primary

If we were voting for favorites, I would go with Kirkham, who pretends he’s not as crazy as the others but totally is

I never thought anyone could top Kenny Powers’ funeral speech for Shane Dog, but a mighty salute to Joe Exotic for being the new king.

I said it to my wife the other night- for me this show singlehandedly diminished the impact of every single Danny McBride character he's done to date.

James Garretson; strip club magnate, slippery figure, confidential informant

aka Proposition Joe (The Wire)

yeah, but prop joe was cool

gotta say it's really something the way the 1st episode presents the show as being primarily focused on the eccentricity of Joe Exotic and then immediately thereafter reveals nearly every other character to be even more insane than he is

"even more" is a stretch

"just as" I would buy

although I'm reconsidering now that I'm remembering the dude who was all "people assume a tiger took my legs but I lost them in a ziplining accident"

I love how that dude seemed like the only sane one of the bunch but he was also this guy:

#TigerKing was so insane that by the time this guy pulled up with a skeleton riding shotgun I didn’t even blink and the show didn’t feel the need to explain it pic.twitter.com/tTzJloh74e

— Ramsey N. Closet (@ram_punzel) March 24, 2020

They’re all terrible, but I found Doc Antle the most annoying.

xp

that was one of the strengths of the series, how these little elements of weirdness would pop up in the background and the filmmaker would just ignore it.

like this guy's taste in home decor:

If the lead detective in my murder case has a monkey butler... please ask for another detective! 🕵️‍♂️ #TigerKing #TigerKingNetflix pic.twitter.com/RquuBbtExo

— Adrian Funtimes (@AdrianFunTimes) March 24, 2020

everyone brings up the monkey butler, but look at that coffee table!

I’m bothered by how much affection Joe Exotic seems to be getting from this. Some of the same people vilify Carole Baskin and seem to think she’s the worst of them all.
Also apparently the zoo now owned by Jeff Lowe was apparently swamped with visitors after this came out?

they're also apparently re-opening carole's murder case and in december the feds raided doc antle's compound.

hate to bring it into this thread but Joe vs. Carole has a big Trump vs. Hillary element to it, in regards to Joe Exotic being an awful piece of shit on his surface vs. Carole acting like "the good one" despite having many skeletons in the closet and doing basically the same things in a way that's less obviously bad

no, that is completely and totally apparent.

the hate for carole has echoes of the anger people feel towards prestige tv wives like skylar from breaking bad, who want to stop the antihero protagonist from doing the badass things the viewer wants to see.

Not sure how many people actually hate Carole vs. just want to join in on the "fuckin Carole Baskin!" meme

I was thinking that Carole gets away with so much shit because she has a good speaking voice.

I haven't yet seen the entire series but up to the introduction of Jeff Lowe, I don't understand how anyone could possibly think Joe shouldn't be in jail

other thought is that people who think they have serious flaws keeping them from finding love and companionship and feeling like it's a permanent state of loneliness should watch Tiger King.

I feel like that could massively backfire into “omg these insane meth addicts can find love and I can’t, I must be worse than I thought”

i now can't stop laughing.

I'd almost be willing to believe Carole isn't so bad except we find out she apparently relies on a whole buttload of unpaid labor while sitting on racks on racks on racks from her dead hubby*

*I have no idea whether she's responsible for his death though I do thoroughly enjoy the meme of Carole sitting in front of a tiger with the caption "WHY MEN GREAT TIL THEY GOTTA BE ATE"

I'm very much hating Howard Baskin at the moment. Everything about him. Cold, creepy and calculating.

Doc Antle though is so a cult leader though, you didn't even need that testimony from his former employee,

not a good idea to trust anyone who calls himself bhagavan

Voted Don Lewis - horndog jetting off to Latin America to engage in cub breeding - who misses him?

mario tabraue has surely done worse things but jeff lowe just came across as pure evil to me

Doc Antle for me, the others were all just outrageous or nuts but he was a sleazy arrogant libertarian groomer who made my skin crawl.

Lowe a close second though for fucking getting away with all his shit!

Doc for me, but there are a lot of contenders. I felt bad for Carole. They never just said straight out, the truth, which is that (unlike the rest of teh scumbags) SHE DOESN'T BREED WILD ANIMALS. On the other hand, her whole park had weird Scientology vibes going, with people paying more and more to unlock different volunteer levels, etc.

I voted for Doc after watching a couple episodes, but now that I finished the whole thing, I'm leaning a bit more towards Jeff. The scene where he was picking out a sexy nanny was a bridge too far.

People who havent seen this show are all "wehhhhh I wont watch it if they are cruel to the animals!!" but no one much talks about how brainwashed, groomed and controlled a lot of the women are :/

not seen this yet but it seems to have blown up massively, literally everything on any timeline I have is either covid or this

well then here's the crossover event of the year

https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/netflixs-tiger-king-star-joe-21803242

carole baskin's response letter is interesting: https://bigcatrescue.org/refuting-netflix-tiger-king/

imo she convincingly clears up the questions about her sanctuary, and it did seem like the doc was massaging the facts in order to equate her legit and well-regulated operation with the private zoos. but, the very long passage in the letter about her husband and his associates doesn't really exonerate the most suspicious details on the show.

Oh god. Doc Antle's malignant narcissism wrapped with a nauseating pseudo-spiritualist bow takes some beating.

I feel like he's less damaged/more in command of his faculties than Exotic.

I'm leaning a bit more towards Jeff. The scene where he was picking out a sexy nanny was a bridge too far.

Oh yes I didn't even consider Jeff. His supernatural lack of charisma for an alleged playboy means he blends into the background compared to the other flamboyant fruitcakes. But he is truly a terrible person.

Not to mention his associate Allen has almost definitely killed people in the past

Okay, finished this. Definitely gets better after the first episode. Keeps ramping up the levels of absurdity to almost unbelievable heights. Can't keep track of how many times I thought "wait, what now?!?"

https://66.media.tumblr.com/ce2dd1ad4d3f17f3f837dbb15f2d72dd/b1be846c4b6354d4-cd/s1280x1920/47b83d4ddc5ed7a6ed180804c8857d63b674aa15.jpg

voted for Doc Antle because I get serious R. Kelly sex cult vibes from him, plus the fact that he's working them 100+ hours per week for well less than minimum wage and forcing them to get boob jobs and all that. there's definitely a lot of secrets and skeletons in his closet and he seems clever & cunning enough to get away with it. plus he was pretty obnoxious and whiny almost every time he spoke.

Joe probably a 'worse' person in an objective sense (he did try to get someone killed, after all) but at least his life seemed to be shaped by legitimate trauma - parents disowning him, the suicide attempt, the Travis thing, etc.

who knows about Carole, I guess it hinges on whether or not she actually did kill her first husband. I will say the documentary definitely tried to make her look conniving and evil in a way that maybe wasn't warranted, especially b/c "she fed him to the tigers" feels like such a bullshit urban legend & Don Lewis absolutely seemed like the kind of guy with a dozen mistresses who would just fuck off forever and never be found

I guess you could make a strong argument for most of these folks, outside of Joshua Dial, the one person (outside of the park employees) who I really did feel bad for, though I thought his presence was lowkey the funniest thing about this series, the way he unwittingly got sucked into this whole world and wound up having to witness some severely fucked up shit

I should’ve screencapped it but one of Joe’s (so Josh’s obv) campaign platforms was “anti-cyber bullying” which was just so fucking lol

ok, finally finished this up and how the hell is Jeff Lowe not in jail right now

xp lol, yeah no cyber-bullying unless you wanna shotgun a mannequin of your nemesis on your internet tv show every day for multiple years

more I think about it they really never explain how Don Lewis made his money (just "everything he touched turned to gold") which may explain why he suddenly disappeared

echoes of drew thompson from season 4 of justified

xp lol, yeah no cyber-bullying unless you wanna shotgun a mannequin of your nemesis on your internet tv show every day for multiple years

I went with 'Bagwan' Doc Antle in the end.

Some mitigating factors for some of the others are imo:

Joe had been disowned by parents for being gay and had half tried to save tigers but then bred them but if you were desperate for money and were big cat rich ... he's also half trying to save fucked up people by having them work on his park but then exploits them too

Carole had been raped as a child - really cannot blame her for seeing an opportunity in rich husband, can easily imagine him abusing her and can't blame her, he must have been some level of crooked, I dunno I'd still find her sympathetic given definite proof she killed him

Kirkham I liked immensely, same with Dial

Jeff Lowe was fucking horrible but wrt to swinging his wife seemed more like an equal partner and at least sex parties don't pretend to be anything else - wrt to stealing the park this is sort of mitigated because all these guys would do similar

The scarface guy was just a very standard scarface guy

I truly hated, hated, hated Antle above the others and I think it's the sex cult that settles the score for me, so very obviously a whiny weirdo that had brainwashed young girls; and that he had no horrible backstory I was aware of, no demon sitting on his back

Anyone seen the Joel McHale followup thingy yet? It felt a bit "jump on the bandwagon" cheap.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

oh yeah, remember Tiger King?

Gonna make sure likely murderer Allan glover gets a vote

Haha imo Allen’s not even in the bottom half of this human trashpile.

Doc Antle is just so much worse than every other piece of shit in this show and I won’t be convinced otherwise. I was wishing death on him by episode three. I mean I’m not proud. But I mustered up some kernel of sympathy or pity or at least mirthful derision for everyone else. Antle’s new age pretensions are good for half a laugh, I guess, but he made my skin crawl from first sight.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Congrats, Doc! Feel free to provide your own trophy.

lol remember when this was a thing, back in the day

I never watched this but those ridiculous character decriptions in the poll are making me think I missed out

oh my god pic.twitter.com/iiODBHgOlh

— Matt Blakemore (@MattBlakemore) July 14, 2020

https://www.nbc12.com/2021/01/20/limousine-awaits-tiger-king-outside-texas-prison-if-trump-pardons-him/?outputType=amp

he's a horrible dude who deserves to be in jail but I do have a bit of sympathy for the fact that he finally achieved his lifelong dream of becoming famous while serving out the first year of a 22 year prison sentence

Forgive the thread spam, but I wanted to note that this show's 2020 season is nominated in the 2020 ILX TV poll:

ILX's Best Television of 2020 Poll / VOTING AND CAMPAIGNING THREAD / Voting Ends After January 29, 2021

If you like this show and you'd like to see it have a good showing in the poll (running in February) all you need to do is submit a ballot including it and your other favorites (3 minimum, 25 maximum, ranked by your favorite to least favorite) to forksclovetofu at gmail. It'll take five minutes; get to it!

summary of Tiger King season 2: everyone has a massive ego and nothing happens.