Ryan Murphy's fourth “Monster” season dropped Thursday with Ella Beatty as Lizzie Borden, and audiences torched it — around a 26-35% viewer score against a 50% from critics. One camp says the franchise has become a blood-soaked machine that recycles real killings for clicks; the other says every generation retells Lizzie Borden and squeamishness isn't criticism. Which is it?
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Add your commentMy grandmother grew up in Fall River. Her family talked about the Bordens the way other families talk about a local fire — part of the town's bones. Seeing it turned into glossy Netflix gore porn genuinely upset her when I showed her the trailer. That's not squeamishness. That's something else.
The franchise model is the problem. Season one works because it was built with care. By the time you're on season four with a brand and a logo and a promotional machine, you're not making art about a murder. You're making a product shaped like art about a murder. That's the line.
The Lizzie Borden story has been told in books, plays, musicals, films, and a TV movie with Christina Ricci — but somehow Ryan Murphy making a series is where we draw the moral line? The selective outrage in these comments is genuinely fascinating.
"Every generation retells Lizzie Borden" is doing a lot of work in this debate. Every generation also produces bad art. The age of a story does not immunize its latest adaptation from criticism. Come on.
If you disagree that the franchise model degrades the subject matter, explain how you square that with the fact that Netflix greenlit this before season three even aired. They weren't evaluating artistic merit. They were expanding a brand. That's not a creative decision, it's a corporate one.
If the critics gave it 50% and the audience gave it 26-35%, that gap tells you everything. Critics have been trained to reward ambition. Audiences just want to know if a show is good. Trust the audience on this one.
I want someone to make the actual affirmative case for this show. Not "Lizzie Borden is public domain" and not "Murphy is bold." Tell me what this specific season illuminates about this specific story that we didn't already have. I'll wait.
The 26% viewer score is the criticism. You don't need a philosophy degree to understand that audiences have a voice and they used it.
The 50% critic score is low too though. People keep framing it as critics-versus-audience but a coin flip from the critical establishment is not a defense of a show.
The franchise has a real problem with what I'd call subject-matter drift — Dahmer was about a specific cultural failure, Monsters season two was explicitly about a legal case, and now we're doing a Victorian axe murder mystery. The connective tissue is just "infamous and dead." That's not a thesis, that's a catalog.
"Squeamishness isn't criticism" — okay, but neither is saying a thing is bold. Bold and good are not synonyms. Murphy fans confuse the two constantly.
I work in true crime production and the criticism that this "recycles real killings for clicks" applies to literally every documentary, podcast, and prestige drama for the last fifteen years. Why is scripted always the villain?
I've said this before and I'll say it again: Ella Beatty is going to be fine. She's not the problem here. She's doing what good actors do, which is commit fully to a flawed project.
I don't know why people are acting like the viewer score is some kind of verdict. Half the people scoring it one star on those sites hadn't finished the season. I watched all six episodes. It's messy but it's not worthless.
I changed my mind partway through writing this comment. I started thinking Murphy had gone too far, then I remembered how much I loved Dahmer, then I watched the Lizzie Borden trailer and... yeah, this one does feel different. More performative. Less interested in the actual person.
the person asking whether the show gets the history right has the only correct question in this thread and everyone walked right past it
I grew up watching Unsolved Mysteries and In Cold Blood and every week there was a new miniseries about a real crime. The idea that THIS is some new low feels historically illiterate to me.
"every generation retells Lizzie Borden" — sure, but not every retelling is good. Frequency of a bad practice doesn't justify it.
The comment about Netflix greenlit this before season three aired is actually factually correct and nobody's pushed back on it. That detail should bother people more than it apparently does.
The person talking about their grandmother in Fall River — genuinely moved by that comment. That kind of proximity to history is exactly what gets steamrolled by the content machine.
My 17-year-old watched it and said it felt like the show was daring her to look away rather than inviting her to think. That's a pretty sharp observation from someone who's never heard of Ryan Murphy.
Hard disagree with the person saying to always trust the audience score. Audiences review-bombed shows they hadn't watched all the time. That gap could mean the show is challenging, not that it failed.
ella beatty's mom is warren beatty's daughter so this is going to get coverage no matter what the show is like, lets be real
I just want to know if Ella Beatty is good in it because if she is I'm probably watching it anyway and feeling complicated about myself the whole time
watched the first episode and honestly ella beatty is doing something interesting with the role but the direction feels like its trying to shock you every ten minutes instead of letting the story breathe
waited two days to watch it specifically to avoid spoilers from people on sites like this and then someone in my work slack just blurted out the ending. I'm so tired.
genuine question nobody here seems to want to answer: does the show actually get the history right or does it invent things? because that changes my whole position
ngl i thought this dropped already and binged what turned out to be the ricci one from 2018 so i have no idea what im talking about but carry on
so we're mad at netflix now but hulu can do whatever it wants? the only consistent principle here is that people hate netflix specifically
ok the unsolved mysteries comparison is wild to me. that show was trying to SOLVE crimes. this is just vibes and blood.
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