What. On. Earth.

I’m not far into it but wow. It goes from strange > surreal > off the deep end in a few episodes.

Definitely an eye opener. Hugely entertaining.

Is that the story of Joe Exotic? I listened to the podcast a while back if it’s the same story, which was crazy!

Yeah that’s the one. Absolutely insane.

Yeah, I’m two episodes in. Bonkers doesn’t even begin to describe it!

It’s all Carol baskin’s fault.

Just this minute finished the last episode. It gets more and more bonkers throughout!

@WillH

Brace yourself, or quit while you’re ahead.

Just when you think it cannot get weirder it does!

also 2 episodes in. everyone seems to be recommending it but i find it a bit crap really. yes its nuts, but not sure whether to keep going or bin it.

I feel I know everything and nothing about it, having only seen ALL. THE. MEMES. About it from mates on insta…

It’s amazing

I can’t stop laughing at this

View this post on Instagram

Carole Baskin nightmare fuel #TigerKing @chicks (via @chloeiscrazy)

A post shared by Barstool Sports (@barstoolsports) on Mar 26, 2020 at 2:49pm PDT

Still can’t believe there are more Tigers in captivity in the states than there are in the wild.

Just finished, starts crazy and goes from there…some horrible tragedy as well though.

Yep definitely a lot of personal tragedies in the story.

I do like how it shows some of the great and not so great of the US. The have a go everyone deserves a chance kind of attitude combined with the animal abusing, gun toting, corn dog eating underbelly.

It’s insane. I don’t think any one comes away not looking like a complete megalomaniac.

I’ve been reading quite a lot about it via Flipboard, not sure I can bring myself to watch it, I’ll spend too much time screaming at the telly!

also 2 episodes in. everyone seems to be recommending it but i find it a bit crap really. yes its nuts, but not sure whether to keep going or bin it.

Keep going down the rabbit hole.

do these netflix docu’s need so many episodes?

TBF you’d struggle to fit that much crazy into an hour

It’s bat feces crazy, but many years back I worked in some of the UK zoo’s and the attitude of …”I love x animal more than you, and you don’t treat your animals as well as I do…” was everywhere. Peoples egos were so large they encompassed the animals as well. It’s like that job attracts crazy.
Did anyone else think Rick Kirkham came out of it with the most unlikable personality of the them all?

I can’t get over how Carol B is seen as a saviour of tigers. She keeps them in cages until they die!

Bonkers!!!

And that smug look she gives at the very end is unbelievable.

The whole documentary is MINDBLOWING.

Did anyone else think Rick Kirkham came out of it with the most unlikable personality of the them all?

I think I’ve still got an episode to go but I kind of know what you mean. He was there first and foremost to make cash out of the train wreck.

Did anyone else think Rick Kirkham came out of it with the most unlikable personality of the them all?

uh huh, Let’s re-cap: in comparison to the “Guru” with a messianic complex that drove him to get one of his own workers breast implants, or the Vegas con-artist who’s a convicted felon, choosing “nannys” to replace his pregnant wife, or the psychotic woman who may have had her husband murdered…Or finally Joe the Egotistical sadist who ‘s in prison because he tried to have Carol murdered…And you think the reporter was the most unlikable?

Yeah there’s a fair old cast of wrong uns.

Most of them had some sort of redeeming qualities I guess. The guru guy had the face most worthy of punching repeatedly.

NickC – good point! Though I get the impression that Joe, Guru, and Carole would all be great people to know, as long as you don’t fall foul of their ego. To a certain extent they are likable, even if it’s just the sheer size of their ego’s that’s makes them so. Rick Krikham just came across as bitter and twisted (and I realize he had a right to be).

Joe Exotics ex-husband was a poster boy for the medicinal benefits of crystal meth, wasn’t he?

Interestingly there are a couple of other Ex husbands in Joe Exotic’s back story. One of whom is in prison for Murder…

http://archive.is/rPXVC

Louis Theroux’s article from the times. His documentary from 2011 is also available on Netflix. Interesting re-watching that as Joe seems slightly less bonkers at the time.

Try the Tiger King drinking game – take a shot every time you say ‘what the …’

So, did Carol do away Don Lewis then?

Still can’t believe there are more Tigers in captivity in the states than there are in the wild.

I’d read that stat a few times in the past and thought it was crazy, but I assumed it meant lots of Americans with too much money kept a Tiger in the back-yard in a cage or there were hundreds of them in places like Vegas etc.

I don’t know why, but Tiger King skirts around the subject, the Louis Theroux docu is a bit clearer.

There was lots of money to be made, turning up to Malls etc and charging $25 to have your kids photo taken with a Tiger Cub, but once they’re a few months old they’re far too big and dangerous to let near kids and as they show in Tiger King, even if you’re taking a lorry load of out of date meat from supermarkets it still costs thousands of dollars a month to feed an adult Tiger.

If you forget they’re Tigers for a bit and just think of the way humans use animals it’s pretty easy to imagine an industry that breeds a lot of Tiger cubs and then “euthanizes” them when they’re too big to use anymore – after all, as was shown, a Tiger Cub is worth $2000, and Adult Tiger you can’t give away for $100.

They’re farming them like Sheep or Cows, but unlike sheep or cows they’re being farmed for photo ops, not meat. Racing Greyhounds and Dogs used for breeding in the UK used to suffer the same fate and I’m sure a lot still do, kept as long as they’re profitable and then shot / bludgeoned to death or just left tied up at the road-side.

PETA seemed to want to stop it, to end suffering, but the law of unintended consequences only made it worse in the short-term.

So, did Carol do away Don Lewis then?

Oh yeah, that Geezer got pushed out of the back of a couple of tigers years ago.

So, did Carol do away Don Lewis then?

My partner and I were discussing this. There’s a part in the documentary where a friend of his mentions that Don had said that he was on the verge of sealing a deal that would set him up for the future. I reckon (what with the Costa Rica references and the fact that he was a light aircraft enthusiast) that he was referring to importing a big load of drugs. I think he got offed and dumped by rival dealers.

I do think though that Carole is probably more than aware of what happened to him, if not actively engaged in Don’s world, certainly knew what he what up to.

I tried watching this at the weekend and couldn’t even get to the end of the first episode. I’m obviously in the minority so when does it start to get ‘good’?

It doesn’t, it’s a long drawn out horrific car crash of a program. Watch the first 20 mins of the Louis Theroux documentary on iPlayer and then imagine what their lives would be like after a decade on Meth and you’ll get there.
RM.

I tried watching this at the weekend and couldn’t even get to the end of the first episode. I’m obviously in the minority so when does it start to get ‘good’?

As above, either you enjoy watching ‘the crazy’ unfold before your eyes or you don’t.

If it’s not your thing, don’t be dragged into watching 7 hours of it, just because it’s THE thing to watch at the moment, it’s popularity is largely because millions of people are stuck at home and watching crazy people do crazy things, even if it’s pretty hard going for all concerned is great escapism at the moment. I’m sure if it came out next year, it would hardly make a ripple.

If you don’t enjoy the first episode it will only get worse, not better. It’s ‘wtf’ from the start only punctuated by a few moments of genuine shock / horror / repulsion. No lesson are learned, no redemption, things just continue to crash towards the logical and inevitable conclusion.

No Tigers are saved, No Tigers are ‘returned’ to the Wild.

“Don’t **** with Cats” on Netflix is ‘better’, its a hard watch, especially if you’re an Animal Lover, and raises a lot more questions about who is good / bad. It came out a year or so ago, it made some headlines at the time, but was largely ignored by the masses.