Delayed Reaction: Mommy Dead and Dearest

The Pitch: Munchausen by proxy syndrome leads to a murder.

After watching the Paradise Lost trilogy over one very long and slightly depressing day, I was on a crime-doc kick, and some wise algorithm targeted this for me. Where Paradise Lost is an examination of a broken legal system, Mommy Dead and Dearest is a straight-up crime-doc. If there isn't a "ripped from the headlines" Law & Order: SVU about it yet, there will be. It's about a fascinating case of Munchausen by proxy and a perfect storm of a revolting daughter who starts dating the wrong guy. It's certainly worth watching. I tackles a moral grey area that's hard to condemn too harshly.

I was bothered the whole time I was watching this because I feel like I've heard this story before. The daughter, Dee Dee Blancharde looks so familiar. I don't watch the news much, so I doubt I caught anything about this story there. I don't follow the kind of news sites that would've covered this story. I've literally tracked every movie and TV show I've watched since well before the murder was committed, so I can safely say that this story hasn't turned up in anything else I've watched. Why does she seem so familiar? Does she look like someone I know? Or is her story so uncannily like an episode of SVU from 2006 that I'm confusing her with a character from an episode of that? I don't know and there's no way for me to track this down. It's very frustrating.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend