Why The Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez is a reckless and irresponsible docuseries

Vulture

"One of the stranger things about Netflix’s documentary series The Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez is that it is so obsessed with that question of why that it forgets to focus on the victims at all," says Will Leitch. "It feels less like a definitive theory of the case than a series of postulates and speculations thrown at the viewer in a rush, leading to a sense that it’s a bunch of gossipy rubberneckers lobbing guesses at each other. Why did Aaron Hernandez, an All-Pro NFL tight end with seemingly everything going for him, kill his friend Odin Lloyd and (maybe) two random clubgoers in Boston? He had a bad dad! His dad died too young! His mother was aloof! He had an unhealthy relationship with his cousin! He had CTE! He was lonely! He smoked too much weed! He was gay! The series doesn’t know any better than you do, and it certainly doesn’t know any better than the stacks of terrific reporting on the story that already exist. But why should that stop us from taking a few stabs at it? The Killer Inside feels like a title in search of a story."