Women love true crime, and apparently so do I, because “Maternal Instinct” is my second true crime review in three weeks, after The Crash.
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Why? Why do women love true crime? Morbid insight into their own vulnerability? Fascination with the cruel fates of others? Or maybe women like to be reminded that they aren’t delicate flowers and can be just as ruthless and backstabby (or frontstabby!) as men, because the true criminal from “Maternal Instinct”, like “The Crash”, is a murderess.
Here’s my advice to the ladies: Stop freaking out. Allow me to redirect your interest to the holy trinity of stuff you should actually care about: Chicks, cars, and sports. Y’all need to step up to the plate and start listening to the “Cars!, chicks!!, and sports!!!” podcast, hosted by Bro McGLP2, with special guest every straight man on earth. By the way, “step up to the plate” was a sports reference, which you would get if you started listening to the podcast!
But, instead of taking my own advice, I watched “Maternal Instinct”, and in the opening scene was greeted by our villain, Taylor Parker, who has been pulled over to the side of the road by a police officer in New Boston, Texas. I am curious if New Boston runs a New Marathon, or if they still do it like in Old Boston.
The police take Taylor, who has a baby with her she claims she’s given birth to, to the hospital, where we promptly are treated to doctors, nurses, and police officers debating the veracity of her story.
Here’s the thing... This is a documentary, right? How are we getting this footage of Taylor on the roadside and in the hospital? Then it hit: We’re looking at footage from police body cams.
WHAT?!?
Isn’t the point of body cams to prevent abuse of police power (@#$! the police!)? To hold cops accountable for questionable actions? If so... Why has body cam footage become a clown, for our amusement? And how on earth did a netflix documentary crew get ahold of it? During the closing credits, they thank the New Boston PD for “providing” the footage. Providing? I might not know much, but I know this: Ain’t nothing free. I am guessing that the documentarians “provided” some of that sweet, sweet Netflix cash to the correct department, and then in return were “provided” with the body cam footage in the Taylor Parker case.
So now body cams, tools that are supposed to help underprivileged people not get railroaded by the state, are just providing entertainment. It’s like that old TV show “Cops”, except we don’t need a full fledged camera crew following the cops around anymore, we’ll just furnish the cops with THEIR OWN cameras, paid for by the government. This is exactly what economists are talking about when they mention “Socialist input, capitalist output”. The body cams are being paid for by US, the taxpayers (you’d best believe movieshyte pays their taxes... *wink*) and yet the profits reaped from the footage are being collected by Netflix, a private entity worth billions. Instead of the masses getting justice, they’re getting placated with spectacle. Why hold a cop responsible for beating somebody down when we can be entertained by WATCHING them beat somebody down? Goodbye humanity, hello epicaricacy. By the way, you might notice my insane vocabularly flex this review. You’re welcome.
Then we have the actual crime itself. Taylor is a con woman, but she is apparently the worst con woman in New Boston because none of her schemes actually work. She tries for a real estate thing that fails... And the central incident of the film, is she tries to convince people that she’s pregnant. Because... ??? I guess it doesn’t matter why, what matters is that the only person in the entire town that fell for the ruse was her boyfriend Wade.
We get interviews from Wade’s family, Wade’s friends, Taylor’s friends, lawyers, and even doctors (no engineers, so we don’t complete the trifecta of careers acceptable to asian parents), and ALL of these people say essentially the same thing: “It was obvious she was lying. I never believed she was pregnant. I tried to tell Wade, but he didn’t believe me”. Followed up by: “I was really curious what she was going to do when her ‘due date’ came up”.
There are two options here. First, these people are lying, and they actually were fooled by Taylor and don’t want to look stupid in hindsight. The second option, is that they are telling the truth, and kind of seem complicit in a murder.
Now, let me be clear. I don’t think Wade’s friends or the people of New Boston are vindictive or evil in any way. They seem like good people. If they had any inkling that Taylor would eventually murder a pregnant woman and steal her baby, they would have stopped her. BUT... They did have an inkling that *something* was about to happen. We know this, because they tell us in their interviews! What was going to happen when Taylor was ‘due’? A doctor in the town PUT THE HOSPITAL ON ALERT FOR A POTENTIAL BABY KIDNAPPING when Taylor’s due date arrived, because he was concerned she might take action that drastic. Umm... Doc? If you thought Taylor represented a threat large enough to put your hospital on alert... Why didn’t you just call the one person Taylor was fooling, her boyfriend Wade, and say “I’m a doctor. Your girlfriend is NOT pregnant.” He could have shut the ruse down right there. Wade’s friends, that tried to tell Wade he was being fooled, just kind of shrugged and walked away when Wade wasn’t buying their story. Why didn’t they pull up Taylor’s shirt, rip off her false belly, and throw it in Wade’s face?
I don’t want to speak for these people out of turn or claim to know exactly why they didn’t stage a full on intervention to uncover Taylor’s ruse. But I’ll tell you at least PART of it: Spectacle. They knew the Taylor car was going to crash (much like MacKenzie’s car in The Crash), and they wanted to know what the result looked like. I’ll repeat myself, I don’t think for a second that any of these people thought *murder* was going to be the outcome... But by being so fascinated by the spectacle of Taylor and Wade saga, they unintentionally left that murder door open, when they could have provided irrefutable evidence to Wade that his girlfriend was lying to him, and ended the whole ruse right then.
I feel bad for Wade. Apparently, after Taylor’s arrest and conviction, he was kind of treated like a pariah by the town. That seems unfair, being as Wade was only person actually fooled by Taylor’s fake pregnancy. That makes Wade guilty of what... Being a dumbass? Hardly. Relationships are hard, and it’s just unreasonable to expect people in relationships (romantic or otherwise) to be objective about them. That’s why the whole “throw the false belly in his face” thing was necessary to get him to see the truth. I think Wade is more innocent than all the townspeople that DID see through Taylor’s ruse, and just watched, waiting to see how the story would end. Then it ended in murder.
Can I sit here on my soapbox and say I would have done any differently? Of course I can’t. I wasn’t there. Maybe I would have seen through Taylor’s ruse and looked on with everybody else. Or maybe I would have been fooled by Taylor but lied about it to a documentary crew to save face. I don’t know. Hopefully, I would have learned from the experience. Maybe it’s better to stop cops from beating people down rather than enjoy watching them do it. Maybe it’s better to step in and try to help your friend by revealing his girlfriend’s duplicity before it can spiral into a tragedy that you never imagined was possible.
Or maybe you can just grab the @#$!ing popcorn and watch.
6/10