Born In Synanon is a four-part docuseries (now streaming on Paramount+) directed by Geeta Gandbhir that shows Cassidy Arkin, who was born into the Synanon community in 1974, interview various people from that community to find out just what went on there. What Arkin, along with her mother Sandra Rogers-Hare, is looking to figure out is how Synanon went from being an experimental community founded by Chuck Dederich in the mid-1960s to help those with drug and alcohol addictions to being a full-blown cult shortly after Arkin was born.
Opening Shot: A young woman is singing in an unfinished space. Then she says, “I’m Cassidy, and I was born into a communal cult.”
The Gist: Arkin started seeking these answers back in 2001, when she was 27; when she got a professional video camera, she started interviewing her parents, Rogers-Hare and Ed Arkin, along with members of Synanon she grew up knowing. In 2023, she interviewed a number of people she interviewed 22 years ago (although her father and a couple of other people she interviewed in 2001 have died in the interim) in order to get an idea just how Synanon started out and what it became.
What we find out, via these interviews and copious documentary footage from Synanon’s early days, is that Dederich found the community as a way to help “dope fiends” become productive members of society. Dederich himself was an alcoholic, and while he found help in AA, he felt that a community where there was a discourse was something many addicts may be looking for. Others who joined to help but weren’t addicts were called “squares”; Arkin’s parents were in this category.
Two things that attracted squares and dope fiends to Synanon in those early days was its diversity and something called the “Synanon Game,” where members would speak to each other honestly and and loudly in small groups, getting out all of their beefs and feelings, but never come to violence. After those meetings, there would then be a “hoopla”, with the people who were yelling at each other minutes before dancing with each other.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Any number of docuseries about cults, like The Vow and Escaping Twin Flames.
Our Take: What makes Born In Synanon a bit different than most cult-related docuseries is that Cassidy Arkin, who is an executive producer along with her mother and Gandbhir, didn’t join Synanon, she was born into it. So her perspective of the organization was this large and happy community, and now as an adult — and for the past two decades — she’s been trying to find out about its secrets from the people who joined it.
The first episode doesn’t give us a ton of information about Arkin’s personal experiences in Synanon, but we expect to see more of that as the show goes along. What the first episode shows, though, is that Dederich found the organization with some pretty good intentions, and the people who were in the community during its early days have nothing but fond memories of it. It’s not until Synanon became more of a self-sustaining community, and Dederich got a taste of the power he had, that it became more of a controlling cult.
It’s an interesting illustration of why people join these communities to begin with. To the “dope fiends” who joined, it was a way to reenter sober society, as Synanon provided work and a group of like-minded people. For the “squares,” it wasn’t just a way for them to help people in need; the community was diverse, artistic and politically progressive.
But now that all of that has been set up by the first episode, it’ll be fascinating to watch it all go bad, with Arkin finding out from her parents and others the exact ways that things went wrong.
Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first episode.
Parting Shot: As we see a scene where Dederich is being led from a courtroom, we hear a voice, after being asked if Synanon is on the way to being a terrorist organization, he says, “I think they’re already there.”
Sleeper Star: Dederich himself is the sleeper star, because he starts out looking like one of the “squares” that he invited into Synanon, but as you pull back the layers, you see that he was anything but.
Most Pilot-y Line: Nothing we could find.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Born In Synanon is unique among cult-related docuseries because it shows that not all cults start because of one person’s narcissism and messiah complex; some actually have good intentions. Of course, it makes it all the more fascinating to watch it all go wrong.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.