Trainwreck: P.I. Moms might be the most trainwreckiest entry yet in the hit Netflix documentary series. That’s a multilayered statement – the story of a reality TV series that went kablooey because of jealousy AND a criminal scheme to steal and resell police-confiscated drugs is here told in a sloppy doc that seems more interested in squeezing a complex, multifaceted story into 45 minutes. But hey, it’s weird and fascinating in a stop-and-gawk kind of way, right? That’s the M.O. of the Trainwrecks, which have covered all kinds of goofy, newsy stories, with varying results. Not that quality necessarily matters; the sensationalist angle these docs take is catnip for Netflix viewers, who routinely make sure they end up in the Netflix Top 10. Insert cynical commentary here!
The Gist: WALNUT CREEK, CALIFORNIA. A nice little town in the Bay Area. But every town has its DARK UNDERBELLY, doesn’t it? It’s where a Hollywood project collapsed under the weight of troo cryme in 2010, thus depriving the world of a reality show from the producer of Steven Seagal: Lawan that surely would have touched billyuns of lives and filled warehouses with Emmys and trophies for public service. I mean, Dr. Phil once had the subjects of the series on his show! And we all know Dr. Phil is the bastion of credibility.
Anyway, some of our key players here: Lucas Platt is the aforementioned producer, contracted by Lifetime to make P.I. Moms, a reality series about a Walnut Creek private-detective firm owned by former cop Chris Butler, who’s characterized as a bit of an attention-seeker. Hence, why he almost exclusively hired women who scoped out infidelity cases and such by day, and went home to their families by night. It was a gimmick, and it got Butler what he wanted – a TV deal. But Butler doesn’t appear in this documentary, because he’s the villain. Same goes for the non-mom that worked for him, Carl Marino. More on him in a minute. But two of Butler’s detectives, Denise Antoon and Ami Wiltz (here identified simply as “Ami”), aren’t afraid to go in front of the camera and talk about what crumbums Butler and Marino are. Same for cops Daryl Jackson and Robert Blehm, the latter of whom put a wire on a cooperative Marino to monitor a drug deal, and was gobsmacked to learn that the shady business was peripheral to a big dumb reality-TV project.
This nutty plot hinges on Marino, a wannabe-actor with Jon Hammish good looks who pitched himself to Platt as a star of P.I. Moms, despite the fact that he didn’t quite represent the title of the series. For that very reason, Platt turned him down. Then we meet Pete Crooks, a magazine writer who hung out with the P.I. Moms for a fun feature – then got an email from someone named “Ronald Rutherford” who claimed the bust he witnessed was phony, staged for Crooks’ article. WHO, we’re all thinking – not that we need to think that hard, mind you – could “Ronald Rutherford” BE? As Crooks pulled on that thread, Marino contacted Jackson about Butler’s other side gig, which had something to do with a dirty cop stealing drugs from evidence lockers and giving them to Butler to sell. “It was all over the place!”, Jackson exclaims of the story he was fed, which is something you’ll inevitably say after watching this doc.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Compared to other Trainwrecks, P.I. Moms is even more superficial than the saga of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford (Mayor of Mayhem) and the Carnival Cruise plumbing fiasco (Poop Cruise), although Balloon Boy was a generally more satisfying slice of quasi-journalism.
Performance Worth Watching: Wiltz says she wanted to share her heartbreaking personal story with the world so it could be therapeutic for herself and others, and you’ll believe her.
Memorable Dialogue: Platt’s initial impression of the P.I. Moms project sounds like famous last words now: “I have tons of great characters – this is going to be the easiest show I’ve ever produced!”
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: I get it. It’s tough to make a documentary that finds the sweet spot between leave-them-wanting-more and overloaded-with-information. We get plenty of the latter in documentary sagas that needlessly stretch over multiple episodes. But Trainwreck: P.I. Moms skimps on details (e.g., I had to find a CBS News story from 2012 to determine that the bust Crooks saw was indeed staged, not by the TV producers, but Butler), and fashions itself as a de-facto Carl Marino hit piece while crucially lacking an interview with Marino himself. This might be the least thorough and most dissatisfying Trainwreck yet.
Sift through the various plots and subplots of this saga, and you’ll turn up all kinds of subtext in which the doc shows no interest, a big one being the thorny gender dynamic of a situation where the actions of men torpedoed a professional opportunity for several women. Antoon and Wiltz say that their intention with the P.I. Moms series was to inspire other women with their personal stories, and show that they too can have cool jobs and raise families – while selectively ignoring the exploitative qualities of Butler’s TV pitch. The documentary generally asserts that this P.I. Moms show was a big deal, and those of us who’ve seen countless canned and manipulative reality series should be unconvinced by this argument.
Director Phil Bowman profiles Butler as an inexpressive type who’s also hungry for attention – and curiously never explores, or even asks, why Butler would risk scrutiny of his drug operation by inviting camera crews into his life. Or for that matter, why he continued an illegal scheme when a perfectly legal TV endeavor might’ve netted him money and fame. Was Butler that hard up for money? Don’t expect an answer, or even any basic facts or speculation about Butler’s character, his motives or where he is now.
The doc also fails to interrogate the idea that Marino was a shrewd opportunist who aided the police in taking down a drug ring at the exact same time he torpedoed a TV show that rejected him. It just paints him as a jerk who – did what, exactly? The right thing, maybe? That just so happened to kill an opportunity for several women to become basic-cable stars? The series pushes the narrative that he was driven by malevolent jealousy, and finds itself in a quandary because his character presents a fascinating dichotomy, and his point-of-view might give us the richest story for this doc. Alas, there isn’t even an explanation as to why he didn’t participate in the movie. Meanwhile, Platt makes a passing comment about fame and how many people erroneously believe it’ll fulfill them, and the doc treats it like a vestigial organ, just hanging there useless and unnecessary, when it should be the heart of this story. But hey, at least we have a slipshod episode of Trainwreck to give us a vague outline of some crazy things that happened, crazy things that are outlined far more thoroughly with a cursory Google search.
Our Call: Trainwreck: P.I. Moms doesn’t investigate its subject very well at all – and that’s some remedial irony there, kids. SKIP IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.