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This article discusses the full season of <\/em><\/strong>Monster: The Ed Gein Story.<\/strong><\/p>\n Somewhere around the halfway point of Monster: The Ed Gein Story<\/em>, the title character stares into the camera and warns: \u201cYou shouldn\u2019t be watching this.\u201d In a literal sense, he\u2019s talking to a pair of strangers who have interrupted him in the bloody aftermath of a murder. But the head-on closeup makes it clear that the so-called Butcher of Plainfield, played with eerie gentleness by Sons of Anarchy<\/em><\/a> star Charlie Hunnam, is also speaking to his rapt audience of Netflix viewers. Then he revs up his chainsaw and starts chasing the men. Of course, we keep watching. In the next scene, Ed treats his first fan\u2014his sometime girlfriend Adeline Watkins\u2014to the spectacle of a dead, nude woman, eviscerated and strung up like a carcass in a slaughterhouse.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a short sequence that might easily get lost amid the parade of violence, gore, warped sexuality, and heavy-handed social commentary that makes up this and every season of Ryan Murphy<\/a> and Ian Brennan\u2019s Monster <\/em>anthology. Yet it encapsulates the creators\u2019 attitude towards the millions who devour this kind of entertainment. Like the two previous installments, on Jeffrey Dahmer<\/a> and the Menendez brothers<\/a>, Ed Gein <\/em>retells in lurid\u2014and largely fantastical\u2014detail the legend of a notorious murderer<\/a>, with the aim of discerning what our collective obsession with and inevitable misunderstanding of each case says about society. In taking on Gein, America\u2019s ur-serial killer<\/a> and the inspiration for some of our most disturbing works of art<\/a> (not to mention crimes), Monster <\/em>seizes the opportunity to indict the very audience that made it one of TV\u2019s most popular shows. The upshot of this contempt is a season that layers hypocrisy as well as sanctimony over the grubby, tedious nihilism that made Dahmer <\/em>so miserable to watch.<\/p>\n Disdain for the viewer has been part of Monster<\/em>\u2019s DNA since the beginning. Each of its first two seasons opens with multiple\u2014some might say too many\u2014episodes reenacting the central crimes with a level of self-aware salaciousness that makes the typical TV-MA docudrama look like children\u2019s programming. Then there\u2019s a turn, when the human impact of the case comes to the fore and what the creators presume to be our uncritical fascination with murder schlock is challenged. In the case of Dahmer<\/em>, Murphy and Brennan shift focus from Jeffrey Dahmer (Evan Peters) to the dozens of queer men and people of color whose marginalization enabled him to make so many of them his victims. Menendez <\/em>is practically a remake of American Psycho <\/em>for its first three episodes, following young preppies Lyle (Nicholas Alexander Chavez) and Erik (Cooper Koch) as they execute their parents, then guzzle Chablis at a food festival, sing along to pop hits on the car stereo, and indulge in a six-figure shopping spree. But Episodes 4 and 5 are almost entirely devoted to the brothers\u2019 harrowing accounts of sexual abuse at the hands of their father (Javier Bardem) and, to a lesser extent, mother (Chlo\u00eb Sevigny). It\u2019s as though the show is saying to viewers: You wanted all the horrible details? Well, here you go, you monster. Enjoy them.<\/em><\/p>\n