No one protected girl who killed mom
The show: Mommy Dead and Dearest The moment: Dee Dee’s parents
So far in this harrowing documentary, we’ve learned that, for years, Dee Dee Blanchard, perhaps suf- fering from Munchausen by proxy syndrome, kept her daughter Gypsy Rose ill (by force-feeding her medications) and in a wheelchair, though she could walk; and that Gypsy and a boyfriend finally murdered her.
We meet Claude Pitre, Dee Dee’s dad, and his second wife, Laura. They sit on chairs in their house, a riot of knick-knacks. They speak in thick Cajun accents.
“Dee Dee was a filthy person,” Laura says.
“If it didn’t go her way, she’d see to it that you would pay.” Dee Dee once poisoned Laura by putting Roundup in her food, they say; Dee Dee starved her own mother to death.
Then, we meet Gypsy’s cousin, a tattooed biker who says, “I figured one day, Dee Dee would piss off somebody” and be killed.
“I thought it would probably be Gypsy.”
If this has you screaming, “So, why didn’t you help?” just wait until you hear from her legion of doctors. They all have their reasons for hurrying Gypsy along, for missing what was right in front of them. Many feel terrible regret. But no one protected this girl; that’s the message director Erin Lee Carr communicates loud and clear.
True crime docs need lurid details and this one has plenty: the strangeness of Dee Dee’s syndrome; the pathos of Gypsy’s romantic fantasies.
But the best ones show us the consequences when we fail one another.
If you see something, please say something. Mommy Dead and Dearest airs on HBO Canada starting June 1 and is available on demand. Johanna Schneller is a media connoisseur who zeroes in on pop-culture moments. She usually appears Monday through Thursday.