Elisa Lam doc on Netflix

[WIBadger]

I've listened to a few podcasts on this case and was intrigued by the Netflix mini-series. I finally watched it over the weekend. It didn't really give me any new information, but I thought they gave way too much airtime to the internet sleuths and conspiracy theorists. I really feel bad for that musician whose career was essentially ruined. I also feel bad for her family. This was definitely a case of mental illness, and I can't imagine what those last few days were like for her.

Yeah, I thought that episode three kind of jumped the shark a bit in that regard before showing why it was all crap in episode 4. Or at the very least, show from the outset how crazy those conspiracies were. Because the documentary at first presented them fairly uncritically.

 

[WIBadger]

Oh, I must not have seen that part. I thought they said the lid was closed.

Yeah, it was right at the end. It was just a misunderstanding somewhere along the line.

As for why they didn’t lock it, I felt like their explanation made quite a bit of sense; they just didn’t think they needed to. People aren’t supposed to be up on the roof and the door that goes out there is set to an alarm. And even if you know that people are somehow getting into the roof, it’s a leap to then think that they would go hide in the water tanks.

 

[Drew0311]

I honestly watched it and think she had a bad acid trip mixed with her bi polar. Bad acid trips can make you over heat and get naked. Mixed with her clothes being off and puns in the water tank. I think she had a bad trip, stripped down and jumped in the water to cool down. Some weirdness happened though and I can’t explain that. I had a friend almost die the same way. Found him naked in the lake trying to cool down and he had no idea what was happening. If we didn’t have friends there he would have died. That’s my amateur thought

 

[2forISU]

I honestly watched it and think she had a bad acid trip mixed with her bi polar. Bad acid trips can make you over heat and get naked. Mixed with her clothes being off and puns in the water tank. I think she had a bad trip, stripped down and jumped in the water to cool down. Some weirdness happened though and I can’t explain that. I had a friend almost die the same way. Found him naked in the lake trying to cool down and he had no idea what was happening. If we didn’t have friends there he would have died. That’s my amateur thought

Didn't the toxicology report come back negative? They explain why her clothes were off in the documentary.

 

[Stewo]

It was 2 episodes longer than it needed to be. Felt like the real story was the internet “sleuths” making money off the conspiracies, death tourism, etc.

The actual case really isn’t that unique.

I didn't enjoy this at all. They focused so damn much on the fools of the internet that it took far too long to get to the actual details. Clearly, they did that because it was barely a story. This must be how people felt when they watched the series finale of "Lost".

 

[Beernuts]

I didn't enjoy this at all. They focused so damn much on the fools of the internet that it took far too long to get to the actual details. Clearly, they did that because it was barely a story. This must be how people felt when they watched the series finale of "Lost".

Agree. This should have been a one episode story. The hotel and the manager itself was more interesting than the missing person case.

 

[2forISU]

Agree. This should have been a one episode story. The hotel and the manager itself was more interesting than the missing person case.

Skid row is more interesting

 

[Die4Cy]

I didn't enjoy this at all. They focused so damn much on the fools of the internet that it took far too long to get to the actual details. Clearly, they did that because it was barely a story. This must be how people felt when they watched the series finale of "Lost".

It's a documentary as much about how amateur investigators chasing youtube clicks will get it wrong as it was about getting the Elisa Lam case solved correctly.

That's sort of the main take away, I thought.

I watched the one on the Night Stalker yesterday and I appreciate that it was entirely focused on the investigators' points of view: how they tracked down leads, how they tried protecting information, how they dealt with the press. Quite the contrast to the youtuber opinions in the Lam case, which were just sort of vomited everywhere.

Senator Diane Feinstein (then San Francisco mayor) does not come out looking good at all in that one. She almost blew the case entirely the way they made it sound, the only saving grace was that the suspect was out of town when it happened and didn't know they had him dead to rights.

 

[JayV]

Somewhere during episode 2 it became very obvious what had happened, except for whether the hatch was open or closed. They wrapped that up at the end of episode 4. They could have completely skipped episode three, covered the hatch issue at the beginning of episode 4 and then talked about the complications created by the internet detectives. There was no reason at all for the ghost discussion and other supernatural theories.