#meunchausen syndrome

[ha-yeah-nothankyou]

The Act (A HULU Original) series review

During this self-quarantine, I decided that I was going to (finally) watch The Handmaid’s Tale because now is a better time than any to watch three full seasons of approximately 15 episodes each, with every episode spanning a full hour of moral horror.

Great way to pass the time.

I was half way through the very last available episode, right at the biggest climax the story presented so far, when the ad break started. I watched two different commercial about car companies and what they have to say about the end of the world. Then, the third ad was squeezed in at the end. This one was for a HULU Original called The Act, and when I heard the name Gypsy Blanchard uttered by a kind middle-aged woman I knew that this show was going to take priority over the fate of June Osborne.

You see, I find myself very familiar with the story of Gypsy Rose Blanchard. In an uncomfortable way, even.

In the middle of an episode not made for easy-peasy switching about, I quickly typed in “Act” in the HULU search and immediately started watching. I almost couldn’t care less about Offred/Ofjoseph.

The show opens to a cluttered but otherwise empty house, camera at the end of the hallway pointing straight at the locked front door. Someone is frantically knocking. But the knocking is drowned out by an audio track played over top. It is a 911 call, the real 911 call placed on that very day. Not a reenactment of it.

Dee Dee isn’t answering the door. Her car is still in the drive way, but the neighbors haven’t seen her in a few days. Someone posted a worrisome message on her Facebook page, and she isn’t answering the door.

Now, this was very smart of the writers. They opened to the climax of the story with no explanations, then skipped backward almost 6 years to the day. Each episode featured a piece of information uncovered at the crime scene the night Dee Dee’s body was found and then went back in time to show its true significance.

Gypsy Rose Blanchard lived with her mother, who actually had several alias’ so we’ll just call her Dee Dee, in a simple home built by Habitat For Humanity for the Blanchards after they lost their previous home to Hurricane Katrina. The Blanchards took priority, of course, because poor Gypsy was very very sick. She had epilepsy, leukemia, muscular dystrophy and so much more.

In reality, Gypsy was healthy as could be, minus what was imposed on her by her mother to make her seem sick. But Gypsy didn’t know this. She was raised to believe that she needed a wheelchair and that she was allergic to sugar all to appeal to Dee Dee’s ego.

You see, Claudine (Dee Dee) Blanchard was never officially diagnosed, but it is speculated, as evidence reported, that she had meunchausen syndrome by proxy. Meunchausen syndrome is when an individual feigns or induces injury or illness in order to seek attention. Meunchausen by proxy is when a caregiver feigns or induces injury or illness on the person receiving their ”care” in order to seek the attention, sympathy and pity of spectators.

Now that I’ve established the beginning of the story, stating some facts and explaining some terms, I think it’s time for what I think of The Act.

It is, in fact, a dramatized reenactment based on a true story. There are characters and pieces of information that are new, altered, or all-together missing. For example, we see interactions between Dee Dee and her own mother that happened in secret. Both of them were dead long before the show was written, and therefore no one would know what had happened between them really. All the witnesses are dead.

Two can keep a secret if one of them is dead. But if they are both dead, that secret is even safer.

Watching this show brought up an emotion I haven’t felt in a very long time. I don’t know what to call it or what to even compare it to, but it’s there lurking in the darker corners of my memory. 

In order for you to understand how I feel about The Act, you need to know a personal story of mine. I’ll make it short, as it is important and undetailed anyway.

From the age of eleven to approximately fourteen, I was introduced to the internet at the peak of popularity for Creepypasta. If you don’t know what that is, congratulations may you live a healthy life. Also, why are you on here if you don’t? But those of us in the know...

I, personally, got into a questionable crowd, consisting of two people and sometimes three. We were a tight group and stayed in touch for a couple years, I actually still talk to one of them occasionally. But the foundation of our relationship was a bed of knives, shrouded in baggie hoodies. I have no concept of time regarding these years of my life and some of the years following, so I can’t give you a straightforward timeline.

I was obsessed with a friend of mine, I only knew her as Jade. She depicted herself as a mysterious figure with auburn hair, a black hoodie, and a dark blue mask to cover her face with two black gaping holes where her eyes should be. To some of you, this sounds familiar. Yes, she said it was her OC. Yes, the OC’s name started with “Eyeless.” You know the drill.

And to compliment her, I depicted myself as a seductive red-haired teen with a dark secret: that she is actually a serial killer! Dun dun dun!

We role-played as these characters and created fictional situations where we would carve up victims, and occasionally each other, for the sheer pleasure of it. We fantasized about how we would kill people, who we would kill first, and how we would dispose of evidence.

At one point, I planned to kill my parents. I was so deep in this second reality I had built that, today, I don’t have any first hand memories outside of it. I remember our fantasies, but I don’t remember what was happening in my house. I don’t know what show my parents were watching then or what movie we bought as soon as it was available in stores. I don’t have a splinter of memory pertaining to events happening in the world around me.

That emotion I mentioned? It exists there, right there in that jumbled mess of images I wish I’d never seen and stories I wish I’d never made.

This HULU Original? The Act? Somehow, this show managed to drudge up an emotion that doesn’t exist in reality as I perceive it today. This show is so well done; the acting is on point, the casting is uncanny, and the story so well written that seeing it remolded my reality. With the medications I now take, so that I don’t return to the place where that emotion resides, I shouldn’t have been able to feel it. This series is powerful in a way that makes me regret recommending it to my mother before I finished it.

Now, HULU isn’t very specific about its trigger warnings, as I learned from watching The Handmaid’s Tale, so if you are sensitive (like me, oops) you should research the story beforehand. Learn the story-line of the real case and then make your decision.

Here is a very undetailed but informative article on the case of Gypsy Rose Blanchard.