Dirty John tells a terrifying story with a lot of melodrama and not much else
Note to readers: Dirty John is about emotional and financial domestic violence.
“Dirty John” Meehan is a man of utter evil, of no remorse, a bad guy who knows how to play a long con. He’s charming and persuasive, until he’s not. He’s a grifter and a con man who targets wealthy women, isolates them from their families, and finds ways to siphon off their wealth. He’d been in and out of jail on various charges involving weapons, drugs, stalking, and harassment. He had no job but wore faded scrubs and called himself an anesthesiologist. He had no income and no nice clothes, but had explanations for everything, and enough swagger to be convincing. He met Debra Newell, a wealthy interior designer and businesswoman, over a dating app the day after he left prison, and persuaded her to marry him only a two months into their relationship. He installed security cameras to watch her every move, isolated her from her family, and took her money.
Dirty John, currently airing as a limited miniseries on Bravo, wants to be a prestige TV drama, but it can’t reckon with that lurid narrative. The podcast was a carefully researched and reported story, layering interviews and background information, letting an outrageous story speak for itself. Christopher Goffard wrote the series of articles in the L.A. Times and also hosted the Wondery podcast, which includes interviews with Debra Newell, an Orange County interior designer; her two grown daughters, Jacquelyn and Terra; her nephew, Shad, and mom, Arlane; and a handful of other extended family members and law enforcement agents. There’s no titular Dirty John in earshot, though listeners don’t know until the last episode whether he’s in prison, dead, or just out of the picture. In the deluge of true-crime podcasts, Dirty John stood out because the story is so shocking, particularly in its final twist (which we won’t reveal here.) Goffard does a fine job of reporting and narrating the podcast, though to its detriment, he doesn’t engage with some of the bigger questions the narrative raises. Consuming true-crime as pop culture already requires some private moral negotiation of finding entertainment in somebody else’s trauma; when that trauma isn’t framed within a larger purpose, it’s a slippery slope into popping popcorn while watching a barely fictionalized man prey on a woman and her family.
And that’s how we find ourselves in front of the TV watching Dirty John, which heats up a real-life story that needs no more fuel. That might have worked—if the events hadn’t happened so recently, maybe, or if the show was more heavily fictionalized—but it hits so many of the actual events note for note, uses many of the same names, and completely disengages from the violence and terror that form the bones of the real narrative. Dirty John Meehan is a more malicious and masterful criminal than most, and Debra Newell has more money and style than most, but the core of the emotional abuse is sadly ordinary. As played by Eric Bana, Dirty John goes through motions of violent outbursts and apologies without a convincingly evil center. We know he’s a bad guy because Debra’s older daughter, renamed Veronica in the TV show, keeps telling us so. There might have been some pleasure to glean from a miniseries like this, an enjoyably salacious story—something like Desperate Housewives, which creator Alexandra Cunningham also produced. But the show extricates itself from the true story it’s telling; instead of digging into it, it dresses it up in gold-sequin dresses and stilettos.