\n<\/p>\n
Netflix\u2019s true-crime documentaries have a recognizable sheen to them\u2014the streamer even released a comedy series mocking its take on the genre. Yet its latest hit, The Perfect Neighbor, takes a different tack. Unlike the average true-crime doc, the film doesn\u2019t rely on soapy reenactments and first-person accounts to piece together its story: a Black woman\u2019s murder by her white neighbor in 2023, which rocked a tight-knit Florida community. Instead, it leans on primary-source material culled from body cameras and interrogation rooms. The unvarnished approach stands out among the flashier titles in Netflix\u2019s catalog\u2014so much so that it became fodder for a Saturday Night Live spoof last night. Using that same device, it probed a different, more mundane topic: the division of household labor.<\/p>\n
The sketch was a trailer for an imagined forthcoming Netflix true-crime docuseries called Gone Without a Trace, which tracked three men rattled by their wives\u2019 sudden disappearance. This week\u2019s host, Miles Teller, and the cast members Ben Marshall and Kenan Thompson played the bereaved husbands; they retold their version of events through a combination of sit-down interviews and security-camera recordings. The concept involved direct nods to The Perfect Neighbor\u2019s use of real-time footage\u2014particularly a moment where Teller\u2019s character, Doug, paced around his front porch while speaking with body cam\u2013wearing cops.<\/p>\n
Via a series of \u201cnever-before-seen interviews\u201d with the men\u2019s partners\u2014played by Veronika Slowikowska, Ashley Padilla, and Sarah Sherman\u2014we soon learned that these spouses hadn\u2019t been abducted at all. Instead, two of the women were traveling. (\u201cI had told Doug about it maybe 45 times,\u201d Slowikowska\u2019s exasperated character said.) Sherman\u2019s character had the most absurd story of the bunch: She happened to just be in the bathroom for a while. With their wives away for a spell, the husbands swiftly unraveled at home. \u201cWhoever took her left a bunch of cryptic notes,\u201d a stupefied Doug said. The sketch then cut to an indoor security-cam shot of him reading Post-its stuck to the fridge. They instructed him how to heat up food and finish the laundry, prompting him to cry out to the presumed kidnapper putting him to work, \u201cIs this a game to you?\u201d<\/p>\n
The men\u2019s utter dopiness was played for laughs, yet the true-crime framework shrewdly animated a deeper discussion about what\u2019s become known as the \u201cmental load\u201d: the unspoken work that women in heterosexual partnerships too often take on for their household. Studies conducted in recent years have shown that women in heterosexual couples predominantly take on the brunt of domestic tasks\u2014managing the family\u2019s calendar, unloading the dishwasher, feeding pets. This is not to say that men don\u2019t contribute to the household at all; rather, research suggests that some men aren\u2019t cognizant of their partners\u2019 frustration, as the women silently project-manage their home lives. Sometimes, as the sketch underscored, the men won\u2019t realize it until they are left to fend for themselves.<\/p>\n
The SNL parody never mentions the phenomenon by name, but doing so wasn\u2019t necessary to get the point across. The women explained to viewers that they had not only told their husbands where they were going but had also reminded them of it constantly. The true-crime trappings offered a pointed tool for presenting evidence that contradicted the husbands\u2019 oblivious assertions. One wife had marked her work trip on a calendar by circling, starring, and adding arrows clearly pointing to the dates she would be away. Padilla\u2019s character offered the most blistering example: She entrusted her befuddled husband, played by Thompson, with handling child care alone. \u201cI just wish I could have prepared myself,\u201d he said in an interview. \u201cBut there was no way I could have known.\u201d The sketch then cut to a recording of Padilla\u2019s character, bags in hand, repeatedly telling her husband that she would be visiting her sister upstate.<\/p>\n
In satirizing some women\u2019s impressions of their male partners\u2019 cluelessness as a high-stakes matter, SNL subtly commented on these fraught domestic dynamics. Mimicking The Perfect Neighbor was a cheekily zeitgeist-y maneuver\u2014a way to illustrate, as is the case in many true-crime docs, how these men failed to recognize the warning signs before their supposed tragedies struck. More harrowing still: The husbands refused to learn how to, say, care for the kids and make Cup Noodles without lighting the house on fire. They instead resigned themselves instantly, as if waiting for their partner to offer them one more reminder to do the most basic of chores.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Netflix\u2019s true-crime documentaries have a recognizable sheen to them\u2014the streamer even released a comedy series mocking its take on the genre. Yet its latest hit, The Perfect Neighbor, takes a different tack. Unlike the average true-crime doc, the film doesn\u2019t rely on soapy reenactments and first-person accounts to piece together its story: a Black woman\u2019s<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32047,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[18569,1386,7290,3584,7983],"class_list":{"0":"post-32046","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-chores","9":"tag-domestic","10":"tag-highstakes","11":"tag-sketch","12":"tag-snl"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32046\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}