Trainwreck: P.I. Moms tells the kind of wacky true story that, if it were the plot of a movie or TV show, you’d write it off for being too farfetched. That’s always wonderfully fertile ground for a documentary. You get the sense Netflix probably knew they were onto a winner with Phil Bowman’s offering under the Trainwreck banner, which has been dominating the streamer’s top ten lists for weeks in a trend that isn’t likely to end any time soon, not when the mini-movies just keep getting better.
As well as being roughly analogous in quality to Trainwreck: Balloon Boy, which I only recently declared the best in the collection thus far, P.I. Moms touches on similar themes of mistrust around reality television and the aching need some people have to be famous by any means necessary. But it’s also about much more besides that, including women’s stories being hijacked by egotistical men and police corruption. I, for one, had never heard of the proposed 2010 Lifetime reality show P.I. Moms, which only helps, but even those familiar with the story will delight in how capably and effectively it’s retold here.
The premise of the original show was simple enough. Following the reality TV boom ushered in by Keeping Up with the Kardashians and The Real Housewives, every network was looking for a comparative mega-hit, and Lifetime thought they had one in a show about a Bay Area private investigator firm staffed almost exclusively by soccer moms. The firm, Butler & Associates, was owned by Chris Butler and featured one male staffer in the form of a handsome ex-cop-turned-wannabe-actor named Carl Marino, but otherwise only employed women. Two of them, Denise Antoon and another investigator only referred to as Ami, appear in the documentary at length.
Lifetime gave the responsibility of bringing the show to life to Lucas Platt, a well-heeled reality TV showrunner who had worked on that hilarious Steven Seagal: Lawman show. The production seemed to take care of itself. The women were smart and interesting and were adamant about creating a show that showcased their personal stories, empowered other ordinary women to go into a similar line of work, and rejected the sensationalism that defined most reality shows. It was, surely, a home run waiting to happen.
Except it wasn’t, obviously. The problems begin with a seemingly innocuous conversation between Platt and Carl Marino, who was manning the phones during lunch but was nonetheless adamant that he should have a big role in the series to court the particular female demographic that had seen him on TV. Then Pete Crooks, a senior writer at Diablo magazine who was invited to do a ride-along with the P.I. Moms for a puff-piece article, started receiving worrying emails from an interlocutor calling himself Ronald Rutherford. Accusations included the case being set up by Chris Butler. The credibility of the show was immediately in jeopardy. And this wasn’t even the half of it.
Needless to say, I won’t spoil any more, because like Balloon Boy, P.I. Moms takes some serious swerves. What starts as a jealous egotist threatening to undermine a production becomes a story about police corruption and drug dealing with many victims, both intended and otherwise. And it’s in the thematic texture that the story resonates, because the ease with which a female-driven story is hijacked by men for no reason other than their self-aggrandizement is inarguable.
An example, if I may. One of the investigators, Ami, lost her son when he was young, after he suffered brain damage as a result of an attack. Ami getting a tattoo in his memory was one of the scenes that the show intended to depict, allowing her to share her story — for the first time — and reclaim some of her lost identity by sharing her grief with other women who might have been in a similar position. This, more so than catching cheating spouses in the act, was the kind of human story that would have defined a reality show more well-intentioned than most. And it’s this kind of openness and honesty that was trampled on by the usual suspects, for the usual reasons.
The ending doesn’t soften the blow, and it’ll be obvious why. But if nothing else, Trainwreck: P.I. Moms gets a long-fought-for win. It wasn’t the one they were expecting, but the moms finally got their show after all.