Like most Americans, I spent the early days of quarantine watching Tiger King and debating the role of Carole Baskin in her husband’s disappearance and laughing at the antics of Joe Exotic. I think as a documentary, Tiger King was entertaining, but missed the mark on it’s original goal. When I first heard about this show, I expected it to focus on the mistreatment of these animals and the fad of owning and breeding big cats as accessories for the extremely wealthy. I learned in this discussion that the show was inspired by the documentary, Blackfish, which followed this format to expose the mistreatment of whales at SeaWorld. After watching Tiger King, I was disappointed in its execution on conveying this message though. I do think that there were some good educational parts of the show, and it demonstrated a lot of the mistreatment of these animals and the evil side of owning and breeding wild animals in captivity without proper regulations and controls. However, I think this message was largely overshadowed by the sensational drama between Joe Exotic and Carole Baskin. After hearing other people’s impressions of the show in this discussion, and from seeing peoples’ reaction to it on the internet, it seems like the main takeaway from the show surrounded the flamboyancy and controversy of the two opposing cat owners, and not the cats themselves. While I think this makes for a good piece of entertainment, I wish the creators of the show could have used this attention grabbing drama to draw even more attention to the cruelty and animal rights violations demonstrated by these for-profit “zoos.”