Netflix fans are finding Ryan Murphy’s latest project to be a different kind of American Horror Story. The prolific 58-year-old creator’s “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story” , which dropped Thursday, is facing backlash from viewers, who find the suggestion of an incestuous relationship between the infamous brothers “disrespectful” and “disgusting.” The nine-part, fictionalized series takes us through the events leading up to the sensational 1989 slaying of Jose and Kitty Menendez at the hands of their two sons, who insisted their father sexually abused them — along with the aftermath of the brutal crime.
The innuendo kicks off in the second episode, titled “Spree,” where it’s hinted that Lyle, now 56, and Erik, 53, had a romantic relationship — starting with a scene where Lyle (portrayed by Nicholas Chavez) enthusiastically kisses his brother (Cooper Koch). The show presents the suggestion of incest as a journalist’s theory, that the brothers were “hiding an even darker secret” that had “nothing to do with Jose,” allegedly floated at the time by Vanity Fair’s Dominic Dunne — a plot point which has been reported as only partly factual. In the first so-called problematic episode, the siblings have already killed their parents, and Lyle is now laying out a vision to Erik of their futures being bright, now that Jose and Kitty are gone.
He tells his brother that the two will live their best lives at LA’s exclusive Hotel Bel-Air �.