I am not generally into true crime, that is, unless it’s made into a fictionalized show or movie with a bunch of actors that I love case. Case in point: The Staircase. This HBO Max miniseries is based off the documentary of the same name that was fairly recently all the rage on Netflix. Well, now this story has finally made its way to me.
Although, I say that not totally realizing what the whole story was about. As I read the highlights of the actual case against Michael Peterson, I thought to myself, “wow, this sounds like what happened on Trial & Error.” Readers, I am stupid and never connected those dots. Anyways, I’ll circle back to that a little later. For now, I’ll cover the basics of the events of the show, based on a real life mess. What you need to know first is that the cast is a dream. Anything that’s got Toni Collette and Dane DeHaan is an instant-watch, but add people like Colin Firth, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Sophie Turner, Odessa Young, AND Michael Stuhlbarg. Well, let’s just say I was hooked without needing to know anything else about the series.
But, if anyone out there has watched the documentary, it is my understanding that this miniseries follows the exact same thing, with some flourishes of course. That’s what makes for good TV. Michael Peterson, a mooching, narcissistic writer, “finds” his second wife of five years, Kathleen, dead at the bottom of the steps. Let me tell you what, I was not even close to expecting the amount of blood that there was. I don’t know how anyone could have looked at that profuse amount of blood and thought Michael Peterson didn’t have anything to do with it. Despite there being no skull fractures, it appeared to be blunt force trauma that caused her death. Not to mention there was injury consistent with strangulation. Yet, Michael proclaimed his innocence despite all the lies we learn about him as the story goes on.
Don’t worry, Collette’s Kathleen is seen in flashbacks mainly months and days before her death. She’s a pretty great lady who’s the breadwinner of the family and essentially wrangled Michael’s hodge-podge family together. That’s why it’s such a shame none of them believed that he could have done this to Kathleen, even after all the falsehoods they learn about him. Some of the most damaging being that he lied about having a Purple Heart, and the fact that he had a lot of sex with a lot of men. That is the lie that lasted through the whole thing. He told everyone that Kathleen was privy to that information and was cool with it. Now, having never told, one can’t predict how she would have reacted, but I think she would have been more upset learning that she was being cheated on on a regular basis.
Kathleen’s biological daughter was the only one to defect from the family after her death, where the rest of Michael’s kids stayed by his side regardless of how crappily he treated them. It’s clear later in life how tremendously his harshness impacted them. It’s most clear in his retrial hearing in 2017, where he accepts and Alford Plea, is finally free from prison, but none of his kids are there to celebrate the good news. That’s right, Michael definitely went to prison for some time, and tried and failed to appeal several times. The only person waiting for him in the end was Sophie, one of the editors of the original documentary series. How messed up is that?! I think she’s delusional and clearly didn’t understand the whole picture of Michael’s life.
That’s something that is wild to me. Michael, played by Colin Firth, comes across as such a scumbag. He thinks so highly of himself, yet hasn’t really accomplished much in his life without the help of the women that were in it. There’s no doubt in my mind that he was behind Kathleen’s death, but it sounds like we may never truly know. Now, back to the thing that ties this miniseries to the wonderful and short-lived comedy, Trial & Error. In the shows first season, John Lithgow’s character is trying to clear his name of his wife’s death and we come to find at the end of the season that she died at the hands (or claws) of an owl! That’s the other running theory for Kathleen’s death that actually had some meat to it, but ultimately didn’t amount to much in helping Michael out. Still neat to see that connection.
Overall, this was a pretty neat and twisty series to watch. I’d be interested to hear people’s thoughts who watched both the miniseries and the documentary and how they compared. I think the series did a decent job of leaving the ultimate conclusion up to the viewer, but whichever way you slice it, it’s still a tragedy.