To put it mildly, no, we’re not done with Joe Exotic quite yet. Yes, he’s still languishing in his own ‘cage’ and likely still enjoying any and all attention he’s getting while in prison, but the story of Joe Exotic hasn’t been tapped for every red cent just yet since now we’re going to see Surviving Joe Exotic on Netflix in just a few days. On July 25th we’ll be given another look inside the Oklahoma GW Zoo where he became the ‘star’ that he is now and might be a little more surprised by what we see if that’s even possible at this time. As of now, it’s kind of hard to think that Joe could offer up any more surprises, but obviously there are a few more layers to this particular slice of life that the nation has been exposed to. The only thing to wonder is if it’s going to be just as hard to take and just as divisive as Joe’s story has already been. There are still plenty of fans out there that want to see Joe set free from prison, though whether or not his appeals are going to work is anyone’s guess since the crimes he’s being accused of are pretty stiff. Plus, just from watching this trailer it’s hard to say that Joe should even be released, let alone be allowed near a zoo at any time in the future.
To be fair, a lot of us don’t know what it takes to operate a zoo and we wouldn’t know what to do if we had the chance. But there are moments during the series and even during this trailer when it feels that Joe is a bit too extreme, even for someone that might have been going through as much pressure as he did. It might have been feasible to say that he was high-strung from his war with Carole Baskin and everything else we saw, but what ruins this thought is that Joe happens to love being on camera and didn’t really become a different person when he was on TV. In fact, he became worse if anything. There are plenty of people that have found a soft spot in their hearts for Joe and wish him well and hope that he’s being taken care of in prison, while there are others that are hoping for some far less pleasing to come his way. But the truth of it is that Joe is a rather pathetic and unfortunately tragic individual that apparently didn’t have a fair shake in life, like so many others, and did the best he could to make himself into something that would outshine the life that he likely wanted to leave behind. Coming out as gay to his family didn’t go as he’d planned obviously, having a zoo that took more out of him than he’d expected had to be rough, and having two husbands that weren’t even gay and were hooked on drugs was another point in his life that likely didn’t go the way he’d planned. At this point, it’s hard to know whether to feel sorry for the guy or to just admit that he and those around him are safer with him being locked up.
It gets worse though since even if he does get out, Carole Baskin, his worst enemy, already has control of his zoo, meaning he has next to nothing on the outside other than a handful of people that care about him as more than just a TV personality. Some might think it’s hard to know where to stand on this particular issue, and it is at certain points since Carole Baskin and Jeff Lowe, both individuals who have had dealings with and troubles with Joe in the past, aren’t much better than Joe when it comes down to what they do and why they’re famous. They both still keep animals in cages, Jeff Lowe is notorious for the kind of things he does such as sneaking tiger cubs into hotels, which he likely can’t do any longer. Carole still has plenty of detractors that think she murdered her husband and fed him to the tigers, a narrative that Joe eagerly pushed throughout their feud.
But if we learned anything from the Surviving Joe Exotic trailer, it’s that we might finally get some insight on the animals and what happened to them once Joe was gone. It’s amusing in a dark sort of way, but the animals in his zoo were supposed to be a big part of the show. Once Joe came on-screen though it was kind of obvious that the animals had become secondary, and eventually would become just a part of the setting. The one thing that Joe doesn’t like to do is share the spotlight, a fact that’s made painfully obvious.
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