Stream It Or Skip It: ‘How To Fix A Drug Scandal’, A Netflix Docuseries About Two Chemists Who Sent The Massachusetts Justice System Into Chaos

Not many people know about the role of a forensic chemist in drug cases. Their job is pretty boring, but incredibly crucial: They test seized drugs to confirm that what they have is an actual controlled substance. Without their help, prosecutors have no case. It’s one of those jobs that’s a cog in a larger machine, one that most people don’t think about. But, what happens when something goes wrong in that cog, and one or more of those chemists start sampling the evidence? That’s the topic of the new docuseries How To Fix A Drug Scandal.

HOW TO FIX A DRUG SCANDAL: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A closeup of a digital voice recorder. Then we see a scroll of a transcript, an interview between Massachusetts State Police Detective Lieutenant Robin Whitney and forensic chemist Sonja Farak. The interview takes place on January 18, 2013.

The Gist: In the four-part docuseries How To Fix A Drug Scandal, director Erin Lee Carr (Mommy Dead And Dearest) examines how the actions of two forensic chemists, Sonja Farak and Annie Dookhan, threw thousands of cases into doubt because of their actions.

The docuseries concentrates mostly on Farak, who had been testing captured drugs for cases in the western part of the state, in a lab on the UMass campus in Amherst. Her job is critical to the prosecution of drug cases, because she has to identify that what was captured during a bust was indeed the controlled substance the perpetrator is accused of possessing. Without the presence of the actual drug, there is no case. But when two samples are discovered missing, the sealed bags are found under Farak’s bench, sliced open, with fake powder subbed in for cocaine.

The first episode examines just how critical technicians like Farak are to the justice system, despite their unglamorous jobs, and how the state’s attorney general tried to limit the scope of Farak’s case to just the two samples that were tampered with. This despite the fact that her actions likely put the thousands of cases she worked on over nine years in doubt.

Carr interviews Farak’s mother and sister, who detail her mostly normal life, but also talk about her addiction issues, which is what led to Farak’s evidence tampering. She also talks to reporters who worked on the story, a member of the Northwest region DA’s office, who was none too happy that the AG tried to limit the scope of the case, and Whitney, who questioned both Farak and people who worked in the lab with her. We also hear Farak’s grand jury testimony via reenactments (Farak is played by Shannon O’Neill) which show Farak testifying as well as taking samples of the pure reference samples the lab had stored away.

Our Take: How To Fix A Drug Scadal suffers a bit because it’s the first docuseries we watched since Tiger King, and no docuseries is going to approach that one for sheer craziness. But Carr also has to overcome the fact that the show’s topic is so foreign to viewers — as one chemist points out, it’s not the sexy stuff you see on CSI: Miami (yes, she specified Miami) — that the first episode needs a fair amount of exposition. The process of zuzzhing up the repetitive nature of weighing and testing drugs to see if they’re really drugs leads Carr to make choices that sometimes undercut just what is at stake.

Farak isn’t a particularly compelling protagonist; the most interesting thing about her was that she was on the boys’ football team in high school, which made the news. She kept to herself most of her life, had maybe one relationship that didn’t last, and was perfectly content doing the detail-oriented work she did, barely even communicating with her co-workers. We guess this is why Carr felt she had to add the reenactments of Farak’s testimony and her machinations to sneak samples of the reference drugs before her co-workers showed up. But both lend the docuseries a bit of a cheesy Unsolved Mysteries flair, taking away from the gravity of the case.

Subsequent parts will dive into Dookhan’s story, but will come back to Farak’s trial. The information we’re most interested in, though, is just how the state tried to limit the scope of the case and how defense attorneys and the ACLU tried to reopen cases that Farak and Dookhan worked on. That “fix” referenced in the title is really what Carr needed to concentrate on, not the mostly humdrum lives of the people who got arrested.

Sex and Skin: Not that kind of show.

Parting Shot: A closeup of a sweaty, blinking Farak (at least the actress who plays her) after weeks of sneaking samples of the reference drugs.

Sleeper Star: As much as we don’t love the reenactments, we do think O’Neill does a good job of underplaying Farak.

Most Pilot-y Line: When the chemist mentioned CSI: Miami, did we need to see a self-satisfied shot of David Caruso?

Our Call: STREAM IT. In trying to make a dull profession and dull protagonist interesting, How To Fix A Drug Scandal veers dangerously close to becoming cheesy and artificial. But the results of Farak and Dookhan’s actions is so fascinating, that we’re very interested in watching this until the end.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company.com, RollingStone.com, Billboard and elsewhere.

Stream How To Fix A Drug Scandal On Netflix