Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Tiger King 2’ On Netflix, Where Joe Exotic Stews In Prison While Everyone Else Gets Famous

Tiger King 2 is the follow-up season of 2020’s massive hit docuseries Tiger King, which took the early pandemic period by storm with the story of Joe Exotic, who is now in federal prison, convicted of multiple animal cruelty charges and a charge of hiring someone to kill his nemesis, Carole Baskin. The second season, again directed by Eric Goode and Rebecca Chaiklin, is less dependent on the massive backlog of footage they shot of Exotic and the footage Exotic had also shot of himself doing things like making music videos and accusing Baskin of killing her first husband, Don Lewis. This season depends more on prison interviews with Exotic and interviews with everyone who was in his life and worked for him at the GW Zoo in Oklahoma.

TIGER KING 2: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: The planet Earth. A data center in an undisclosed location. “March 19, 2020”.

The Gist: Most of the first episode deals with the presidential pardon Eric Love — who never met Exotic, but feels he was railroaded in the case — tried to get for Exotic from Donald Trump before the previous president left office. There are serious questions in the case, according to Love, including the involvement of Jeff Lowe, Exotic’s former business partner/rival and “life-sized Chucky” James Garreston. According to Love and his attorneys, the two of them set up Exotic to take the fall, and the federal government pinned the animal cruelty charges onto Exotic because they couldn’t make the murder-for-hire case stick.

For his part, Exotic openly stews about everyone around him getting rich and famous from the first season of the series, and the fact that his current husband, Dillon Passage, hasn’t seen him or hasn’t even tried to get his conviction overturned. We also hear a bunch of details about Exotic’s turbulent childhood with his abusive farmer dad, how he got depressed over being gay, his time as Texas’ youngest police chief, and his 16-year marriage to his first husband, Brian Rhyne. We also hear from Exotic’s brother Yari Schreibvogel, who hasn’t seen Joe in 20 years.

Even as we see Love and supporters like John Reinke try to meet with Donald Trump Jr. — right before President Trump contracted COVID — and attend the January 6 rally that led to the Capital insurrection, Exotic is still lobbying to reopen the Don Lewis case. Baskin, who did not participate in the second season because she felt the filmmakers lied to her the first time around, is seen in archival and news footage, but only one interviewee — a representative of PETA — seems to be sympathetic to what she’s been through since the first season debuted.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Tiger King‘s first season, though this season feels more like a companion piece to the Discovery+’s recently-debuting Carole Baskin’s Cage Fight.

Our Take: There was no way that Tiger King 2 was going to be as crazy or as shocking as the show’s first season, mainly because this deals more with the aftermath of the original season’s impact than what Exotic or Lowe did with the animals in their “care”. As it is, it’s a bit of a mishmash, not knowing whether to concentrate on Exotic and his allies’ attempts at exoneration, Baskin and Don Lewis, or just the whole silly phenomenon that now feels like happened eons ago.

That’s one of the feelings we got as we watched the first episode of the sequel season; its time has passed, even though it’s been less than 2 years since the first season premiered. When Tiger King was part of the zeitgeist, we were still figuring out where and when to wear masks, singing “Happy Birthday” twice while we washed our hands and taking Clorox wipes — if we could find them — to our groceries. The world feels a lot different now, and the story of Joe Exotic seems like it’s from a different time.

Goode and Chaklin definitely seem to be sympathetic to Exotic’s plight in the first episode, and considering the fact that a number of the 5 episodes in this second season are devoted to the Carole Baskin-Don Lewis mystery, there seems to be very little evidence that they’re going to balance things out in this season. Not that we’re Baskin supporters, but her non-participation seems to have given the filmmakers free rein to fully lean into the idea that she had something to do with Lewis’ disappearance.

So what purpose does this follow-up serve? We’re not sure. It certainly isn’t going to get Exotic out of federal lockup, and slimy frenemies like Lowe and Garreston look like they’re getting more attention than either deserves. Maybe it’s to show just how disgusting this whole business was and is, and that we all participated in it by watching and talking about the first season like it was fiction. If that’s Goode and Chalklin’s goal, then they succeeded. We’re just not sure that this is anything but a money grab by them and Netflix.

Sex and Skin: Besides Exotic’s first fiancée talking about how, as police chief, he danced in a g-string for the town’s mayor and her pals in order to raise money for a fire engine, thankfully there’s nothing.

Parting Shot: A shot of Don Lewis’ passport photo, showing us where the second season is headed; a reopening of his case.

Sleeper Star: None. Seriously. If anyone, Kimberly Craft, Exotic’s first fiancée, gets points for staying close to Exotic after he finally came out.

Most Pilot-y Line: The video from O.J. Simpson that speculates that Don Lewis became “tiger sashimi” at the hands of Carole Baskin was funny, but, boy, the Juice has no idea how to read the room anymore, does he?

Our Call: STREAM IT. Despite our negativity towards Tiger King 2, we still recommend it to anyone who watched the first season and wants to find out more. But, it certainly isn’t essential watching to anyone, whether they liked the first season or were repulsed by it.

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, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream Tiger King 2 On Netflix