Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Worst Roommate Ever’ On Netflix, A Docuseries About Roommates Who Are Con Artists, Killers And More

What do you prefer to watch when you press “play” on a true-crime docuseries? Stories told in an efficient manner that might skip over a few details, or an hours-long series on one topic that starts pulling in demographic data, biographies and people saying that “it’s not like there were cell phones/Twitter/DNA tests back then”? Maybe the way we’ve written this introduction tells you what we prefer, but the review below, of a new Netflix true-crime docuseries produced by Blumhouse, will lay out why we prefer one over the other.

WORST ROOMMATE EVER: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: We hear a recording of a 1988 police interrogation in Sacramento. The woman being interviewed insists that the bodies that were buried in her yard were not murdered.

The Gist: Worst Roommate Ever is a docuseries that takes a look at various horrific roommates, from killers and other violent criminals to squatters who find every excuse to stay and wreak havoc.

The first episode is about Dorothea Puente, a woman from Sacramento that comes off like a kindly grandmother, but turned out to be a serial killer. Through interviews, archival news footage, and animated reenactments, we hear about Puente’s childhood and her criminal exploits through the decades, starting with passing bad checks when she was 19.

The through-line of the story is how Judy, a social worker who worked for Volunteers of America, wanted to get an unhoused man named Bert Montoya a stable place to live. Despite some severe mental health issues, she felt Bert would be better off in a house environment, rather than in a shelter or even a halfway house. She felt that moving him in with Puente was the right move, as she ran a boarding house and had other boarders like Bert.

But when Amy hadn’t heard from Bert in a few weeks, she called Puente, who said that Bert had gone on a trip with her son. Because that made no sense, Amy eventually reported Bert as missing. Because of her past record, where she would knock out victims with paralyzing sleep medication, alerted the investigating officer to ask Puente to search her home where he found various pills. That led him to ask whether he could dig in her yard. When she gave permission, that’s when the grisly discoveries started. Overall, seven bodies were found, including that of Montoya.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Worst Roommate Ever has the tone of some of Blumhouse’s other true-crime docuseries, like Relentless, Fall River and No One Saw A Thing. The anthology format brings to mind Netflix’s reboot of Unsolved Mysteries.

Our Take: Nothing we saw during the first episode of Worst Roommate Ever makes it particularly distinctive from other true-crime docuseries. Since three of the four stories are one-and-done deals (the fourth story spans two episodes), director Domini Hofmann doesn’t waste any time in giving lots of background.

There’s a quick introduction to Sacramento’s growth in the 1980s, which coincided with it’s growing difficulty managing its unhoused population, and there’s some biographical background about Puente. But for the most part, the content is about the case, which is a welcome relief from the more padded, single-topic true-crime docuseries we’ve seen lately.

Are we fans of the animated reenactments? Not really, but they’re relatively sedate, and we do give Hofmann and the producers credit for not doing more garish forms of reenactments to fill in some of the details.

We’re at a point with shows like these that having a straightforward storytelling method that moves along quickly feels like a refreshing approach. And the businesslike manner of Worst Roommate Ever is definitely a welcome sight.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Amy holds up a picture of Montoya and says, “I just feel it was his destiny to expose Dorothea Puente.”

Sleeper Star: None we could find.

Most Pilot-y Line: One of the parts of the story that was glossed over a bit was Puente’s trial. The jury convicted her on three of the murders, but not the rest, including Montoya’s. Considering her claims that everyone died of natural causes and she felt she couldn’t report it due to the fact that she was on probation, how was the state able to get a jury to convict her on any of the murders? And why was the jury deadlocked on the others?

Our Call: STREAM IT. Worst Roommate Ever doesn’t try to gild the lily when it comes to the true-crime docuseries genre. Its straightforward storytelling and fast pace may skip over a few details, but that’s better than padding out the story for hours on 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, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream Worst Roommate Ever On Netflix