Stream It Or Skip It: ‘MerPeople’ On Netflix, A Docuseries About Professional Mermaids

MerPeople is a 4-part docuseries about the small but rapidly growing community of mermaid performers. This is exactly what the name says it is: These performers don elaborate, custom-made fins and perform either solo or in groups.

MERPEOPLE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A group of mermaid performers dive into a pool to entertain adults and kids looking through side windows. Then they all pop up in pain; there’s way too much chlorine in the pool and their eyes are burning.

The Gist: When many people think of people working as performing mermaids, the first place they think of is Weeki Wachee Springs in Florida, where mermaid performers have been swimming for family audiences since the 1940s. In fact, a few of the former mermaids reminisce about the experience in the first episode.

The main focus of the episode is on four performers. One of them is Sparkles, who considers herself a “landlocked mermaid” because she lives in Arkansas. There aren’t many people in the state doing what she does, though she did meet a fellow mermaid and they’ve become “seasters”, as Sparkles calls them. Performance opportunities are also hard to find, except for the occasional kids’ birthday party.

Another performer we follow is Ché Monique, the founder of The Society of Fat Mermaids. She’s promoting body positivity among those who dream to be a mermaid performer. She auditions for the Circus Siren Pod, one of the elite mermaid performance troupes; she does well, but founder Morgana Alba (also interviewed) tells her that she needs to be able to lift herself out of the pool for safety reasons.

A lot of the discussion in the first episode is about just how physically demanding the work is, because not only are they swimming with a heavy tail binding their legs, but they have to hold their breath and keep their eyes open underwater. Stamina is critically important in this field.

Oh, and there’s a high entry budget: A custom tail can cost anywhere from $2500 to $5000. One of the people who make the tails is Eric Ducharme, the MerTailor. He followed the Weeki Wachee mermaids since he was a kid, and became a merman at the attraction at the tender age of 13. He bought an old furniture store and is in the process of converting it into a tourist attraction where people can come and see a mermaid show. He even installed a tank. Now he’s holding auditions, and both Sparkles and Ché Monique are there.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? There aren’t many docuseries about mermaids, are there? As far as documentaries about nichey careers are concerned, the first one that comes to mind is Well Groomed.

Our Take: According to one of the interviewees, professional mermaiding is a $500 million industry, which is why director Cynthia Wade treats the subjects of MerPeople with a fair amount of respect. Another reason that they’re treated with a lot of respect is that, man, it’s a damn hard job! It takes a lot of training to get the stamina to be a mermaid, and there’s a ton of up-front costs that need to be laid out without a ton of promise of return. In other words, the people working as mermaid entertainers absolutely love what they do, or else they would never do it.

That absolutely comes through in the talks with the mermaids in the first episode. Ducharme was a quiet kid with Tourette syndrome, and he found joy and control in the water. Ché wants people who look like her and want to entertain people underwater to know that they can do it. Sparkles is trying to be a mermaid somewhere where there’s no body of water. Overcoming such massive obstacles is a pretty good indicator of their passion for the work.

The series does try to hold the sense of magic and whimsy around these performers, though, showing how much fun people have during the performances. Yes, there are doses of reality, like the pH of the pool being off or the fact that for every open performance position, there are hundreds of applicants. The Weeki Wachee mermaids had to dive through a long pipe to get to the main performance area, which led to a lot of sinus and ear infections. But these people all love being in the water and love seeing how people, especially kids, react to them, and it makes all of it worth it for them.

Sex and Skin: Aside from whatever shows when the merpeople wear their tails and suits, there’s nothing.

Parting Shot: Sparkles and another hopeful get into the tank to audition for the MerTailor show.

Sleeper Star: Basically, someone in the cast who is not the top-billed star who shows great promise.

Most Pilot-y Line: Not sure why we didn’t hear Sparkles answer the question, “Why not just move to where there’s some water?”

Our Call: STREAM IT. It may seem crazy to think that professional mermaiding is a thing, but after you watch MerPeople and see the happiness coming from the people who are doing this work, you way want to do that work, too.

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.