During this, our nation's time of quarantine, one unexpected, white trash, bizarre documentary series brought everything together. "Tiger King."

Everyone watched it, and, based on the memes and tweets and Facebook posts, everyone left the series with one opinion intact: Carole Baskin killed her husband.

I had seen the tweets and photos before I decided to waste seven hours of my life watching the show. I was ready to meet Carole. The cold-blooded killer who everyone was sure played a hand in her husband's death. I was ready to watch her incriminate herself, to watch her outplay the police who couldn't believe she got away.

But I have to tell you... I watched, and watched, and watched, and the last person whose character I would question in that show would be Carole Baskin. (Besides any and all characters who had less than four limbs, who I consider the only not terrible people on the show)

I just want to talk through the situation, OK? Carole Baskin was 19 years old when a man 20+ years her senior pulled up to her on the side of the road and asked her to put a gun to his head just so she would drive around with him.

Then, he LEFT HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN to start a life with her. So already, I'm not seeing the man as a sympathetic character, but I digress.

Carole said that before his disappearance, he was starting to lose his mind. Though other people in the show disputed that, Carole was his wife and would have known more about him than anyone else. And sure, could she have pushed the dementia angle so when he went missing, a disappearance might make more sense than a murder? Sure. But again, I come back to the fact that he was in his 40s and picked up a teen on the side of the road to marry and it doesn't seem like that much of a stretch to believe he was a little crazy.

It is also important to note that there isn't any evidence against Carole for the murder of her husband. And I get it. When you run a tiger sanctuary and you wanted to get away from your husband and, later in the documentary, you say what you would have to do to get a tiger to eat someone very casually, it looks bad. But that's because it was a documentary, and things are clipped together. And in this documentary, things are clipped together to make Carole look suspicious because it is a documentary about her enemy, Joe Exotic. And I think that is the main reason why I don't believe it.

The documentary wanted me to believe it. That was the agenda that was being pushed, and what everyone walked away believing because that's what it was supposed to do. And even then, when you were supposed to believe it, I didn't buy it. I took the word of one of the most level-headed individuals on the show who has a good explanation for nearly everything that may have seemed fishy over the word of a tiger-breeding redneck who admitted, regularly, that he wanted her dead.

What shocked me most about the show wasn't the show itself. In fact, I found it kind of boring and didn't quite understand all of the hype around its craziness. What shocked me the most was the reactions.

Your main characters are: Joe Exotic, manipulative partner, tiger breeder, absolute crazy person, and convicted felon; Doc Antle, tiger breeder and runner of a TIGER SEX CULT whose loyal subjects admit he uses sex to give them better living conditions; and Jeff Lowe, also a convicted felon who used to put tiger cubs in SUITCASES so he could use them to pick up and have sex with women, and said he would ONLY GET A NANNY FOR HIS NEWBORN IF SHE WAS SOMEONE HE WOULD SLEEP WITH.

And then we have Carole who, along with her weirdo husband, attempt to provide a stable life for tigers, run a non-profit that does not allow tiger breeding or even touching, and whose primary goal is to shut down for-profit big cat zoos in the United States... and because her other weirdo husband disappeared 20 years ago and out-and-proud Carole Baskin hater Joe Exotic claims she killed him, she is the villain in this story?!

I also think this is a good time to point out that there is a difference between a for-profit zoo and a sanctuary. The animals at Big Cat Rescue are rescues. Yes, they are in cages. They can't be not in cages, they are large, dangerous animals outside of their natural habitat. But they are outside of their natural habitat because they were bred in the US for profit, and then rescued.

Despite some clips in the show, Big Cat Rescue has really vast cages for the animals, who get to live without being used for monetary gain for the rest of their lives. (And no, you can't just "release them into the wild," because that is not legal.)

Is the best-case scenario for a tiger to be in a cage at a sanctuary where it is taken care of by humans? No, the best case for a tiger is for it to live in the wild, in its natural habitat. But for some tigers, i.e., ones bred for profit so creepy con men can wheel them up to hotel rooms for sex or redneck losers who breed them for money and were convicted of killing some of them, that is their best-case scenario. It isn't the perfect solution, but it is the better one.

All of this to say: Joe Exotic was convicted of killing five tigers (and admitted to it), convicted of paying someone to kill his rival, and in that rivalry, he was on the pro-animal exploitation side.

Doc Antle was accused of euthanizing animals once they stopped making him money, bred and crossbred wild animals for pay, and coerced women into sex in his creepy tiger sex cult.

And Jeff Lowe was a general creep, using tigers as a party trick and for sex and had a long criminal history before even meeting Joe.

AND CAROLE BASKIN, WHO POLICE CLEARED OF SUSPICION OF KILLING HER HUSBAND, IS THE VILLAIN HERE?

If you think Carole killed her husband because the documentary wanted you to, that's understandable. But, if without one actual shred of evidence of her doing a bad thing, and seven episodes worth of video clips showing that everyone else in the show was the human worst, you still think she is the worst person in the show, then I think you need to reevaluate what you just watched.

Read Carole Baskin's statement on the Netflix show here.

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