Afflicted

I can only imagine how these chronically ill individuals felt when they saw what their hard work and sacrifice had produced. The filmmakers draw back the curtain on their lives not with compassion, but more like a sideshow huckster asks the healthy audience to step right up and get a closer look at the freaks. Once you realize the framing, it's hideous. Worse, it's obviously taken its directorial inspiration from 'Unrest', a far more honest depiction of chronic, unexplained illness. The hard work the Unrest crew put in to carefully decide how to frame their narratives feels stolen, co-opted by a team that was lazier and carried ill intent, hoping to capitalize on Unrest's success. Healthy people looking down on sick people is nothing new, so the only question I have left is to wonder what possessed Netflix to pick it up? If this show were about any other marginalized group, would that be all right? Asking for several million friends.