If I Did It
Oxygen's Snapped targets a new demo: the female armchair killer.
by Amelie Gillette
December 4, 2007
There are times when it's morning, and I'm lying awake next to my sleeping boyfriend — my head buried in that space on the pillow right behind his head, where all I can see is the stubble on the back of his jaw (he has a beard) and the slope of the back of his neck (he also has a neck) — and I think about how easy it would be to stab him. Not that I would kill my boyfriend by stabbing him viciously with a knife, of course. (I'd probably use poison of some kind.) But if I had to kill him, and I had a knife stashed somewhere nearby, I probably could do it before he even wakes up — again, not that I ever would. But, still, I totally could.
Apart from the moral issues involved, not to mention the guilt that would envelop me like a leaden blanket for the rest of my life, it wouldn't be that hard. Although I definitely wouldn't be able to stab him 192 times and then drag him to a hole on the other side of the bedroom window, like Susan Wright did to her husband in 2003. But then again, I'm not an ex-stripper-turned-mother-and-housewife living in Texas who, suddenly, just one day, snapped.
I know that Susan Wright suddenly, just one day, stabbed her husband of nearly six years 192 times — an action the prosecutor called "overkill," a term I call "an understatement" — because I saw her story on Snapped, the long-running Oxygen Network series about women who suddenly, just one day, freak out and kill people. I watch Snapped obsessively, which isn't hard: it's often scheduled during lazy weekend afternoons, in three-to-four-episode blocks. I like to watch it on Saturdays, while drinking coffee on the couch, close enough to my boyfriend to tell him, "I would never put antifreeze in your food. I'd use Fentanyl patches instead. Don't worry: You'd just fall asleep."
But I don't watch Snapped because it's a convenient way to make my significant other feel uncomfortable — that's just a fun bonus. I watch it because it allows me to blueprint how I would commit the perfect murder. Not that I would, of course. But I could. You've heard of "armchair quarterbacks," people who watch football and therefore decide they know everything about how the game should be played? Well, when I watch Snapped, I'm an armchair killer. I second-guess the murderer's methods (stabbing someone with a knife 192 times? Haven't you ever heard of good, old-fashioned succinylcholine?) or their clean-up attempts (hastily hung wallpaper? Nice try) or their defense strategies (self-defense doesn't make sense if he was sleeping when you shot him). Considering the series' popularity — it's already in its sixth season, and shows no signs of stopping — I don't think I'm the only one. The show's audience is probably all armchair killers, which makes sense considering how often Oxygen plays the show.
Oxygen — the cable channel, not the life-sustaining gas — is weird. Schizophrenic, even. On weekdays, it seems completely devoted to middling, female-fronted sitcoms such as Ellen and Grace Under Fire. It gave Mo'Nique her own beauty pageant called (no kidding) F.A.T. Chance. It's the only place on television that would dare to present a twenty-four-hour marathon of Center Stage, the dancer-comes-of-age, Fame-as-scored-by-Mandy Moore film. But Oxygen is strange mostly because it's a television channel for women that doesn't aim to inspire or uplift through melodrama. Unlike its competitor Lifetime, Oxygen seems to revel in showing women who are both crazy and "crazy." While Lifetime, or at least Lifetime movies, are all about women (usually mothers) triumphing or persevering in the wake of a crazy situation (Mother May I Sleep With Danger?, The Truth About Zoey, etc.), most of Oxygen's original programming is about gawking at women going crazy in every sense of the term, as evidenced by series such as The Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency, The Bad Girls Club and, of course, Snapped. The overall feel of the network is, "Go ahead and flip out. We'll get the camera." In fact, Oxygen's motto is "She did what!?" a phrase that fits some shows better than others.
On its surface, Snapped is a true-crime documentary series that is sort of like A&E's Biography, but for women who kill. It's hopelessly cheesy, from the blurry prison-bars backdrop behind the various neighbors and friends being interviewed, to the vérité-shaky re-enactments, to the laughably repetitive stock footage, to the slow zoom-ins on the same three photographs to tell a story. If I had to guess, I'd say that each episode of Snapped costs about $20 to make. But even though it's definitely a terrible show, it's also a compelling one, though not for the reason Oxygen perhaps anticipated.
Because the women on Snapped seemed so normal before they pulled out the knives, guns or Fentanyl patches, it's easy for the viewer to put herself in the killer's shoes. After watching a few episodes, it's also easy to figure out what to avoid. Affairs, for one, are always a bad idea, especially if you let your boyfriend live in the closet of the house you share with your husband, like Martha Freeman did. Racking up debt in your husband's name is also not a good idea, because eventually you're going to have to either tell him, or shoot him and take the kids to the beach, like Mary Winkler did. Don't fake your husband's suicide by using Fentanyl patches if you're a toxicologist who has access to Fentanyl, like Kristin Rossum. That's not a good plan. Living in a house with wallpaper and carpeting — which are a bitch to clean or get rid of when covered with blood spatter — should be avoided at all costs. You should also never use a cellphone to establish an alibi while you're driving your ex-husband's body to a disposal location, as Jessica McCord did, because the police can track the pings. And, whatever you do, do not own or operate a ranch. Apparently it leads you to become a murderer. (Seriously. You'd be surprised how many of the killers on Snapped are ranchers.)
See, watching Snapped isn't about incredulously wondering, "She did what?!" For one thing, the audience already knows what she did: She snapped and killed someone. It's right there in the title. Instead, watching Snapped is about wondering, "She did it how?" and "She did it why?" and, if you're an armchair killer, possibly, "If I were her, how would I do it? Not that I ever, ever would."
©2007 Amelie Gillette & hooksexup.com.