Ugh, this show had SO much potential. So, so much. And I don’t mean like The Midnight Club which had potential in the premise but didn’t live up to it for even one single episode. The Watcher had potential up until the very last episode and then it just dropped the ball so spectacularly it’s hard to even understand how someone as talented as Ryan Murphy could fuck up such a perfect tee up for a grand finale.

The Watcher is based on a very true story but obviously, like any adaptation of a true story, takes many liberties and involves lots of fictional narratives for entertainment value. And the first few episodes of the Watcher were genuinely creepy and had some of the jump scares I was left wanting after Midnight Club. And it doesn’t hurt that Netflix clearly dropped some serious $$$ on casting – Naomi Watts is the one of the two leads, and the cast includes Jennifer Coolidge, Bobby Cannavale, and Shooter McGavin/ Christopher McDonald. Oh, and friggin MIA FARROW. Almost every actor that comes onscreen is recognizable from something else, so you know Netflix means for this to be a big big show for them.

And it almost was. The premis: a family moves from New York City to the suburbs and buys a big beautiful colonial mansion starts receiving freaky letters soon after moving in from someone calling themselves “The Watcher.” The Watcher claims they have been watching the house for decades, and the letters indicate this person is definitely currently watching them, as they contain personal facts and details about the new family and their daily activities.

The letters also are creepy as hell and also vaguely threatening – suggesting there is something hidden in the walls of the house, asking whether they could hear their kids scream if they are playing in the basement, and telling them that the house needs “young blood” indicating what – a sacrifice? Plus some fucked up things start happening in the house, like music playing over an ancient intercom, a pet ferret unexplainably ending up dead in the upstairs hallway, etc. (There is another IMO unnecessary dead pet scene and if this triggers you like it does me, stay away from the whole show. Not worth it.)

The Watcher letters keep coming, local police chief Shooter McGavin seems totally uninterested in investigating, leading the audience to think there is something going on that we don’t yet know about, like the local police are somehow in on it? Or are interested in not letting this story get out and wrecking property values in their small town? We don’t know. There is also the real estate agent who sold them the home (Jennifer Coolidge) who, as usual, gives a great performance as someone whose motivations/ involvement in the letters we are also left to question – she shifty about the previous owners, and is also constantly encouraging the current owners to sell and re-list the home with her – at a much lower price than they paid, of course. The possibility that Jennifer Coolidge and/ or her boss is behind the letters because they want the house for themselves is dangled in front of us more than once.

Other “suspects” include a few very creepy neighbors who are rude and unwelcoming and making general weird comments to the new family. The show lays out a LOT of suspects, and even more than I’ve mentioned here by the end of the show. By the last episode we truly have no clue how this is going to end and that’s the sign of a good mystery.

The family hires a private investigator to help them figure out who the Watcher is, who we also suspect could be leading them astray, as she also seems a little off base with her investigations and the family was directed to her by the equally suspicious local police chief.

And during all this time the family is slowly torn apart by the madness of being tormented by this unknown figure, slash also becoming unnaturally obsessed with the house themselves.

Over the first 6 episodes of the 7 episode series the show lays out a ton of mysteries, tons of plausible suspects, hints at even a supernatural element, leading up a finale with the audience well primed and very ready for a satisfying payoff. Even if we don’t solve the main mystery of the Watcher’s identity (I did not google the real story before watching so I didn’t know whether this aspect was ever solved), there were plenty of fictional mysteries to give us fictional answers to.

Spoiler alert: There is nothing solved. Now to be fair, I learned after watching the show that the real-life mystery of the actual identity of the Watcher was never solved. Fine. I can live with that. But what I cannot live with are all the fictional plot lines and mysteries we absolutely could have been given answers to but were not.

For example, we never find out: What was up with the real estate agent, what was up with either set of creepy neighbors, what was up with the former owner of the house and what did he see, what was up with fucking JOHN GRAFF or if there even WAS a John Graff, what was up with the security installer/ boyfriend, what was up with the local police being discouraging of the case???

And for the love of god, WHAT WAS UP WITH THE SECRET TUNNELS IN THE BASEMENT?? I mean we are seriously asked to believe that this family finds tunnels under their house that look very much like they are connecting the house to other properties in the neighborhood – which could explain how someone was getting in and out of the house undetected to do creepy things like murder pets, play music, and stage some weirdo porn with the sleeping husband one night – they go into said tunnels, FIND SOMEONE IN THE TUNNELS who runs from them and then disappears, and they never investigate further!?!?! They find a full-on bedroom down there that looks currently lived in and they simply never go back in?? Never try and find the hidden exit to the passages, or even try and map out which house the dead ends (WHICH ARE CLEALY NOT REALLY DEAD) appear to end at. It’s the least believable part of this entire story.

We, the audience, see that the person in the tunnels is John Graff/ not John Graff (another unsolved fucking mystery), one of the supposed former owners who murdered his family in the house after being driven insane by the Watcher letters (but this was also a fake story?), and he is now being harbored at neighbor Mia Farrow’s house. How long has he been there? If the John Graff story is false, as we are led to believe, who is this rando in the tunnels living with Mia Farrow? No answers.

And then there is a whole bunch of unnecessary nonsense with the private investigator claiming on her deathbed it was really her who was the Watcher, providing a moment of peace to the family, only for it to turn out it wasn’t her. Ugh. But then why was she sort of weird about helping them solve the mystery? Is it because they were referred to her by the also disinterested local police chief? We never find out, which is dumb because these are fictional plot elements that did not occur in the real life story and there is nothing preventing giving us answers except Ryan Murphy being a pretentious dick.

I read the real story of the Watcher after I finished the show, and the most hilarious (in an unhinged, insane, fuck you Ryan Murphy way) part is that the true story is WAY MORE INTERESTING than the show. I’m already too over this entire experience thing to explain why, but you can read the true story here, or a non-paywall version is here. I highly recommend that over watching this show.