“I like you special.” In an hour of television that includes the aftermath of a murder, the possibility of a kidnapping, and the evidence of year upon year of medical child abuse, these four innocuous words are the most frightening thing we hear. Dee Dee Blanchard isn’t lying when she says them, either. She treasures Gypsy, her frail and charming daughter. Dee Dee loves Gypsy for the things anyone would find lovable about her: her cheery disposition, her reassuring optimism, her own love of all things bright and beautiful. Dee Dee also loves Gypsy for the what others might find burdensome: a bottomless cocktail of illnesses, including epilepsy, paraplegia, a heart murmur, anemia, a lethal sugar allergy, a condition that required the surgical removal of her salivary glands, her need to be fed through a tube in her stomach. Gypsy’s suffering, and her endurance of it, are a part of what make her special, and just as she says, Dee Dee likes her for it. That Dee Dee also manufactured this suffering makes what she’s saying no less true. It just makes it horrifying. Like the little pink house after which this episode, “La Maison du Bon Rêve” (The House of Sweet Dreams), is named, “I like you special” is a prison in disguise.
“The Act” thoughts, Season One, Episode One: “La Maison du Bon Rêve”
(NOTE: I’m playing link catchup so these episode descriptions will be brief. You’ll just have to read the reviews!)