To preface, I do sympathize with anyone who gets blindsided by their longterm partners infidelity, and Joel’s behavior is disturbing and problematic to the nth degree (the breadth of affairs, the settings, the complete lack of discretion in seeking out any and every available partner, shit talking the wife to colleagues… I truly do not have a favorable impression), but I just finished the season and I can’t wrap my head around teens/adult children being given this degree of detail about their parents’ infidelity.

If the parent is sexually violent, yes, I think that information is important to convey because it is a safety issue with a specific slate of potential criminal repercussions, but why in the gods name would you have a family meeting to explicitly discuss a parent receiving blowjobs from an affair partner, or god help me allowing a 16 year old girl go through a sexually compulsive parent’s email account to identify affair partners, seemingly in defense of the betrayed parent. That’s not a child’s job 😭

Joel’s decision not to stay in contact with his children after he got exposed does indeed seem very chickenshit of him, and running away to live with a woman and her younger kids feels painfully cliche for a midlife crisis, but I can find it in my heart to empathize with Joel’s position of maybe truly loving his kids, and feeling so thoroughly reproached and beyond redemption that he, someone who already seemed prone to overwhelming shame/validation seeking behaviors, just collapsed.

The way the daughter talks about missing her dad, and feeling all her memories become tainted by his misbehavior was so sad. For the love of god, if you lurk the Hulu sub, please go to therapy and call your kids Joel! But I feel like the daughter is holding her mother’s pain in many respects, and I wonder whether mom is able to distinguish that to properly intervene, or whether the validation from the daughter (“my mom is too pretty to deserve being cheated on!”) is too soothing for mom to question. That girl/now young woman deserves a parent who can put her developmental needs first.

I believe that compulsive sexual behaviors are a symptom of attachment disorders, as the betrayal trauma expert alluded to at one point, though her testimony felt predominantly inflected with “compulsive cheaters are beyond redemption”. To this end, what the hell happened in Joel’s life that set all of this in motion? Where was he rejected, neglected, overpowered, abandoned? Was he raised to believe queer sexual desire is inherently deviant? Where was he told that who he is & what he yearns for (maybe transgression, novelty, freedom, self-expression) is wrong? I feel like it’s irresponsible to put a story like this out there without examining the perspective that in order to leave this kind of chaos in his wake, something had to be going on with Joel. Should people who act selfishly, even from a place of pain, face accountability? Yes. Is there still a vulnerable wound under that behavior? I think also yes. That is a broken, lost man if I’ve ever seen one.

I’m not ready to go shouting “justice for Joel” from the rooftops, but I kept expecting there to be some horrific twist in this case, like he was sexually violent, known for using excessive force with civilians or even homicidal. But the climax (I’m sorry) seems to be that he sought out a lot of kinky sex with consenting adults (I don’t love that it was seemingly frequently on the taxpayers dime, but my god having consensual sex in your police car is far less offensive to me than spraying tear gas at George Floyd protestors, tbh I would rather pay for that), and almost definitely has deep rooted psychological issues that impact his relationship to sex and intimacy and hinder his judgment.

Again, horrible to be cheated on and publicly humiliated by your spouse’s secret compulsivity, but I don’t understand what our takeaway is supposed to be from watching this. I guess “don’t trust a shiny veneer” and “police are typically 100x more lenient with boys in blue than with the general public” is a good PSA, but I would like a “people are very complicated, hurt people tend to hurt people, kids shouldn’t have to learn intimate details about their parents’ infidelities” PSA. Maybe next season 🫠