After Kyle and Erik Menendez brutally murdered their parents in 1989, the brothers temporarily moved out of the Beverly Hills mansion where they committed the crime and began racking up huge bills at local hotels. Monsters: The Story of Lyle and Erik MenendezThe second installment in the Ryan Murphy-produced Netflix anthology series about famous American killers, chronicles their antics during a stay at the Hotel Bel-Air in LA, where Lyle convinces his brother to order a ridiculous amount of room service.

In the scene, both Menendezes wear skimpy Speedos that put their hairless, tanned, muscular torsos on display in an exciting way. “From now on, we’re going to demand more from life,” says Lyle (a Zac Efron-esque Nicholas Chavez), placing his hands around Erik’s neck in a way that’s simultaneously sensual and intimidating. He punctuates the conversation by leaning in and kissing his brother on the mouth. It doesn’t seem like the first time he’s had that impulse and acted on it, and Monsters likes to emphasize that.

The real Menendez brothers, who are currently still serving life sentences for the murder of their parents, José and Kitty Menendez, have never said they were involved in an incestuous relationship, although Lyle confessed to abusing his brother during their murder trials and apologized for it, an emotional moment that Monsters. Still, this fictionalized work of “true crime” can’t help but lean into the idea of ​​a long-term Cersei-Jamie situation between the two, which is played out in scenes where they dance provocatively at parties and are caught showering together. The level of homoeroticism makes the volleyball scene in Top gun seem subtle by comparison. Lyle characterized whatever happened between them as abuse stemming from their father’s sexual abuse, so why would Murphy and series co-creator Ian Brennan feel compelled to frame it as a secret romance, even to the point of Vanity Fair writer Dominick Dunne (Nathan Lane) nonsensically suggesting it was a motive to murder their parents?

The easiest and most obvious answer to that question is that that’s what Ryan Murphy shows generally do. They revel in the unspeakable, adding extra dollops of salaciousness to already pretty shocking stories. But when Murphy and his collaborators are at their best, they can offset those hyperbolic tendencies with careful, nuanced character work that opens our eyes to aspects of a story we hadn’t thought of, even though we’ve heard the same story before. The Story of Lyle and Erik Menendez does this most effectively in the sixth episode, a 36-minute single take in which Erik, played with great discipline by Cooper Koch, describes the years of emotional and sexual abuse inflicted on him by his father.

You could argue that the incest storyline was included with a higher purpose in mind. The first two episodes of Monsters paints a portrait of the brothers that matches the first impression most people get of them from the media: spoiled, rich, preppy, muscle-bound dudes who drive around Los Angeles in limos. And yes, they’re extremely fit, with the extremely visible abs to prove it. Despite the horrific crime they committed, the Netflix Original casts them in an aspirational light that could be seen as an indictment of our own fascination with cases like this. The Menendez trials — the first of the two ended in a mistrial due to a jury’s indecisiveness — became such a sensation in part because of the horrific nature of the crime, but also because of who Lyle and Erik were. They rose to fame as the ‘80s drew to a close, seeming like personifications of what Americans of the decade had been conditioned to covet: wealth, physical attractiveness, obvious access to all the amenities of the good life. That was the fascination: that two guys who looked like that could possibly That.

As the series suggests, the Menendez brothers earned many admirers who sent them loving letters and provocative photographs as they sat in prison awaiting trial. These women — the series suggests that they were almost exclusively women — weren’t afraid of these boys. They idolized them, and Monsters initially sets us up to understand those feelings. Then it tries to take it a step further by adding an erotic layer to the nature of the brothers’ relationship. Murphy and co. try extra hard to make us horny for killers, something they’ve done more than once on American horror story and in Roof. But they’ve dabbled in this territory so much that it’s hard to see this as a meaningful meta-commentary on the public’s perverse attraction to murder stories. You can’t insightfully criticize people for watching porn while giving them more pornography to watch.

As the episodes progress, The Story of Lyle and Erik Menendez takes a more serious turn, focusing more on the horrific nature of their father’s abuse and showing genuine compassion for both of them. The drama never absolves them of the murder of their parents, but it does show a home life miserable enough to make it understandable, if not forgivable, that they would want to be rid of their mother and father. Particularly in the aforementioned sixth episode, “The Hurt Man,” the details of José’s abuse of Erik are handled bluntly but with obvious sensitivity. When Lyle admits on the witness stand that he penetrated his brother with a toothbrush, the same thing their father had repeatedly done to both of them, he sobs as he repeatedly says, “I’m sorry.”

But Monsters also shows both brothers admitting that they lied about or embellished information they shared with their attorneys and the public, inviting the audience to have reasonable doubts about whether their abuse stories could also be fabricated, doubts that are echoed throughout the series by prosecutors and Dunne. Lyle’s toothbrush story in particular runs counter to the consensual, intimate moments between him and his brother that Monsters has shown us before, almost gleefully. Lyle’s admission that he was assaulted, especially this late in the series, makes it all the more strange and confusing that these sexually charged scenes exist at all, especially since they don’t seem to be based in fact and aren’t really necessary to the story.

At best, the steam between the brothers was an attempt to show how challenging it is for victims of child abuse to have normal relationships, an attempt that falls flat tonally. At worst, it undermines the seriousness of the abuse and blurs the lines between what’s “hot” and what’s absolutely inappropriate and wrong. If we choose to believe that the two were lovers on some level, it robs Lyle’s confession of abuse of its meaning and impact. So does the conclusion that Lyle lied about abusing his brother together. Monsters refuses to take a definitive position on the nature of their relationship and the brothers’ culpability, it ultimately draws the same conclusion as Dunne: “Regardless of what happened to them, Lyle and Erik have no right to our forgiveness.” That may be true. But viewers of this series should be entitled to a more nuanced, less exploitative depiction of the relationship between these two notoriously complicated men.