If you thought COPS blurred the line between entertainment and law enforcement, that’s nothing compared to what the Dateline NBC spinoff To Catch a Predator did. The undisputed king of sensationalistic ambush TV, the series became part of the national lexicon, and host Chris Hansen a celebrity for the casual way he would greet newly-entrapped child predators: “Why don’t you have a seat over here?”, “What were you thinking?” “What was the thought process?”
It’s been eighteen years since To Catch a Predator left the air, and now David Osit’s documentary Predators seeks to look at the infamous show’s legacy. To be fair, the show has always had a certain yuck factor to it. Not just because the men (and it was always men) were a bunch of creeps, but because of this sleazy, lowbrow, exploitative form of entertainment the series delivered week after week. That it was turning potential child molestation into a ratings-grabbing spectacle was one of many reasons some rejected it, while others saw the harm these pedophiles were planning to commit and defended it to the hilt. It’s easy to see why. Who doesn’t like to watch a bad person get what’s coming to them? But we’re also effectively watching someone’s life get destroyed on national television, and who knows the circumstances, mental health issues for instance, that led them to fall for the charms of a hyper-sexualized decoy.
For those who may have missed the show during its heyday between 2004-2007, To Catch a Predator followed a relatively simple formula. At a time when the Internet was still fairly new and dangerous, a group called Perverted-Justice lured online predators to a home, using a decoy who is older than they seem, for sex with a minor. The men know what they are showing up for, and they almost always go in ready for action. Then Hansen comes stepping out of a backroom and the men start clamming up, or begging for mercy, all swearing they’ll never do this again. Hansen hits them with the “You’re free to go” and they leave, only to be tackled to the ground by police and arrested.
Osit splits the film into three parts. The first establishes quickly that Predators is in no way an attempt to forgive these creeps for what they were trying to do. It begins with a chilling audio recording of a 37-year-old man and the disgusting conversation with a child he thought was 13-years-old. The second part follows Hansen copycat Skeeter Jean, a YouTuber without Hansen’s journalistic credibility or connection to law enforcement. He’s essentially doing this for clicks; his promises to these men are complete bullshit, his warnings are bullshit, too. His decoy, a woman named T-Coy, seems broken inside. She’s getting way too much pleasure out of what she’s doing. Osit, smartly sensing more, pushes her a bit and finds that she, like him, was a past victim and quietly yearns for understanding.
But understanding was never what To Catch a Predator was about. We also meet some of the young decoys used by the show, including a young man, David, who was part of the notorious Texas episode that concluded with an assistant district attorney’s suicide. Somehow that show still aired, and in its own way led to the show’s cancellation, as it should’ve.
The third chapter finds Osit confronting Hansen directly. His disappointment in Hansen’s answers matches our own. Osit is looking for something specific and he’s not going to get it from Hansen, who has built a career out of this type of attack journalism. I think we all hope that everyone involved with To Catch a Predator had the best of intentions, and I believe Hansen does even if his approach is flawed and destroys people. One of the biggest strikes against To Catch a Predator was that it made prosecutions practically impossible, so there’s no proof that it met Hansen’s intended goals of keeping pedophiles off the street.
A big problem with Predators is in Osit’s filmmaking style, which largely relies on a bland ethnographer (someone who studies a society’s culture, in this case media culture) to be a sounding board for the director. Later, in the interview with Hansen, Osit finally shows his face so we can see his disappointment at not getting what he wants. The conversation Osit wants to have about To Catch a Predator is one that has been going on for years and even while the show was on air, so it’s not presenting anything particularly new. Hansen has also spoken about it and defended it. The most interesting thing Osit could’ve done more of to truly show the series’ impact would’ve been to catch up with those most directly affected by it. Osit dabbles in this with the story of an 18-year-old boy exposed by Hansen for dating a 15-year-old classmate. That kid’s life was destroyed, and Hansen is still out there doing what he does and being celebrated for it at true crime festivals. For many, the consequences were very real and long-lasting, and Predators could’ve done more to show that rather than toiling around in gray areas.
