‘P.I. Moms' Was a Train Wreck for Lifetime. Now It's a ‘Trainwreck' on Netflix
Fifteen years ago, Lifetime ordered a reality TV series about a private investigation agency staffed by soccer moms. In terms of synergy and branding, it was a no-brainer. In execution, it was a complete train wreck. (Hey, maybe that's why it made Netflix's excellent eight-episode series of documentary films, Trainwreck, produced by Raw.)
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The Phil Bowman-directed episode chronicles how you go from having a hit show, and possibly a hit franchise, on your hands to having handcuffs on your wrists. That's how it played out for the private-investigator firm's owner and the P.I. Moms show's fourth lead, Chris Butler.
P.I. Moms needed a good pilot. But for some reason, the moms' investigations keep falling apart. It wasn't bad luck or bad investigating — it was internal sabotage.
The moms' (and Butler's) colleague Carl Marino — a wannabe actor looking for his big break — was so miffed to not be a main character on P.I. Moms (important note: Carl is not a mom) that he blew up the show from within. Marino, also a P.I., sent the moms (and Lifetime's cameras and budget) on witch hunts designed to make the series' stars look inferior to, well, himself.
When that wasn't enough to tank the show, Marino dropped a dime on the only one shadier than himself: his employer. Butler, the founder of Private Investigations, Inc. and the man who had the idea that attractive women could make for the most-effective P.I.s, had a side hustle. Butler and a crooked cop were (re-)selling drugs that had been seized into evidence by the police, and the ticked-off Marino tipped off a reporter to the crime. (I'm not sure what it says that none of the P.I. Moms caught on.)
P.I. Moms was canceled and the moms, Butler and Marino suddenly found themselves each out of two jobs. Read our Q&A with Bowman below about his now-streaming Netflix film about the whole debacle.
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You got only half of the P.I. Moms to participate in the film. Who was the hardest to convince?
Everyone was given the opportunity. [Production company Raw was] super thorough in the development [stage], and Netflix feels the same: 'Let's find out the whole scope of the story. Let's do research, reach out… and see who wants to take part.' I would say that the Moms that I spoke to were incredibly easy to deal with. I love Ami [Wiltz] and Denise [Antoon]. It was fantastic getting to know them. It was easy because they were at a point where they were ready to talk about this — I don't know if that had always been true. It was the right time for them after 12 to 13 years had passed.
It probably helps being on Netflix.
Not necessarily. I've worked on a lot of different channels, and the process feels similar. It's never about convincing people to do this, because you only want to speak to people who want to tell their stories and who see a value in it — whether that be true crime or something super harrowing that has happened to someone, they have to have a legitimate reason within themselves to want to take part. It's sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
You don't necessarily always want the person who raises their hand and [says], 'put me on TV' — you're looking for the people doing it for right reasons. And that's certainly true of our Moms. The interesting thing about all of this is that they had legitimate reasons for wanting to take part in the reality TV show in the first place: At surface level, empowering other moms and saying, 'Hey, this is a career you could do that you might not know about,' and seeing how far that [message] spread. Then obviously, the personal stories that are touched on that they had told at the time that got blown away. They really put themselves out there, and then it all got crushed. So that was one of the things I felt most passionate about making this film was, like, 'We're giving them that chance back.'
How close were you to getting the other Moms, Charmagne Peters and Michelle Allen, and for that matter, Chris (who is out of prison) and Carl?
Raw and Netflix encouraged us to have a dialogue with everyone, and everyone was presented an opportunity to take part in this story. But yes, there are a few people who are key to this story who didn't feel that the project was right for them at this time.
In 2010, cable TV was still big business — and these sort of reality shows were basic cable's bread and butter. Do you have a sense of how much money was lost here?
That's a super-interesting question. I would say, money-wise, no, but if they were able to syndicate this show that [Butler] had been the fourth part of and then they had put it into other cities — Atlanta, Chicago, whatever — that would have been incredibly lucrative. As you hear in the wiretaps when he's convincing Carl [Marino] to stop sabotaging the show, he wanted the show to be a success and knew that he stood something to gain from that.
It feels like having ownership in a successful reality-show franchise would be more profitable than street drug-dealing — and definitely safer.
One hundred percent. It feels like a Sliding Doors (1998) moment that things— if they had a bit more success with the show and things hadn't gone haywire, that things could have panned out very differently, and this documentary wouldn't exist. But the whole P.I. Moms network of shows might have.
was screwed up by the only men in this story — because, of course it was. Chris did the illegal thing, but it was Carl who continuously tried to sink the project. Who is more to blame?
Ultimately, that question is best answered by the P.I. moms, Lucas, the people who made the show and the audience watching. I think a lot of this is more to do with how you align with people's motivations, and what people think is a justified action and how much empathy you need to have for other people vs. empathy for your own personal gain. There are many ways of viewing the actions of the show — that's what's interesting about it.
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Trainwreck: P.I. Moms is now streaming on Netflix.
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