Merritt Wever and Toni Collette star as cops who brought down a rapist
Netflix’s miniseries Unbelievable tells the true story of two female detectives tracking down a serial rapist in 2011. The show flashes back and forth between the cops on the case in Colorado, and the assailant’s first victim (Kaitlyn Dever), an eighteen year old who was raped in her apartment in Lynwood, Washington in 2008.
The show starts out with the entire first episode devoted to Marie (Dever), who experiences the assault and must live out the aftermath- the endless and unsympathetic questioning from the cops, a harsh medical exam, and all without a support system to protect her, as she’s a former foster child who’s been in the system her whole life, passed from family to family. Those former foster parents turn out to be only minimally empathetic and involved, as Marie must navigate this whole experience almost entirely on her own. It shows us how the police quickly start to question Marie’s story altogether, as the details don’t seem to add up with what she told friends and neighbors, and her own recent foster mother doubts her account when Marie’s reaction to the assault doesn’t seem “right” to her. The male cops assigned to the case are quick to jump on the possible false report and completely bungle the investigation into the evidence at the crime scene, preferring to believe that a damaged teenager made the whole thing up.
Kaitlyn Dever (of Justified and Booksmart) gets a star turn in a tragic role
The outrage of this second abuse Marie suffers from the police is difficult to watch, to say the least. But it’s tempered by intercutting with the new investigation into a series of rapes in Colorado, of which Detectives Karen Duvall (Merritt Wever) and Grace Rasmussen (Toni Collette) are assigned in separate districts, and wind up combining their resources when they realize it’s a serial rapist they’re after. The difference in approach between the two women and the men who botched Marie’s original case could not be more stark. Duvall and Rasmussen are personally driven and instinctively side with the victims, both feeling the outrage of the crimes being performed with impunity from a man who gets off on how smart he is in getting away with it. Wever and Collette are great in their roles (especially Collette) and work well together, but the police procedural aspect of this drama is not that different from what you might see on an average episode of Law and Order: SVU. That’s not entirely meant to be an insult, as these sorts of process stories can always be gripping when done well, which this one is. It’s just not entirely unfamiliar as drama- buddy cop bonding included.
What is new is Marie’s story, as you follow the aftermath of her being bullied into saying she made up her assault. The tragedy of her experience is what sticks with you the most from this series. The coldness of the system and the way it treats victims, especially rape victims, especially ones who don’t possess the resources or the knowledge to fight back, is a reminder of 2019’s other miniseries about tragic victims of the legal system, When They See Us. This show tries to give you some hope in the way this case eventually turned out, but it’s hard to feel optimistic when you see how common completely negligent investigations of crimes this serious is, and hear statistics like 40% of male cops identify as domestic abusers (and those are just the ones who admit it). It’s enough to make you feel dismayed, unsafe, and to echo the sentiments of Grace Rasmussen in one episode from the latter half of the season- where is the outrage?
Grade: B+
Marie experiences another kind of attack from the police after her assault
