Like a room-temperature carbonated beverage on a humid day, Dirty Pop: The Boy Band Scam is all fizzle and no substance.
It’s not to say that there weren’t enough salacious moments to toss into the mix to elicit a gasp here and there, but as far as documentaries go, it barely sates the thirst, but it’s something to do.
Well, in this case, it’s something to watch.
Quit Playing Games With Our Attention Span
Dirty Pop is a three-part documentary, which is roughly an hour and a half longer than necessary.
The documentary tells too much information and not enough simultaneously.
It aimlessly bounces around timelines as it depicts the start of the boy band craze Lou Pearlman orchestrates, his dabbling with Trans Continental airlines and blimp bullshit, and ends on a “Catch Me if You Can” thriller note as it reveals his capture, sentencing, and fate.
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The documentary lacks any real focus and certainly struggles with balancing what people may be tuning into it for (the music component) with the dry exploration of Pearlman’s embezzling, fraud, and decades-long Ponzi scheme component.
It’s a pity because Lou Pearlman running the longest Ponzi scam in history SHOULD be interesting, right?
There’s plenty of great fodder there to explore for a documentary.
Yet, this one barely scratches the surface, either too afraid of boring viewers or severely underestimating their intelligence and ability to contain multitudes.
Is Dirty Pop the “Pepsi” to The Boy Band Con: The Lou Pearlman Story’s “Coke?”
There’s no shade to either Backstreet Boys or *NSYNC, but it’s essentially the same story in a different font, right?
One would argue that this should’ve been an email, but the thing is, we already had that email.
Back in 2019, a YouTube Premium documentary dove into this same subject matter similarly.
They even interviewed some of the same people and struggled with the same issues.
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The conclusion might be that there is no good way to create a documentary about Lou Pearlman that adequately encapsulates the full breadth of his 30-year scamming career.
What in the Deepfake F*ckery?!
In a stunning lack of foresight, someone thought it was a fabulous idea to use an AI-generated version of a deceased Lou Pearlman to recite quotes from his book Bands, Brands, and Billions.
We’re essentially at war with AI presently, yet they keep force-feeding it into every aspect of our lives to dazzle us with its perks despite addressing its drawbacks.
It felt inadvisable to use such a tactic to bring this controversial figure back to life in a documentary about a con artist who put up a false front.
And it wasn’t even essential to the series in the least bit or added any real value to the tale.
If anything, it served as an unsettling distraction and unintentionally raised questions about how some treat individuals like products until a more efficient way of replacing them was found.
It’s at the crux of the human versus artificial intelligence issue in the first place.
But this tactic was flashy for no reason other than its own sake and set a disturbing and dangerous precedent for what’s real and false in what’s essentially a true crime documentary that at least sticks closer to the facts.
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We’re currently battling deepfake utilization and fake news, and it’s getting harder and harder to parse through what’s real and what isn’t, so the specific use in this instance was flat-out irresponsible.
Attempts to Capitalize Off Nostalgia, Baits and Switches, Then Falls Tragically Short
The primary reason that most are remotely interested in Lou Pearlman in the first place is his role in creating some of the biggest boy bands of all time.
This documentary is meant to entice Millennials, who have a reputation for being the nostalgic generation, wearing ’90s Children like a badge of honor.
Given the circumstances, it’s a perfectly understandable path to take, as it’s more than enough to get people to tune into the series.
If for nothing else, the behind-the-scenes and early footage of The Backstreet Boys, *NSYNC, and O-Town certainly sparks that coveted nostalgic ache in our chests.
The documentary lures viewers in with all of that, knowing that’s why they’re there in the first place.
It’s peppered with commentary by recognizable faces.
But it’s nothing earth-shattering about what we’re witnessing.
If the nostalgia doesn’t result in completely unraveling or dissecting everything we knew about an era, group, or person we may have coveted, then what’s the point?
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Dirty Pop doesn’t encourage viewers to remove their rose-colored glasses or unpack the ugly truth behind their nostalgia in the way that the salacious and heartrending Quiet on Set does.
It just gives us a taste of what’s familiar to us and rests on its laurels like it’s sufficient.
This is Going to Ruin the Tour … Just Kidding!
Even if the documentary wanted to lean heavily into the flash of it all, it got a false start.
Sticking the least booked and busy members of boy bands from 25 years ago on a chair to kick it to us about their creator is less enticing than they think.
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I say that with all due respect to my forever crush AJ McLean , sophisticated and sweet Howie Dorough, Erik-Michael Estrada, and the witty Chris Kilpatrick.
There is literally no shade to them at all, but let’s be honest—without more members or at least some of the more popular ones chiming in during a documentary like this, it simply loses the weight it was supposed to have.
Also, one of this doc’s top ten most cringeworthy moments was that footage of a baby-faced, tween Justin Timberlake proudly proclaiming that the Janet Jackson poster over his bed was his favorite.
Whoever was behind randomly inserting in that clip was DIABOLICAL.
Just Got Paid … Peanuts ( And an Incohesive Tale)
The hook was the Boy Band scam.
It’s the glitzier story to tell with Lou Pearlman’s narrative, but the documentary eventually tells two different stories and tries to merge them as one.
The logical thing would be to start with Pearlman’s initial scams, including the blimp crash insurance fraud and Trans Continental Airlines debauchery, in which he didn’t actually have any planes.
Then we lead into how that sparked him to jump into pedaling boy bands to carry on his scheming and bring it to new heights.
It’s a whole elaborate operation that they try to outline, but it often gets lost in the sauce.
They harken back to it as an afterthought to routinely push the narrative of Lou Pearlman as a bigger-than-life but enigmatic figure.
Things started to spiral out of control for him once his two most prominent bands were no longer blinded by expensive toys and the glamour of being famous and began to realize they were glorified performing monkeys working for peanuts and Big Poppa’s praise.
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However, the doc neither delves deep enough into the boy band angle nor expounds on it to explore how Pearlman’s actions deeply impacted a series of stars or reflect pervasive exploitation in the industry.
Nor does it properly explore the lifelong victims of his investment scamming or give them any real presence or relatability.
Awkwardly Sidesteps Uncomfortable Culture Vulture Discourse
Unquestionably, Lou Pearlman was an influential individual who kickstarted a particular subset of boy bands in pop music.
None of that is up for debate, regardless of how he bankrolled their path to stardom and who he hurt in the long run.
But the documentary is fascinating because it gives him such high accolades while simultaneously ignoring the fact that he was not the orchestrator of the 20th-century Boy Band.
Essentially, we had a manipulative scam artist who claimed he had never heard of Joey McIntyre and Co. in New Kids On The Block, deciding to create the perfect boy band by cobbling together what he saw from previous successful acts.
But the inspiration behind those acts and who and what these family-friendly-looking young men were emulating are never actually mentioned.
Pearlman is hailed as carving out a unique space in the musical paradigm that didn’t exist and creating a type of mass hysteria out of it—making “boy bands” a brand.
They were utilizing a bunch of young, conventionally attractive, monochromatic guys who harmonized and showed off their vocal abilities by belting out R&B songs from successful groups and boy bands that already existed.
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It’s glaring that BSB, NSYNC, and even the only credited NKOTB were influenced entirely and molded by everything from The Jackson Five to New Edition and Boyz II Men.
Not even broaching the topic when supposedly calling Pearlman out on the full extent of how he was a crook seemed short-sighted.
Sensationalizes Speculation and Allusion But Doesn’t Pull the Trigger
Dirty Pop happily stays in the gray area about many of the things that Pearlman did or may have done.
In an effort to perhaps play it safe, the documentary and many of its inhabitants ride the middle in not outright accusing him of things.
They speculate about his sexuality, particularly when we’re led to believe that he used the nurse who took care of him his beard by claiming she was his girlfriend.
They imply that maybe he could’ve been sexually assaulting or molesting some of the young men he made into stars.
Still, none of the individuals providing commentary admit that they were victims of that or even heard or seen it.
Kilpatrick vaguely mentions that it didn’t seem appropriate that a middle-aged man was so hands-on with young boys, but this statement just hangs in the air, leaving the viewer to form their own opinion.
The documentary takes an even darker turn and even fosters conspiracy theories when it shifts to the tragic death of Pearlman’s childhood friend and associate, Frankie Velazquez.
Tearing Up Our Hearts … with a Tragedy
While recounting his death, the documentary tees up the notion that Frankie died by suicide as a direct result of his insider knowledge of Pearlman’s scamming and the guilt that his own mother was one of Pearlman’s victims.
However, the documentary also leaves the implication that Frankie’s death wasn’t suicide and that someone could’ve murdered him, which then volleys between, suggesting that Lou may have been behind that death or someone else because of the shady dealings.
But it does nothing with that at all before switching gears again after dangling this true crime angle over our heads like forbidden fruit.
Even the tone of Pearlman’s death during a surgery, resulting in his unclaimed body eventually being sent to NYC and buried in an unmarked grave on his family’s plot, invites the idea that there could be more to his death.
But of course, they don’t take that anyway either.
Stand ten toes down on whatever you want to say, people!
Complacency and Complicity and Lionizing a Problematic Titan
In many ways, the documentary is relatively easy on Pearlman, hesitant to take him to task, fearing that it will undermine the good results.
They can’t present any of the horrible things he’s done or how he pulled the wool over many people’s eyes for 30 years without adding all these little caveats expressing how generous, fun, or nice he was.
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There’s a duality to everyone, and Lou Pearlman was a complex, morally gray person.
It’s okay to sit with that and let it speak for itself without trying to tip the scales one way or another.
However, that attitude and the general sentiment of many of those who speak in the documentary highlight how complicit many were in his behavior.
His own lawyer happily justified all of his scummy ways until he learned that he wouldn’t be compensated for his services.
Pearlman’s nurse ignored all the weirdness and shadiness around her as long as she got personal cards and designer purses.
If Frankie was distraught enough to take his life because of everything Pearlman was into, then how did many of the others close to Pearlman stay in the dark?
Was Everyone Really in the Dark?
Multiple people who knew or worked with Pearlman tried to convince us that they were in the dark about his mechanizations or had no part in them.
Frankly, it was one of the most inauthentic parts of the full documentary.
They weren’t believable; none of them.
It didn’t help that there were various instances when the narrative someone was trying to spin shifted, or they would contradict something they said.
The biggest headscratcher was Michael Johnson’s expression of how clueless he was about the full extent of Pearlman’s actions and how he didn’t realize that Pearlman was literally on the run when they were traveling.
Were they not in contact with anyone else or paying attention to anything news-related?
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Was everyone so singularly focused and happy to ride the ride that they lost sight of reason and were blinded by all the signs in front of them?
Did people suddenly forget the damning final time they saw Frankie and what he was sharing?
Complicity abounds with many people who contributed to this documentary, and it’s a bitter pill to swallow.
Over to you, TV Fanatics. What did you think of Dirty Pop: The Boy Band Scam? Did the documentary miss the mark? Was it too redundant? Let’s hear it below!