What to watch: The Fall of Ruby Franke

I’m always looking for a new show to watch and one thing that always peeks my interest is a true crime documentary. For some reason I like to watch things that get me pissed off and shake my hand to the sky like an old man.

When I came across a new show on Hulu it checked all the boxes. It also had religion sprinkled in to it and I was sold.

Little side not behind the current for me. My daughter is obsessed with watching YouTube and families like the Franke’s who record their lives and put it out for the world to see. Well if you ever want to know one thing me and my wife fight about, it’s this. I hate these shows. It’s basically rich ass hole families that exploit their kids and make them record these good awful shows for kids to watch so they can get pay check from YouTube. Yes, there are some ones I’ll let her watch but 99% of them are not allowed and when I see her watching it they instantly get turned off.

With that said, I wanted to watch this and shove it down my wife’s throat with a big bowl of I told you so. Not knowing anything about this family or the aftermath of the show I binged all 3 episodes in one sitting. This is what I took from it.

Ruby and her husband Kevin live in Utah, the Mormon capital of the world. Ruby starts a YouTube channel vlogging about her family and her Mormon faith. When she started it seems as if they were not well off but after her husband Kevin was asked how much they were making off the vlogs from YouTube, the Franke family was making $200,000 a month with their success.

Money and fame sprinkled in with a cult like religion, Ruby wanted more and demanded more from her family. It seems as Ruby’s older kids, Shari and Chad didn’t like the constant recording schedule and Chad, the oldest son start d acting out at home and at school. It wasn’t until Chad said on camera in one of Ruby’s videos that he lost his bedroom and was forced to sleep in the basement on a beanbag for several months. Ruby saw nothing wrong with this and kept the clip in the video and that’s when her channel took a turn.

Ruby and the Franke’s were now losing subscribers and the comment section was filled with outrage. Her lawyer tells her to make an apology and go seek help from a therapist.

Enter Jodi Hildebrandt. A life coach for the Mormons. Jodi enters in and in my opinion, saw the dollar signs and exploited the Franke family. Jodi is big in the Mormon community and after seeing her mansion in Utah you know she is very well off and makes tons of money off her clients. After “curing Chad” Jodi starts working with Ruby and brings her in as a partner and from all accounts a lover.

Ruby ends up telling her husband it’s time to go and you need to “fix yourself” and until you do please do not contact me or the kids.

So Kevin does what his wife says and leaves and it wasn’t until his 12 year old son ran away from Jodi’s home to a neighbors house to tell the neighbor all the stuff that was happening.

How Kevin isn’t in jail along with his wife who he still loves after all the shit she did to her children, is mind boggling. Ruby, Jodi and Kevin all deserved to be locked up for many years for the stuff they did to their children. The only sane one was Shari who has cut all ties to everyone in her family. Chad continues to love his mom and dad and forgives them, another one that deserves to be locked up in a mental ward for all the shit his parents put him through. Once you see the gruesome photos of what she did to the two youngest children you hope she rots in jail for the rest of her life.