Tiger King and Carole Baskin

2020

Date: 20 March 2020 · Place: Netflix, global lockdown living rooms · Figures: Joe Exotic, Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park · Carole Baskin, Big Cat Rescue · Eric Goode and Rebecca Chaiklin, directors · Tags: Netflix, Lockdown, Docuseries 01. Big Cats, Bigger Vacuum Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness drops on Netflix on 20 March 2020, four days after most US states issue stay-home orders. Within ten days it pulls 34.3 million US viewers per Nielsen, the second-biggest Netflix debut to that point. The country has nothing else to talk about and nowhere else to be. Joe Exotic, mulleted private-zoo owner already imprisoned for murder-for-hire, and Carole Baskin, the rival sanctuary operator he tried to kill, become the first true memes of pandemic time. Tiger King mask edits, Joe Exotic Cameos, and homemade Carole Baskin TikToks fill the feed for six weeks. 02. Hey All You Cool Cats and Kittens Baskin's chirped catchphrase becomes a TikTok sound with hundreds of thousands of uses by April. Megan Thee Stallion samples it. SNL stages a Zoom-era cold open about it. The show ends on Joe asking, then telling, the camera that his husband Travis took his own life and that Carole probably fed her missing first husband Don Lewis to her tigers. Sources • Nielsen, 'Tiger King Pulls 34.3 Million U.S. Viewers Over First 10 Days' (April 2020) • Vulture, 'A Complete Guide to Every Tiger King Meme' (April 2020) • Netflix, Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness (20 March 2020)