With the recent release of Gypsy Rose Blanchard, who was convicted of second-degree murder of her mother after years of torment, no time is better to get brushed up on her situation.

“The Act” is a heavily dramatized TV series on the events that led to Gypsy (Joey King) convincing her boyfriend, Nick Godejohn (Calum Worthy), to kill her mother, Claudine “Dee Dee” (Patricia Arquette). It takes creative liberties to fit a very complex and tragic real-life story into its eight-episode run and should not be confused with a factual representation of what happened (as is par for the docudrama genre).

At the core of this murder is Dee Dee’s tenuous relationship with Gypsy. Dee Dee is a compulsive liar and has gaslit Gypsy and her doctors into believing she falsely has multiple conditions, like muscular dystrophy, cancer and an allergy to sugar. She forces Gypsy to sit in a wheelchair despite the fact that she can walk, and her manipulation causes Gypsy to get multiple procedures that she does not need, like the installation of a feeding tube and the removal of some of her teeth.

Naturally, Dee Dee tries to control every aspect of Gypsy’s life, leading her to have an extremely small and overly curated social circle. Dee Dee also uses Gypsy to commit serious financial fraud, securing funds from sympathetic parties, a house from Habitat for Humanity, Disney trips and even a “Child of the Year” award from their local community.

She also lies about Gypsy’s age, with her true birth year revealed only after Gypsy digs up her birth certificate. Dee Dee convinces Gypsy that years of her adult life that she’s a teenager, limiting and controlling as much contact with the outside world as possible.

Gypsy eventually has enough and tries to run away, though she tracks her down and forces her to come back home, despite the fact that Gypsy is a legal adult. This causes Gypsy to resent her mother, which she eventually communicates to her boyfriend and Dee Dee’s future killer, Nick.

Nick is a troubled young man suffering from multiple personalities, with one, whom he calls Victor, being extremely violent. Nick is portrayed as someone who probably would’ve killed through Victor anyways, and needs little convincing by Gypsy to commit “the act.”

This series works as an interesting drama but it lacks connective tissue at key moments, chief of all being Gypsy’s murderous path. In the final episodes, it’s like the show flips a switch in her character — she has very little internal struggle when embracing this path, which comes off as bad, rushed writing. The series does a good job at communicating why Gypsy comes to hate her mother and how she feels trapped by her, but it fails to illustrate her internal logic and rationale behind her decision.

I shortly after watched HBO’s documentary on Dee Dee’s murder — “Mommy Dead and Dearest” — which includes interviews with the real-life Gypsy, her father, Rod Blanchard, her grandparents, her defense lawyer and the prosecutor in her case. It was interesting to contrast how this series approached the subject matter compared to the documentary.

The portrayal of Dee Dee in “The Act” comes off as much more generous than in the documentary. “The Act” goes to great lengths to make her likeable but fatally flawed, loving Gypsy in a way that is harmful, but won’t necessarily kill her; the interviews in “Mommy Dead and Dearest” paints Dee Dee as a narcissistic monster that cares little about anyone outside herself. However, King and Worthy’s depictions of Gypsy and Nick were pretty consistent with the footage in the documentary.

“The Act” is a highly entertaining but flawed docudrama series that will give you a general overview of Gypsy’s situation, though I recommend instead checking out one of the documentaries on the subject that uses authentic clips from some of the real people involved.

“The Act” gets an 8/10