The Menendez brothers arrive in court in Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story episode 7. "Showtime" opens in the courtroom in 1983, where Dominick Dunne (Nathan Lane) awaits the verdict for the man who killed his daughter. Dunne accuses the judge of withholding evidence from the jury. "How can you sleep at night, defending this monster?" he demands of the defense attorney.
Jamie (Jade Pettyjohn) visits Lyle (Nicholas Chavez) in prison. He assures her that trial prep is underway and he knows he's getting out. Her parents want them to break up, but he tells her to wait until this all gets settled. He asks her to say his father raped her, which shocks her. Lyle has several other visitors he asks to remember things that happened, even though they don't seem to know what he's talking about.
Erik (Cooper Koch) watches as the attorneys listen to Lyle recounting how Jose (Javier Bardem) killed their dog and mocked his stutter. Kitty (Chloë Sevigny), he says, chased them around the house with knives. Later, Leslie (Ari Graynor) and Jill (Jess Weixler) discuss how they find Lyle's stories hard to believe; not necessarily their validity, but they question his delivery. Leslie asks Jill if she thinks it's possible Lyle came up with the whole idea and convinced Erik to go along with it? But Leslie wonders if it's actually the other way around.
Lyle, in the meantime, reads through the bags of fan mail he has received. He ends up calling one of the women, Norma, saying he and Jamie were never right for each other and now she's lying about him asking her to say things that weren't true.
Erik meets with Dr. Vicary (Gil Ozeri) and tells him the story about his father's male lover isn't true. He made it up. Lyle tells Norma he needs to figure out why he never told Oziel about all of the sexual abuse. He thinks he needs to get his story out, and she offers to help him write a book.
Again, but with emotions
Jill and Leslie ask Lyle to take them through the day of the murders. They're trying to get him to hone in on details like the boat trip. In his version, Erik and Lyle tried to sneak out but their parents catch them. Lyle confronts Jose, telling him he's never going to touch Erik again. Lyle accuses Kitty of standing by and watching the abuse, but she says he ruined their family. Lyle thought their parents were getting their guns out to kill them, so he and Erik got their guns out.
Leslie doesn't believe Lyle's testimony and the jury won't believe it, either. She thinks he's making it all up and she pressures him about putting a shotgun to his mother's face. Erik supplies it was because she allowed Jose to rape them, and that's exactly what Leslie wants to see. "So, like, the emotions?" Lyle asks, adding he can cry if she needs him to. He tells the story of how he found Kitty's suicide note and tried to convince her to stop the pills and leave Jose and everything would be ok. Leslie likes the improvement.
Dunne looks over the Menendez autopsy report in July 1993 as the brothers arrive at the courthouse in the prison bus. The courthouse is surrounded by hundreds of screaming women with signs supporting them. Lyle loves the attention, but Erik seems hesitant. As they dress for court, Dunne studies the crime scene photos.
Leslie is ready for her opening statement. She says the trial is all about "why" the brothers killed their parents, but the answer isn't simple. Jose and Kitty both molested their sons, and the only thing Erik and Lyle are guilty of is loving their parents. They killed their parents in self-defense.
The party
Dunne follows Leslie after her statement, calling her defense fascinatingly similar to the case she had before. She's sorry for what happened to his daughter, but she says he should thank the killer for giving him a career.
Later, Dunne hosts a dinner party where guests ask why they couldn't have committed the murders in self-defense. He questions why Kitty asked her friends over to play bridge, and why the boys were scared of the boat trip when there were other people on board. They were also planning a trip to Princeton to furnish Lyle's new apartment and Kitty was helping Erik with his college applications. Why didn't they call the police to report the abuse? None of that happened. "They lied, right from the very beginning," he Dunne says, claiming they lied over 50 times.
The family supported the claim that Jose was strict with the boys and not worthy of the family name, and a cousin testified Jose showered with the boys and locked their door. Dunne asks how many of his guests weren't abused by their parents, and when a guest points out it was sexual abuse, Dunne doubles down and says the boys leared about it by studying books about parricide. He thinks they introduced the sexual abuse to cover Erik's sexuality, a "secret" that isn’t really a "secret." Dunne agrees being gay doesn't make you a murderer, but he thinks it has more to do with a secret that has nothing to do with Jose. We see Kitty walking in on Erik and Lyle in the shower, and Dunne calls it a matter of transference; placing the blame on Jose to hide their secret relationship. Either way, Dunne doesn't think the brothers are entitled to forgiveness, regardless of how awful their childhoods were.
At the end of his speech, we see Dunne sitting alone. The dinner party was in his head. He shares with the server he had two daughters before Dominique, both of which died in infancy, which is why Dominique was so special. He thought watching her die would be the worst thing to happen to him, but it was actually harder listening to John Sweeney talk about being abused as a child in his trial. Dominique was strangled for over five minutes and he got out of prison after three and a half years. After the server leaves, he breaks down in tears.
The greatest testimony ever
Erik and Lyle prepare for court the next day. Lyle takes the stand. Cameras are recording his every move for a global audience. Jill takes Lyle through the night of the murders, then asks if Jose took pictures of them as children. He says his father took photos of their genitals. She asks about how the sexual abuse started. Lyle describes it all in horrifying detail. When she asks if he ever told anyone else, Lyle says Jose told him bad things would happen if he spoke about it. He admits he ended up doing some of the same things to Erik. Tears stream down Erik's face as Lyle says he's sorry to his brother.
Later that night, Lyle tells Norma he gave the greatest testimony ever and he wants to write a screenplay. She's on the other line, recording their conversations and writing everything down. Dunne shows up at Leslie's house and says he's sorry because either the boys endured something unspeakable or they were coached. But he believed what Lyle said.
The entire season of Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story is available to stream now on Netflix.
