Parents' Guide to Apple Cider Vinegar

Kaitlyn Dever makes a sad, sympathetic, and sensational Belle Gibson, a woman with a complicated backstory who spreads lies about both her medical history and the natural-food diet she said cured it. In less capable hands, Apple Cider Vinegar could have been a simple look at a reprehensible villain whose attention-seeking mistruths harmed, maybe even killed, those who listened to her—the sort of true crime document that's legion on both streaming and conventional TV networks. Instead, with creator Samantha Strauss at the helm (as well as in the writers room), and with Dever's extraordinary performance, this story of a troublesome and troubled woman is something much odder and more interesting: a portrait of one woman who exemplifies something terrible about most (or at least many) of us.

As Apple Cider Vinegar shows us, this fictional Belle Gibson never set out to hurt anyone; instead, her lies began as a cry for attention. We see how lonely she is in the series' first episode, calling her mom to convince her (clearly not for the first time) to show up for the baby shower Belle is throwing for herself, then staying up late into the night to make cupcakes to celebrate herself and her baby. No guests ever arrive to shower her with anything like love. And so Belle tells a lie about her health on a message board for moms-to-be ... and she likes the loving attention she gets for doing so. Before long, she's launched a mini-empire online, with an app touting her supposed whole-food cancer cure. The only problem? Real women listen to her, such as Milla (Alycia Debnam-Carey), who's desperately trying to escape her doctors' advice that she amputate her arm to battle her cancer, and Lucy (Tilda Cobham-Hervey), who finds hope in Belle's alternative therapies when her doctors give her little to none. Slowly, painstakingly, Apple Cider Vinegar shows us how insidious wishful thinking can be, how the wrong kind of support is better than none at all, and how some women seek "wellness" as shorthand for the power and agency they lack. Apple Cider Vinegar is bracing, enraging, and relatable all at once, a powerful potential explanation for the why's these cases often spark.