The series was entertaining. That said, it was not actually a "good" documentary because of several flaws.
One, Amazon was definitely stretching it out way more than necessary. With more tidy editing you could easily get this down to 2-3 episodes and still retain the important information. The documentary repeatedly throws in the same "stock" footage, same shots of Lularoe's website or marketing material, same shots again and again and again and again and again and again of Lularoe events. It really isn't necessary and by the end of the series it really has probably added a good couple hours of filler.
Two, Amazon picked the wrong people to appear for the narrative it was trying to tell. The trailer marketed this as a documentary about the rise and fall of Lularoe and the devastating financial damage it caused mostly stay-at-home moms. This would be fine if they had stuck solely with women like Stella Lemberg, Roberta Blevins and Courtney Harwood who were likeable, honest and did seem to have suffered considerably. The problem is that they didn't. Instead you had women like Ashleigh Lautaha who didn't seem to know whether she was coming or going with Lularoe and refused to say anything remotely negative about them and just seemed uncomfortable being filmed, which begs the question why she agreed to be in the documentary or why Amazon kept her there once filming began and it became clear she didn't fit the narrative. Jill Drehmer stated outright that she still happily sells Lularoe at the end of the series which pretty quickly eliminates any sympathy for her. And perhaps Lauren Covey Carson had a husband who made money somewhere else but when she films her entire appearance in a massive, celebrity-worthy, $60,000 kitchen it's a little hard to take her cries of woe about her bad product or financial losses that seriously. She certainly doesn't seem to have been hard done by and still lives in a massive, gorgeous house that was almost certainly bought with her megachecks from Lularoe. LaShae Kimbrough just disappeared completely and abruptly with no resolution to her Lularoe story.
If the narrative had been more tightly crafted and better edited they might have worked as counterbalance *to* stories like Courtney, Roberta and Stella's but that's clearly NOT what they were there for as they were pushed to tell the EXACT same "woe is me" "my $70,000 of bad product" "it hurt us so much" as the other women and it comes across as completely disingenuous.
By the end this series will leave you with about the same feeling as the Fyre Festival documentaries. People who made/had way more money than sense who might tell an entertaining story but will also leave you rolling your eyes a bit and not necessarily feeling all that sorry for the majority of them and their "harrowing" "tragic" "stressful" experiences, whether that was attending a bad festival for one single day (Fyre) or selling enough leggings to build their dream home and buy multiple fancy cars and designer handbags...until they couldn't anymore. Woe indeed.
One, Amazon was definitely stretching it out way more than necessary. With more tidy editing you could easily get this down to 2-3 episodes and still retain the important information. The documentary repeatedly throws in the same "stock" footage, same shots of Lularoe's website or marketing material, same shots again and again and again and again and again and again of Lularoe events. It really isn't necessary and by the end of the series it really has probably added a good couple hours of filler.
Two, Amazon picked the wrong people to appear for the narrative it was trying to tell. The trailer marketed this as a documentary about the rise and fall of Lularoe and the devastating financial damage it caused mostly stay-at-home moms. This would be fine if they had stuck solely with women like Stella Lemberg, Roberta Blevins and Courtney Harwood who were likeable, honest and did seem to have suffered considerably. The problem is that they didn't. Instead you had women like Ashleigh Lautaha who didn't seem to know whether she was coming or going with Lularoe and refused to say anything remotely negative about them and just seemed uncomfortable being filmed, which begs the question why she agreed to be in the documentary or why Amazon kept her there once filming began and it became clear she didn't fit the narrative. Jill Drehmer stated outright that she still happily sells Lularoe at the end of the series which pretty quickly eliminates any sympathy for her. And perhaps Lauren Covey Carson had a husband who made money somewhere else but when she films her entire appearance in a massive, celebrity-worthy, $60,000 kitchen it's a little hard to take her cries of woe about her bad product or financial losses that seriously. She certainly doesn't seem to have been hard done by and still lives in a massive, gorgeous house that was almost certainly bought with her megachecks from Lularoe. LaShae Kimbrough just disappeared completely and abruptly with no resolution to her Lularoe story.
If the narrative had been more tightly crafted and better edited they might have worked as counterbalance *to* stories like Courtney, Roberta and Stella's but that's clearly NOT what they were there for as they were pushed to tell the EXACT same "woe is me" "my $70,000 of bad product" "it hurt us so much" as the other women and it comes across as completely disingenuous.
By the end this series will leave you with about the same feeling as the Fyre Festival documentaries. People who made/had way more money than sense who might tell an entertaining story but will also leave you rolling your eyes a bit and not necessarily feeling all that sorry for the majority of them and their "harrowing" "tragic" "stressful" experiences, whether that was attending a bad festival for one single day (Fyre) or selling enough leggings to build their dream home and buy multiple fancy cars and designer handbags...until they couldn't anymore. Woe indeed.