Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story episode 3 recap and review: "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?"
After making their confession to their therapist Dr. Oziel, it was only a matter of time before Erik and Lyle were caught for murdering their parents. Netflix's Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story continues with the third episode, "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" in which police get a search warrant for Oziel's house and listen to the session recordings. Of course, no time is wasted until they arrest the brothers.
Major spoilers for Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story are below.
Trigger Warning: This episode references child sexual abuse.
Dr. Oziel receives a frantic phone call from his wife Laurel telling him to come home because the police are there. It's March 8, 1990, and when Oziel returns home, detectives say they believe he has tape recordings in relation to the Menendez murders, which surprises him. The only person who could've ratted him out — besides Lyle and Erik themselves — is Judalon, and we get a quick flashback scene of her speaking with Detective Zoeller and telling him what she knows.
Lyle, clueless as to what's going on, is out looking at a space for his restaurant when he gets a call giving him a heads-up. He gives his friends a roll of money, saying they might need to bail him out of jail.
Lyle and Erik are arrested
The detectives listen to the tapes and immediately have enough evidence to arrest the brothers. Lyle and his friends are swarmed by police in the street and Lyle is arrested, while Erik is in Israel for a tennis tournament. He gets a phone call about his brother's arrest and is told to come home. Erik is arrested right when he gets off the plane in the United States and now, both brothers are in jail. And expectedly, they don't handle it well.
Erik and Lyle try to get help from the lawyer their family hired for them, Robert Shapiro, while Erik fears he will be killed in jail. He won't eat and won't shower, and instead only drinks milk. Lyle is picked on and one of the inmates pulls off his toupée, which, expectedly, makes him even more agitated. To use the jail payphone, the brothers need dimes, but even though they're very wealthy, coins aren't something they have. This turns into a surprisingly humorous montage of Lyle trying to get dimes from his family and his fellow inmates.
One of the inmates who's been staring at Erik gives him dimes unprovoked, which confuses him. He later overhears the man talking about how he showers later than everyone when no one's there, and Erik takes a page from his book. They end up going to shower at the same time and stand next to each other, looking at one another. Though there's definitely tension, the man leaves before anything happens, telling Erik that he'll see him around. Meanwhile, Lyle breaks down crying in his cell.
Erik and Lyle meet with their lawyer who tells them they need a reality check. Lyle is adamant about getting his wig glue and tanning lotion, concerned that they won't look good when they're on trial. But Shapiro tells them that the real concern will be them being sentenced to death if they're found guilty. They need a different strategy if they want a shot at proving their innocence.
There's something the brothers aren't saying
Erik tries to talk about things that happened to them before the murders, but Lyle shuts him down. When they walk back to their cell alone, Erik says if they come clean about "it," the jury might feel bad for them. But Lyle shuts him down again, saying they are never going to talk about "it." Given the context clues, it's possible the brothers faced more abuse at home than they've revealed.
The Menendez family ends up firing Shapiro, to which he tells them that the brothers' story is full of holes and doesn't add up. He believes they're guilty and tells the family that the jury won't believe them unless they come up with a new story.
Erik works out in the jail's gym with the man he's been eyeing, who we learn is named Tony. Tony asks Erik if he's gay, to which Erik says no, but when Tony asks if he likes being with men, Erik tells him he likes being around him. It's evident by a comment he makes that Erik's sexuality is something he's struggled with.
Later, Erik's cell is searched and guards find a letter under his bed from Lyle. We learn that Lyle came up with grand escape plans and it's all in a letter he tried to give his brother. Lyle gets in trouble for this and is moved to a different cell block, leaving Erik alone.
Meet the new criminal defense attorney
The show shifts a little here as we meet new players in the case. A couple meets with an adoption agency; the wife is criminal defense attorney Leslie Abramson (Ari Graynor) who wants another child. She later runs into a journalist from Vanity Fair at a restaurant named Dominick Dunne (Nathan Lane), and it's revealed they have a history. In separate conversations, Dominick says he believes the Menendez brothers are guilty and there's nothing that could redeem them, while Leslie doesn't see things so black and white.
Leslie gets a call from the Menendez family and she goes to meet with them. She tells them about a client she once represented who killed his father in self-defense after suffering abuse, and she won the case. This seems to impress the family, and they hire her to represent Erik.
Leslie goes to meet with Erik and tells him that he and Lyle have made a series of mistakes since the murders. She knows they killed their parents and she believes there's a reason why. She references a part of the letter Lyle sent Erik, which reads, "We alone know the secrets of our family's past." She wants to know what that means, and sets up a meeting for Erik and a psychiatrist.
Erik meets with the psychiatrist but doesn't want to talk about anything serious. The doctor tells him that he's wasting his time if he won't open up about what happened, and Erik decides to come clean. He says that he and Lyle did kill his parents, but there was a reason. After their session, the psychiatrist rushes to a payphone to call Leslie. He gives her his notes, and Leslie goes to see Erik again.
Erik opens up
Erik admits to being sexually abused as a child, telling Leslie that his father started with Lyle first, but when he told him to stop, he moved on to him. Erik describes the way he tried to cope with the abuse, which seems to horrify Leslie. This is a major discovery for the case, and it's upsetting to see Erik talk about it in such a matter-of-fact manner. Of course, it's hard for him to talk about, but I don't know if he understands just how incredibly horrible it all is — or that it could be used as a self-defense argument.
Leslie is going to be a great thing for Erik, but will she be able to prove this was self-defense to the jury? We'll have to keep watching to find out. All nine episodes of Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story are streaming on Netflix, and we're recapping and reviewing them here at Show Snob.
Monsters Ep 3. A. The third episode of Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story moves the plot along in a gripping fashion, giving us a glimpse of the spoiled, rich brothers in vulnerability. . . "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?"
Read all of our Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story recaps and reviews: