“Betrayal: The Perfect Husband” is a three-part documentary on Hulu based on a podcast (“Betrayal: Season One”) on the same subject matter.
The story follows one faithful spouse, Jen, and the story of her discovering her husband, Spencer, as both a cheater and criminal having sexually abused some of his high school students.
The TV series is a well-done documentary exposing a particularly disordered and “gifted” cheater. By “gifted,” I mean that Spencer was good at manipulating people and keeping his various targets in the dark about the others. Just thinking about all the relationships he had going–aka exploiting–is exhausting!
While I thought this was overall a good production, I have one major criticism to raise about the series:
I thought they were too easy on the adult women who slept with Spencer knowing he was married. They treated them as mere victims of Spencer.
As backstory, Spencer not only abused his high school students, he was involved with various adult women as well. The series has interviews with two. One was single at the time, and the other was married with children.
The married one was a mutual acquaintance with Jen, Spencer’s wife. Her husband learned of the illicit relationship and chewed out Spencer. Neither of them told Jen, though, at that time. So, they participated in enabling Spencer to continue the deception.
Particularly, I find it hard to treat that individual as a mere victim of Spencer. She could have and should have shut down his advances both knowing he was married and being married herself.
When interviewed, she gave cheater excuses about being “surprised” by him and being tired as a young mother vulnerable to such attention. This obscures her sinful choices:
She CHOSE to accept his romantic attentions.
She CHOSE to lie to Jen by keeping their illicit relationship a secret.
She CHOSE to send those awful explicit picture(s) to Spencer… I could go on….
These were her actions and choices, NOT Spencer’s.
Now, I understand that they were gentle with her possibly to get her cooperation to interview. But I do not think it is fair to write off her affair with Spencer as merely the product of Spencer’s predatory behavior.
Besides things like that, I thought they did a good job exposing the crazy world of being married to a cheater. The cheating was NOT glorified but rather exposed for the damage it did. Criminal behavior is treated as criminal behavior. The student who exposed the abuse was–rightfully–held up as the brave person she is. Things like that is why I consider this an overall worthwhile watch.
