Netflix's Painkiller: Twists in the Final Chapter

Introduction

The latest Netflix series, Painkiller, tells about the opioid epidemic that occurred in America. Created by Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster as screenwriters and Peter Berg as director. Featuring Matthew Broderick, Uzo Aduba, Taylor Kitsch, Dina Shihabi, and West Duchovny. The story of Painkiller is very similar to the painkiller phenomenon in the US in the 90s.

Overview of the Series and Themes

The Painkiller series is about the 1996 opioid epidemic and how everyone at the time was affected, based on the article The Family That Built an Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe of the New Yorker.

The series themes is about crime, accountability, and the failed systems, who examines the greed of medical companies as the cause of an epidemic in the United States, where strong painkillers or opioids are abused for billions of dollars in profits.

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Character Endings and Explained

The series begins with a seething Edie Flowers (Uzo Aduba), a former investigator working for Virginia’s U.S. attorney’s office. Edie travels to Washington D.C. to recount her time in the field, discovering Oxy and eventually trying to make Perdue pay for the irreparable harm the company caused countless people. Though Edie is the narrator, other central figures flesh out the story. There is Glen Kryger (Taylor Kitsch), a car mechanic who is harmed on the job and later prescribed Oxy during his recovery. Shannon Schaeffer (West Duchovny) is a recent college grad recruited by Perdue, and eventually becomes a key sales rep. Then there is Richard Sackler (Matthew Broderick), the Perdue patriarch responsible for creating and marketing the designer narcotic.

Real Events vs. Fictionalization

Officially, Purdue Pharma does exist, as does the Sackler family who made the selling and marketing of OxyContin into a booming business. But Berg likened the process of turning that very real story into a scripted series to a swimming pool with clearly defined limits. He said that he had to stay within certain boundaries. However, those boundaries were rich and there was plenty of story to tell within those boundaries.

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Impact of Purdue Pharma and OxyContin

The opioid epidemic started when Purdue Pharma, the company that manufactures OxyContin, made claims that its drug was safer for many types of pain than other drugs. Even some people who are paid by the company to increase sales, tell that the drug is safe to use and make the doctors end up prescribing the drug with high doses. When the Purdue company learned of the adverse effects of excessive consumption of OxyContin, they even covered it up to doctors and patients.

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Legal Pursuits and Settlements

In Episode 6, after Shannon hands over all her email and phone records from working at Purdue, Edie and her team finally have tangible evidence to bring a case against the company to the Department of Justice. They charge three of Purdue’s top executives — Michael Friedman (John Murphy), Howard Udell (Brian Markinson), and Paul Goldenheim (Cody Porter) with lying to Congress about the first time they heard about the abuse of OxyContin.

After learning who the real bad guys are in “the system” of marketing these drugs, Edie has a moment of clarity and reads her brother Shawn’s letters from prison. He’s serving time for dealing drugs when he was 19 years old. As the finale flashes forward to the present, we see the siblings closer than ever. Shawn (Jamaal Grant) is actually the one who convinces her to tell her story to the new prosecutors going after Purdue.

Conclusion

The series opens the perspectives of perpetrators, victims, and truth seekers whose lives have all been changed by OxyContin. Unfortunately, “Painkiller” fails to trust that its audience has even a slither of context concerning the subject. Instead, it exhaustively focuses on every little detail, enabling most scenes to dissolve into melodrama. 

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