THE WILD AND WONDERFUL WHITES OF WEST VIRGINIA....

Gee, ya think??

Very memorable documentary, it's true.

Those people are ghastly, simply ghastly!

He must have married her for her trailer

Sue Bob is my role model of glamour and sexiness.

Is this like the white trash version of Grey Gardens?

I was shocked with how comfortable they were doing lines of whatever in front of their aged mother, at her birthday party.

Crazy shit. How about the little girl at the end running around talking about "FUCK YOU!" over and over again. What was she? Like three?

Derkie (Derek), Bo's pill-poppin' son, was hot in this, but not surprisingly he isn't aging well.

I loved when Sue Bob snorted coke off the back of a toilet.

^ I thought that was crushed-up pills.

I'm shocked that any of them are still alive.

I can't believe Mousie is Mamie's kid instead of her sister.

A coworker and I reference this show constantly. We like to yell Dennis and Sub Bob at each other across the office.

Bertie Mae begat Mamie, and Mamie begat Mousie, and Mousie begat Cheyenne, and it just might stop there....

I wonder how Kirk "NOT WITHOUT MY DAUGHTER!" White is doing. Gotta hand it to her - she cleaned up to get her baby back

I love Sue Bob, “the sexiest one in the family”.

The scene of her trying to order food at a drive thru was a scream.

A former colleague of mine is from West Virginia. I asked him if he knew of the family and he professed total ignorance of them or the exact location of Boone County. This is a rather insufferable PhD and a lot of other degrees. Funny that this is the one thing in the world of which he is blissfully unaware.

I think when I saw this movie is when I first started thinking (or realizing) that this country is seriously dysfunctional, and quite possibly rotting at its core.

[quote]The scene of her trying to order food at a drive thru was a scream.

I died when she asked for mozzarella sticks at a taco place.

[quote]Mousie begat Cheyenne

I think that's "Cheyan," LOL

Incidentally, Cheyan seemed like a budding baby dyke, although the female of the redneck species is often so butch regardless of orientation that it messes with one's gaydar.

Jesco seemed to speak with some intelligence. Well, when he wasn't talking about himself, that is. Case in point:

"The doctors told me that because I huffed gasoline for 10 long years my brain cell was reduced to a pile of ashes in my head, but they never did tell me which cell it was."

These people make the Tiger King folks look classy.

Mamie is a train wreck, but she seemed like a very nice person with a big heart.

"I got three mine shafts up this here holler, and I kin put a bunch a body parts in a garbage bag and throw it in thar and nobody would ever know!"

"When I die, I want to go to hell so I kin see all the rest of my family."

I agree with the OP that Jesco pings. I also think Hank Williams III pings (and no, I don't think he's hot).

It's documentaries like that that make you question how the hell America is still considered a first world country.

It's documentaries like that that make you question how the hell America is still considered a first world country.

Jesco bearded up a few years back

^^^ How's Marilyn feel about that? She's watchin' boy

If you can find it Dancing Outlaw is also a great documentary. It’s about Jesco White and was quite trashy even though it was made by PBS

Deplorables. SO. NOT. INTERESTED.

I’ve always been the sexy one

You're about ten years late, OP.

I wonder why I didn’t see people like this when I stayed in West Virginia. I stayed at this resort called the Greenbriar and never left. I am a classy bitch with all her teeth.

A real-life SQUIDBILLIES.

West Virginia is such a weird place.

I grew up in eastern Loudoun County, Virginia, which is basically an exurb of Washington, D.C., but I was close enough to West Virginia that I could theoretically have ridden my bike there on a long bike ride.

West Virginia only exists because it seceded from Virginia to side with the NORTH during the Civil War.

There's an isolated community of mixed-race (black, white and American Indian) people who have populated their own West Virginia town since the early 1800s; black scholar Henry Louis Gates was traced back to this community via DNA on his PBS show "Finding Your Roots."

So the state has some surprisingly progressive history. But growing up not far from the border, driving westward into western Loudoun County always felt like I was entering the land of Deliverance. Leesburg, Virginia had a Long John Silver franchise that was operated by a family, and that family was...like something from a really eerie TV show. My sister works in child protective services in that area now and she says they get a lot of reports from WV, although the majority of them are because of poverty-related child neglect and not intentional abuse.

Used to have this fantasy about Matt Barr & Boyd Holbrook in-character as Johnse & Cap Hatfield in that Kevin Costner miniseries they did.

Of course, the real Hatfield boys of WV were nowhere near as beautiful or as clean, so the reality would have been unpleasant. The magic of Hollywood.

I hate all of the television programs that basically normalize deplorable social.

This does not “normalize” the deplorable. It is more like a trip to the zoo.

No, it basically anesthetize viewers to their deplorable ways.

R35 "West Virginia is such a weird place."

This is because people don't really understand the history of it, the story you read in history class is not the actual history. The state was created in a way like the client states created during the Cold War by the US and Soviets, very few people in West Virginia voted to leave Virginia but Congress and Lincoln signed off on it as a reward to Union supporters in a gesture to the greater cause of Union victory, so when the war ended West Virginians found themselves in a continuing war of politics. Disfranchisement of the ex-Confederates meant that the wartime government called all the shots but that lasted only 7 years after the war ended, when the ex-Confederates took over and wrote a new state constitution. The state actually gave half its soldiers to the Confederacy, a higher rate than Kentucky or Missouri, and half of the counties had actually voted for secession from the US in 1861 with the rest of Virginia. So what happened in WV was the creation of a civil war in a microcosm. Boone County, where the Whites live, was a Confederate bastion as was most of southern WV. The extractive industries pulled billions of dollars out of the state and left little benefit or infrastructure, and it didn't matter who you voted for, the coal barons bought whatever party was in power.

West Virginia is a beautiful state. I lived in Bradshaw, WV before there was a time spell that sent us back to the 2010s. Heaven on Earth.

I’m sure there are redeeming aspects in this state well worth seeing, besides what is pictured in this sensational show. In a lot of America the experience is not where you live as much as how you live. Just because you see poverty stricken areas in a certain state, doesn’t mean your experience is going to expose you to that. Yes West Virginia has had booms and busts, and in some cases little boom, but there seems to be important history and nature to be enjoyed. And I’m sure there are a handful of towns where we’re welcomed and we should give them our money.

It is a stunningly beautiful state and much of it is completely wild. You don’t see many people or houses and you get a sense of what the frontier was like. But I saw a KKK meeting in the southern part. It was when I was driving alone at night on a small deserted country road. Came around a bend and there in a field was a circle of men in robes and a cross burning. It was terrifying. That was in 1992 so maybe this generation has died off by now. It is strange to see something that you’ve only seen in pictures or movies in real life, and so suddenly and unexpectedly.

I tried to watch it, but couldn't finish it. Dumb hillbillies aren't that interesting.

That must have been terrifying r43

I’m watching this movie tonight. I saw a recent interview with Sue Bob and she actually hasn’t aged since the documentary came out. Imagine how she’s look if she hadn’t been a drug addict for decades!

The Appa-LATCH-uns are truly unique. I believe every shady person from Europe got over here somehow and fled to the hills.

My Appalachian roots started with a Jew who went to England in the early 1800s, changed his name, then the family moved to the U. S.- eventually ending-up in Ohio. His grandson got into some legal trouble and fled to the hills of Kentucky.

Today, a large number of people in that county have that last name.

R35, I grew up partly in Winchester. Still go back to visit my nieces and nephew there. They like to gamble. Hillbillies aside, WV can be beautiful. Love Harper’s Ferry and Berkeley Springs. Did you ever see “George Washington’s bathtub”?

The land there does look absolutely breathtaking. It’s an interesting culture that sprung up in that region.

R48 there are probably more descendants of George Washington in West Virginia than Virginia.

R47, yeah, lots of in-breds in that county.

There are no descendants of George Washington anywhere because he had no children.

There's a documentary called 'Hillbilly' on Netflix that's about cultural depictions of them in American culture. I stopped watching halfway through because there was a bit too much Trumpism there for my taste, as I'm currently exhausted from hearing about how disaffected people are fueling the MAGA rage. But it is true that many people resent being stereotyped as the equivalent of the Jescos.

Jesco was hot when he was young. I love those white trash men with dark features

R52, true, I should have said relatives of Washington. I have a book autographed by Lawrence B. Washington, George's nephew, born in Jefferson Count, WV.

I've spent a lot of time traveling in hillbilly country and I don't think I've met more than three passably hot guys. I might watch if the guys are hot.