Cut to six years earlier, when the Blanchards move into a pink, wheelchair-ramped Habitat for Humanity home in a quiet neighborhood – even before Dee Dee’s death in 2015, the Blanchards were small-town celebrities in Springfield, Missouri. The Act begins at the end of their relationship, on a night in 2015 when police find Dee Dee murdered in her bed. Such is the odd in-between feeling of watching The Act, Hulu’s five-part mini-series on the bizarre story of inseparable mother-daughter duo Dee Dee and Gypsy Rose Blanchard. But given that the show’s ominous score hints at creepiness from the first scene, that a hard-knocks neighbor (Chloe Sevigny) has already expressed skepticism about Gypsy’s charity case, and that Dee Dee’s murder was all over both the news in 2015 and the Act’s first episode, Gypsy’s deceptive mobility isn’t a surprise. Gypsy’s furtive steps are revelatory, to a point – Gypsy has spent the prior 50 or so minutes of screen time in a wheelchair, seemingly beset by illnesses that keep her head bald and her frame frail.
