Season two of the series turned away from that drab gloom and focused, with at least some sensitivity, on the sensational trials of the Menendez Brothers in sunny California. Season three, the Ed Gein Story, returns to midwest murk and, especially in its early episodes, makes far less of an effort to do anything other than grimly titillate. The show's thesis makes some sense: Ed Gein, who murdered at least two people
Ed Gein is known as the "Godfather" of serial murderers, and it's clear to see why: his habit of grave robbing and crafting grotesque items out of human skin inspired the fictional Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs; his creation of skin "masks" inspired Leatherface in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre; and his obsession with his mother inspired Robert Bloch's novel , which went on to be adapted to the screen by Alfred Hitchcock.