Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Death In The Dorms’ Season 2 On Hulu, More True Crime Campus Murder Stories To Scare Parents Everywhere

If you have kids in college, or even young kids whom may go to college someday, you may want to skip the second season of Death In The Dorms. Why? Because this true-crime docuseries examines various senseless murders of students on or near the campuses where they go to school. And the show is anything but subtle.

DEATH IN THE DORMS SEASON 2: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Shots of Philadelphia and Temple University.

The Gist: In a second season of Death In The Dorms, more cases of students getting murdered on or near campus are presented. The first is the case of Jenna Burleigh, a new transfer to Temple University who went missing in the early morning hours of August 31, 2017, right before the fall semester started. Her body was later found in northern Pennsylvania days later, crammed into a blue plastic bin at the house of the grandparents of Joshua Hupperterz, who immediately became the prime suspect in the case.

Via interviews with Burleigh’s parents, friends and the prosecutors who worked the case, we get a picture of a vibrant young woman who went missing after closing out a bar near the North Philadelphia campus. CCTV footage sees her leaving with Hupperterz, and entering his apartment building shortly after. But Hupperterz wasn’t talking to campus police, and he was nowhere to be found, until law enforcement tracked his phone to the town where his grandparents lived. When Hupperterz’ grandfather found Burleigh’s body in that tub, awkwardly placed in a woodshed, it was law enforcement and the Philly DA’s office’s job to tie the physical evidence they’ve gathered to Hupperterz.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Because of the anthology nature of Death In The Dorms, it’s more of a cousin of 20/20 than some of the longer-form docuseries ABC News Studios have made for Hulu of late.

Our Take: As with the first season, we’re not sure what the purpose of Death In The Dorms is besides scaring the living bejeezus out of the parents of current and future college students. As the first episode demonstrates, the cases presented aren’t all that twisty and turny; in the case of Burleigh, her body was found at the house of the grandparents of the man she was last seen with. There is no real drama besides watching the pain of her friends and family recalling how the life of this person full of potential was ended so violently.

In fact, the story in the first episode is so straightforward that some of the interviewees, particularly the two assistant district attorneys assigned to the case, are instructed by the filmmakers to repeat some of the steps of the investigation that involved Hupperterz as the only person of interest. A lot of Burleigh’s background, including some of the turns her life took before she transferred to Temple, is examined. In other words, there’s a whole lot of filler and throat clearing to fill the show’s 57-minute runtime, because there are no real twists in the story.

Which gets us back to just why this show exists. Besides the sinking feeling in every parent’s gut that makes them want to tell their kids to never go anywhere or experience anything while they’re at college, the only other thing we can think of is to also make people scared of the cities where these campuses are located, as we’ll explain below.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Burleigh’s father says, “I never want to stop talking about her.”

Sleeper Star: None we could find.

Most Pilot-y Line: More than one interviewee is shown explaining that the area of Philly outside the Temple campus was a high-crime area, which gave us a bit of a whiff of victim-blaming, implying that there’s no reason that Burleigh should have been by herself at two in the morning. It’s not a message that should even be hinted at, so that tone was unfortunate to see.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Once again, Death In The Dorms takes pretty straightforward murder cases and makes them into cautionary tales, which is a disservice to the victims and their loved ones.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.