It’s Netflix’s “summer of disaster,” with the streamer rolling out a new documentary each week under the Trainwreck anthology banner. Each of the eight films revisits a real-life event that spiraled out of control, from music festival tragedies to viral hoaxes and reality TV fiascos. These stories dominated headlines at the time, and now each of the installments give the ugly tales a deeper dive. At TV and City, we’re covering them all.
Trainwreck: P.I. Moms hits Netflix on July 22.
By Elazar Abrahams
In the early 2010s, the Lifetime network was convinced it had struck reality TV gold. P.I. Moms, a series following a private investigation agency staffed by soccer moms, seemed tailor-made for success. On paper, it had everything: a quirky hook, strong female leads, and juicy casework. But as the show’s production ramped up, cracks quickly appeared. The investigations kept falling apart, the agency’s boss began to attract serious accusations, and whispers surfaced that the entire operation was less legitimate than it seemed. In a bizarre twist, the head of the agency was later alleged to have ties to drug dealers and a corrupt cop, leading to a collapse that was as messy as it was embarrassing for everyone involved.
Trainwreck: P.I. Moms is another entry in the anthology that ultimately feels pretty minor, but it’s undeniably fun. Much like The Real Project X, this story is not particularly scandalous, but where that earlier installment felt hollow, this one at least leans into its darkly comedic energy. There’s something irresistibly watchable about seeing a reality TV project fall apart from the inside, especially when it was so obviously designed to be a ratings smash.
There’s a faint whisper of deeper commentary here, maybe about how men in the legal system and on the show’s production side couldn’t stomach the idea of women in charge, but this documentary doesn’t dig into that. It’s a schlocky Netflix true-crime doc through and through, happy to skim along the surface without probing any societal angles too hard.
Still, as a guilty pleasure, P.I. Moms works. It’s messy, fast-moving, and filled with enough bizarre twists to keep viewers entertained, even if it ultimately amounts to a whole lot of nothing. Not every disaster needs to be world-ending. Sometimes, watching a small-time flameout is enough.
I give Trainwreck: P.I. Moms a B-.
TV and City 