I'll post the shorter version below.
So, this 14 year old kid lives with his mother, step-father, and few siblings. He and the siblings he shares a father with, visit their father certain weekends blah blah. One weekend, the father drops them back off, but the kid tells his siblings to tell the mom that he isn't coming in, that he's going to go live with his father. He had obviously discussed this in depth with the father and obviously had a plan/strategy...which is why the father is recording. This kid clearly hates living with his mom and step-father, and there is obviously a long history of struggle there. He is very angry at his mom for not letting him live with his father(or, at least, give it a shot for a while), and claims she is physically and emotionally abusive(they fight and yell all the time). He is also frustrated with his step-father because he seems like kind of a pushover that just does whatever the mom wants. And I felt this kid's frustration 'cause I've been in that situation. Now, I can appreciate the fact that as a step-parent, it might be more appropriate to take more of a backseat when you're not the biological parent, but that has consequences. And it can also communicate to the kid that you just don't care that much because it's not like it's your kid anyway. When one parent has all the decision-making power, it opens up the possibility for abuse. Having another parent that can "check" the other parent...and is invested enough to do so, is really important. A parent that can say "whoa, this is my kid too and what you're doing/saying is bullshit". If one parent is abusive, and the other one is a pushover(or somewhat neglectful/disinterested) and passively supports anything the abusive parent does, the abusive parent might as well be a single parent. And the former is actually worse because having a second parent constantly backing up the bullshit of the other parent will make the kid feel like he/she is crazy. At least, with a single parent, it's just you versus them.
So, I started watching this and just planned on watching a little bit, but it just pulled me in...next thing I know I've watched whole. Like I mentioned, I've been in this kid's situation, so maybe that's why I found it moving. So many parallels...my mother was a bit controlling(in fact, I see so much of my mother in this woman it's scary...but it's also why I feel for her. And they have the same intensity. Plus my mom is a damn lawyer, so she knows how to spin everything, and is very intelligent. That's what I grew up with
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), had a pushover step-father, my real father was desperately trying to get custody of me while he was overseas(and he wanted to send me to boarding school in Switzerland...which I would have honestly loved to do 'cause I wanted to get away from my mother), my mother had painted him as a villain for most of my life(but I suspect there's some truth to it...and she had to apparently "abduct" me from him when I was one or two years old in Nigeria...because she had no power there, while he was a successful businessman and politician, and knew he wouldn't let her take me if she asked for a divorce), I had siblings from my mother's new husband that were toddler's and babies at the time(my mother had me when she was quite young)...so I had to take them into consideration as well, etc.Now, I think it's reasonable to take a kid seriously if he/she says a parent is abusive and they don't want to live with them anymore, and that's part of the reason I completely sided with the kid and father at first, and why most people seem to do. But, there's also something wrong with the amount of speculation about the mother's intentions and tactics that I suspect there is misogyny at play. Off the bat, you can see that she is controlling and quite condescending in the way she talks to her son, and you slowly begin to see how manipulative she is...but she comes off intentionally transparent in her intentions...stating that she will basically do or say anything to keep her son from his irresponsible father, for his own good. There's a moment when she asks the police officer what her options are, and I think he might have mentioned she could charge her son, and the son says "did you hear that officer? how can she say she loves me in one breath, and in the next threaten"...and she basically says she will do whatever it takes to keep him from his father. Which I can respect/understand in one sense, but it makes me question her motives and intentions. This was like watching some weird movie...the drama, the suspense, the mystery/second-guessing, the shift in power/control, the tug of war, the emotional roller coaster, the weird limbo/grey area they were in of trying to figure out who had what rights and what could be done. Sometimes I wondered if the father was the bad guy in all of this...whether he manipulated the son...and even the son comes off as a bit manipulative at times(willing to do/say whatever it takes...which you can't really blame him for if he really is being abused). By the end, I was happy for the kid...and kinda proud of him, but sad for the mom as well. She goes from being somewhat cocky to basically pleading with her son by the end. There is one poignant moment near the end where the officer seems to give her and her husband permission to physically do whatever to get the boy in the house, and she suddenly goes from sobbing to this sort of gleeful "Oh, I got you now, boy!"...that came across as somewhat petty and devilish...like celebrating the fact that she was going to win. Made me wonder if everyone was right about what they were saying about her. Like she temporarily dropped the emotionally manipulative thing because she thought she had "won".
Here's the TL;DR version:
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