All six episodes of Apple Cider Vinegar begins with a tongue-in-cheek disclaimer read by one of the limited series' characters: "This is a true-ish story based on a lie." This cheeky caveat creates irony across the series, whereby viewers must do their own research to distinguish what elements of the story — one centred around the destructive nature of misinformation — are based on fact, and which ones creator Samantha Strauss and her writers embellished or dramatized. Perhaps that's the point.
Apple Cider Vinegar seeks to bring to streaming life the rise and fall of Australian influencer Belle Gibson, played by Kaitlyn Dever in the series. For those unfamiliar with Gibson, the salient points of her story are: in 2013 she launched an online wellness empire, offering recipes and diet advice under the guise of having beaten cancer several times without conventional cancer treatments; two years later, she admitted it was all a lie, and she never had cancer.
Strauss readily mixes timelines and perspectives, creating some slight confusion at the beginning, but it's not for naught, as Strauss rewards viewers who stick with the show. Strauss takes the view of Gibson and her reprehensible behaviour, a damage-control publicist hired when the writing's on the wall, the investigative reporter who eventually exposes Gibson, the reporter's wife, a breast cancer patient who is devoted follower of Gibson, her manager who eventually becomes the whistleblower of the whole story, and Milla Blake (Alycia Debnam-Carey), a blogger and eventual rival with whom Gibson builds what we would now call a parasocial relationship with.
Milla is based on Jessica Ainscough, a fellow Aussie who was really was diagnosed with cancer and opted not to amputate her arm where the cancer cells formed; instead she decided to receive treatment through Gerson therapy (called the Hirsch Institute in the series). Rather than conventional cancer treatment, Gerson claims to "cure" cancer with regular enemas and a plant-based diet emphasizing freshly pressed juices. Ainscough documented her experience on her blog that amassed a huge following, including Gibson, before returning to conventional treatment in the final weeks of her life.
Although the series' primary focus remains on Gibson and her ability to lie and manipulate, Milla becomes a close secondary focus. Two stories run in parallel (in the series, not in actual time): one feeds off the other to become a 2.0 version; the other, based on very real circumstances, ends in heartbreak. Taking their stories together, Strauss makes a poignant statement that, while outrage rightly surrounds Gibson's falsehoods, it's the entire industry these women helped build that needs to be targeted. It's not the player, it's the game. (But also, the player is a proper menace to society.)
A complicit part of that game is conventional cancer therapy itself, an element Strauss handles delicately and compassionately. Countless surgeries, endless appointments being poked and prodded at, the horrors of chemotherapy, the effects of radiation — Apple Cider Vinegar takes to task the holes of the medical system in treatment, management and overall care. The holes are so wide, it's easy to see how people already at a point of desperation are driven to seek alternative methods.
Each episode averages about an hour long, but even with six-plus hours of airtime, Apple Cider Vinegar overwhelms with information, never giving any one aspect its proper due (Gibson included). But even though the series threatens to burst from bloat, Strauss takes a pause every so often to consider the effects of the wellness industry and influencers on everyday people fighting cancer, with their loved ones helplessly watching from the sidelines. These moments between investigative reporter Justin (Mark Coles Smith) and his wife Lucy (Tilda Cobham-Hervey) are the most affecting scenes in the series, and Strauss should be commended for carving out time for them.
Gibson's fall from grace and Ainscough's death did little to quell online influencers. Our algorithms are knowledgeable and are always ready to feed us exactly the information we want to hear. Apple Cider Vinegar demonstrates everything wrong with this industry while managing to balance our inherent judgment by candidly showing how people have their own reasons for succumbing to answers that evade logic.
When Gibson first found Milla/Ainscough's blog and decided to start her own, the industry of influencing was still in its infancy. (At one point, Gibson asks someone if they've heard of this new app called Instagram.) Watching the events play out in retrospect and knowing how lucrative influencing has become makes Apple Cider Vinegar a warning sign to our endless scrolling and mindless consumption, the series itself included: CAUTION, HAZARDOUS MATERIALS.