Remember early 2020, when Tiger King hit Netflix and short-circuited the entire country? We were all stuck inside, nobody knew what day it was, and suddenly every person I knew was arguing about whether Carole Baskin fed her husband to the tigers. It was the perfect mix of bizarre characters, ridiculous twists and pacing that made it almost impossible to stop watching.

The guy who made that cultural earthquake, Eric Goode, is back tonight with a new five-part documentary series on HBO called Monsters of God. It premieres tonight and yes, there's a way to watch it without an HBO subscription. That's always the first question I get whenever I mention something on a pay cable network.

According to MSN, HBO is making the premiere episode available to stream for free on HBO Max even if you don't have an account. You can also catch it on HBO's website and on demand through most cable providers. The free window is live right now so you don't have to wait.

The series digs into the billion-dollar global reptile smuggling industry, which is a subject that feels custom-built for Goode's sensibilities. If you watched Tiger King you know he has a gift for finding people at the center of strange, insular worlds where the rules of normal society don't quite apply. Reptile smuggling feels like exactly the kind of territory where that approach pays off.

What I loved about Tiger King was how Goode found characters who operated inside their own logic, where everything they were doing made complete sense to them even as the rest of us watched with our jaws on the floor. That's a rare thing for a documentary filmmaker to pull off. A lot of directors find weird subjects. Fewer ones actually get those subjects to open up the way Goode did with Joe Exotic and the rest of that crew.

The premiere is streaming for free right now on HBO Max. If you're even a little curious I'd fire it up tonight rather than waiting around. These free windows tend to close without much warning.

I'll be tuning in tonight. Goode earned my attention with Tiger King and I'm genuinely curious whether he can hit that same energy on a completely different subject with a different network behind him. Jess Wingo and I were just talking about whether lightning can strike twice for a filmmaker whose breakout was so specific to its moment. Guess we'll find out.