Primetime Ending Explained: What Is The Dark Creature Chris Hansen Sees In The End?

In September 2007, Esquire US published Tonight In Dateline This Man Will Die, journalist Luke Dittrich’s investigation into the sting operation that brought down Chris Hansen’s hit show, To Catch A Predator. The article recounts how practically everyone involved in the sting operation that resulted in the suicide of Bill Conradt was in it for the money. The paedophile catching business was just a moral high horse for a show that was sensationalised to no end for better TV ratings.

Almost twenty years later the article inspired documentary director Lance Oppenheim’s narrative film debut, Primetime. Here’s how the movie winds down.

By the time Primetime starts, To Catch A Predator is already a well-known show. It opens with Robert Pattinson’s Chris Hansen rehearsing lines before they hunt the predator you see in the trailer. There’s a whole team that is involved in this business: Hansen and his producer Andie Bender (Merritt Wever), Xavier Von Erck (Matthew Maher), founder of an anti-paedophile vigilante group called Perverted-Justice, and an actor pretending to be a minor to lure in the offender. At the beginning of the story, Del (Phoebe Bridgers) plays the role. When she gives up, Dan Plum (Skyler Gisondo), an aspiring actor desperate to get that SAG membership, joins in.

Anyway. The real story starts when Hansen and Bender meet NBC head Jeff Zucker (playing himself), who is disgusted by how they go about their stings, but decides to put it in the primetime slot. There’s only one other show at the top that they have to compete with: ABC’s survival show, Lost.

It’s all a Black Swan-like descent for Hansen and the show from there on. 

Hansen is obsessed with doing better than Lost (not that Zucker has nothing to do with this). The ratings aren’t what he wants them to be, and the pressure on him and Bender to strike TV gold is tremendous. Meanwhile, a tabloid is after Hansen, blackmailing him about the extramarital affair that he’s been trying to get rid of. The national darling who catches sexual predators having sexual transgressions… You see how this looks, right? 

Hansen’s behaviour is only getting all the more erratic. He spirals often, even costing them a sting in the process. As if it couldn’t get any better, ABC has been trying to poach Bender for a To Catch A Predator ripoff. 

At this point, Chris Hansen is now convinced that the only way to take the show to the top is by catching a “whale”, a high-profile predator who would shoot rankings through the roof.

Hansen’s potential whale shows up when Perverted-Justice’s Xavier is tipped off about a predator from Murphy, Texas. This guy is quite smart and seems to go to unusual lengths to keep himself hidden. The team suspects he might be a member of the government. Hansen cancels a New Jersey shoot (against Bender’s wishes) to go catch this whale. 

Xavier and team find out that the offender is Bill Conradt (Alex Winters), the assistant district attorney of the county. Big deal. Decoy Dan tries to lure him into the safehouse rigged with cameras so they can take him down like usual. Except that Conradt never shows up.

In the middle of all this, Hansen’s wife calls to confront him about the affair. The tabloid has reached out to her. Hansen starts spiralling again.

Finally, at his wit’s end, he decides to give up on the show format and gets the police to raid Conradt’s property. This goes awry in the worst way possible, and Conradt shoots himself to death. The show is doomed.

As the three leads, Hansen, Bender and Dan grapple with what just happened, we cut to a year later. Dan, now living in Arizona (he has probably given up on acting), receives his SAG membership card with a sad smile.

Bender, ever the stoic, level-headed production executive with an eye for numbers, is still scurrying about for the best byte when news of the suicide strikes. She tries to scavenge for anything she can get, even interviewing the soldiers in the end. Anything that can get them more eyeballs.

Dan, of course, is too shocked to continue. He simply walks out of To Catch A Predator (and possibly out of acting itself).

Meanwhile, Hansen has practically loset his mind at this point. He is left in tears, mumbling away all those catchphrases that made him famous. In the end, he looks outside the window and sees an abstract black figure lurking outside Conradt’s house and slipping away into the woods.

Why the black creature? Let's go back a little for this. We know that Hansen has a bit of a God complex (he might also be a little cuckoo in the head). Earlier in the film, when Dan had voiced his objections to his role, Hansen told him of an “ancient evil” that he is curing the world of. He had come across this evil earlier in India when he was investigating the disappearance of children in a remote village (FYI, the real-life Chris Hansen had actually come to India for an award-winning child labour abuse investigation). 

In the fever-dreamlike sequence that follows this flashback, we see Hansen encountering a disfigured, inhuman figure in a cave. Hansen really believes that this is the monster he’s been chasing ever since.

Of course, it's up to the audience to decide what to make of the ending, but one way to go about it is that Hansen’s mind does not register that his greed has killed the attorney. The real life Chris Hansen definitely doesn't.

Robb Patt's Hansen sees himself as a knight in shining armour, fighting this child predator monster. Conradt’s death has shattered the mechanism he built to fight this monster, and now it roams freely in the dark.

Him repeating those catchphrases again and again also drives home the point of the movie. Hansen goes around saying “What would have happened if I wasn’t here?" The answer is usually a grateful reply about saving innocent young lives. But the fight to stay at the primetime slot takes away from the cause Hansen believes he's fighting for and turns everyone into scapegoats for television sadism and TRP greed.

By everyone, I mean everyone, not just Conradt. Take that conversation between Dan and Hansen we talked about and ask the question there. Putting aside the fact that the conversation almost reminds you of grooming, if Hansen hadn't been there, Dan would have probably given up on To Catch A Predator and continued his acting journey.

Not only that, the show's method of resorting to entrapment to catch these offenders often led to these cases being dismissed in court. During the show's three year run, some three hundred arrests were made. Out of these, only 120 people were reportedly convicted. Luring a offender when there's no conclusive evidence of them being one often turned these cases to fall flat on their heads.

Which brings us back to the main point of the movie: it's great that you're fighting child predators. But are you really making a difference if your fight is just a script for more views?

You be the judge.