I’m not sure what’s happening with Netflix’ Untold, a documentary series that hasn’t had installments since May. Although The Death & Life of Lamar Odom seems to be the first of many standalone mid length features. Either way, this installment starts off well, beating expectations that this will just be looking at that awful day. It peels back into the time when the titular basketball player lost his child before being a Laker. It fast forwards through his marriage to Khloe Kardashian (now Thompson, boo) and to his drug use. Odom’s drug use and sex addiction leads him to regularly patronizing The Love Ranch, a brothel in Nevada. And the documentary gets The Love Ranch’s former manager, Richard Hunter, on several and adequately revelatory interview sessions.

Odom knows that he’s famous for three things – my point of reference for him is Khloe’s ex-husband. Regardless of that reference point, he makes for a good interviewee, but that’s probably comes with the timing. Everyone takes their own time to heal, and I’m not sure if he has all the pieces for that healing. But a decade, in his case, is long enough for him to be vulnerably introspective on camera. This documentary also reminds its viewers that yes, Odom was a good basketball player as much as he is a reality TV personality. It takes time proving it, making it seem as if that he was a marquee player for the Lakers. But The Death & Life of Lamar Odom reminds us that he was sixth man of the year one time.

To restate the obvious, Odom isn’t the only interviewee in Death & Life of Lamar Odom. Some interviewees include his mother Cathy, former girlfriend Liza, and children, Destiny and LJ. It also feels reductive to say that this documentary glosses over his marriage with Khloe Kardashian. That tumultuous time is this documentary’s climax, and it also shows things from her perspective. She discusses their first meeting when she falls in love with him because of a surprise bag of candy. And she’s also frank about some of the ultimatums she made to heal a man who’s facing past pains. Pardon this reductive statement, but yes, even multimillionaires like her are people with their traumas.

The Death & Life of Lamar Odom hits on something universal – everyone can have addiction issues, regardless of their class. Addiction issues have its intersections with class mobility, getting Odom to mingle with people within bad circles. This documentary earns the rating I give it because of how it handles the scenes involving Love Ranch. For this, I’m not faulting Richard Hunter, who’s well spoken and open about that harrowing day at his job. The Love Ranch scenes, though, inadvertently opens up to the crass aspect of a well balanced story. Perhaps viewers are lucky enough that the brothel’s late owner Dennis Hof obviously can’t be interviewed here. Despite moments of the documentary feeling like the 2010s, it knows when to reel things in.

Netflix is the only platform to stream Untold: The Death & Life of Lamar Odom.