Serial - the podcast *spoilers*

this was a weird episode for me

It was a very weird one. It does feel a bit like they're milking it now - maybe should have wrapped up in 10 episodes as planned, last few have gotten pretty lost in the weeds.

The stealing from the collection part could have been dealt with more quickly - I think she was just trying to make it clear that she ran down all the rumours.

I appreciated that she spent some time exploring the idea that he could be an outwardly nice normal guy and still have killed someone, etc. but it felt like common sense to me... but maybe she needed to hit the point hard since she's skated by it so far.

What did you all make of the letter exactly?

I'm biased against Adnan, I'll admit... for no really rock-solid reason, I'll also admit.

To me it felt like the letter was a hail mary. A pre-emptive admission that he's been manipulative from the start, that was in itself manipulative.

Predictions for how she wraps it all up in the last episode next week?

Adnan seems to think that SK is supposed to be part of his defense team or something, evidenced by how pissed he got when she asked him about stealing from the mosque. Why wouldn't a journalist ask about that?

The letter struck me as a panic response. He had tried his best to manipulate SK on the phone, but then, after the show started airing and he realized that she was not just going to straight-up present a defense for him, and perhaps still had some doubts about him, he began to re-think things: like, "maybe I should have said something about her father dying"

yeah - that's how it struck me too. and kind of panicked and unnecessary too, considering how sympathetic she actually is.

on the other hand, if I was innocent and I knew the sympathetic reporter was about to be doing her final show - I might be writing panicked 17-page single-spaced letters too.

I wonder what rumors about other people Adnan wanted SK to track down, and whether she didn't for legal reasons or because they were bs

yeah, it was weird - she said none of the rumours were that significant and then almost immediately afterwards talked about s one so incriminating it would have wrapped up the show if proven (which it wasn't).

I think Serial is most interesting at showing how a violent event long ago touched a lot of peripheral people, and how it lingered and transformed in their memories. Ultimately we're not getting much of value from the didhedoit? stuff, but I liked hearing that Adnan's conviction caused families to tell their sons not to give rides to girls.

The show could have been truly great if SK had been able to get the cooperation of Hae's family and Jay (and Don and etc.) and focused less on amateur sleuthin' than the aftereffects of Hae's murder.

I wonder if the show could have been different if she'd treated Jay with the same objectivity and empathy she treated Adnan. It seems now like a mistake to have just shown up on his doorstep one day already pretty thoroughly convinced of Adnan's innocence and more or less flat out telling Jay they thought he was lying. Of course Adnan had more to gain and Jay had more to lose, so maybe it wouldn't have made a difference - but it feels like she cultivated a relationship with Adnan and gained his trust in a way she didn't even consider trying to do with Jay.

i love it, but in the long run it's looking like the whole season gets the big cartoon stamp that says "unsubstantiated"

I see people are starting to get annoyed that the teaser snippet from the first episode of someone saying "Basically threatened me, like, you know what happened to Hae. This is what's going to happen to you. That's how I felt that day” has not yet come into play on the show.

The show has done a very good job of establishing that the prosecutor's timeline is basically bunk. At the same time it hasn't really uncovered any credible alternate scenario where Adnan is not involved with the crime.

yeah - exactly - and they talked about that exact point in Episode 7 with the Innocence Project lawyer. I thought this was going to be the turning point for the whole series:

Sarah Koenig
As a legal question, Deirdre says they should only have to prove Adnan isn’t their guy, he’s not the killer. But as a practical matter, she said, their chances are much better if they can go a step further, and say to the State, “not only is this not your guy, we can tell you who is your guy.”

Deirdre Enright
The truth is, when you can give the answer of who it is, it makes it a whole lot easier on everybody else to walk away and do this thing that no one ever wants to do. Usually, there is some logical explanation, right? There is a guy, there is a serial killer, there is somebody who is motivated, there is somebody who hated Hae. Usually there’s something. So, you don’t have to, but I always tell people, you have to.

Good luck to SK if the plan is to jam in a whole serial killer/alternate theory in the last episode.

Yeah the only real possibility is that Jay did it/assisted someone other than Adnan in doing it for some mundane reason and has been covering that up for 15 years. That theory would be semi credible except that at apparently at same time Jay was doing this he and Adnan were just chilling, driving round and smoking dop.

Would have been good to methodically go through every alternate suspect (streaker, Don, the serial killer they're talking about on reddit, others?) and explain exactly why they're 100% cleared in Serial's eyes. They kind of did this in a scattershot way throughout the series - but the question of "If not Adnan, who?" seems more important than big chunks of recent shows like the shoplifter's memories of the Best Buy pay phone and whether Adnan stole 60 bucks.

The problem with that though is that Jay is the big elephant in any if not Adnan scenario. So you either have to prove Adnan didn't/couldn't have done it or figure out why Jay would say he did.

yeah - methodically going through these guys would, I think, also have to cross-reference Jay's version e.g. ok if Don did it, how did Jay know where the car is? if it was a serial killer with no known connection to Jay, why was Jay able to describe how Hae's body was buried? Why would Jay send his friend to prison for life - possibly death row - to protect any of these people?

and then of course you have to interrogate the idea that Jay acted alone - look at motive, opportunity, etc...

just can't see how the show can spend so much time on "but he seems like such a nice guy" and so little on testing alternate theories against what we do know

especially after doing such a good job of showing the flaws in the state's version of events

I think SK is being ultra-cautious about alternative theories, for legal and ethical reasons. Adnan's outburst about SK not following up on rumors about other people probably means that people have being telling lots of stories about Jay that never made their way onto the podcast.

http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/full-episodes/v6ahcm/december-10--2014---sarah-koenig

For sure - maybe it's impossible to avoid if he won't talk but it seems unfair to Jay to me if what the show has discussed so far is more or less where they leave it

that colbert interview is blocked in Canada. Anything juicy?

not really, just Colbert being surprised that the first This American Life spin-off was about a murder rather than 24 hours in a nursing home waiting room.

I think SK is being ultra-cautious about alternative theories, for legal and ethical reasons. Adnan's outburst about SK not following up on rumors about other people probably means that people have being telling lots of stories about Jay that never made their way onto the podcast.
--ancient texts, things that can't be pre-dated (President Keyes)

There are lots of stories about Jay in the podcast.

I know, but aren't most of those first hand accounts, rather than "Someone told me that Jay told him..."?

Same is true for Adnan. She doesn't present any hearsay.

yes, I'm just saying that a rumor about Adnan is easier to verify. She went with the story of Adnan stealing money--even though he was never convicted of that crime--because she could get Adnan to talk about it on tape. If someone told her that they heard Jay used to steal from the collection plate then she would have to track down someone who actually saw him doing it, since Jay isn't going to talk to her about it.

She followed up on all the rumors and that one was verified well enough that she asked Abnan about it. I don't think that story reflects worse on Abnan than Jay's friend's stories do about Jay.

I think maybe Keynes is saying she might be unable or unwilling to report other more damaging rumours about Jay than the ones she has reported because she can't get his side of the story. But yes, she has definitely reported some rumours about both of them (and held off on others - like the decision today not to reveal the nature of the super-damaging rumour about Adnan when the source didn't confirm it) .

gotta admit, i'm dying to know what that mysterious rumor was about.

i found the letter really moving - like, everyone thinks i'm this creepy charmer, so i have to try really hard not to be, but then ppl also think i'm a psychopath without empathy, wtf am i supposed to do? which is why i think he got so mad at SK when she was talking about what a good guy he is a while back - he wants to be cleared of all charges based on the facts of the case, not a subjective view of his personality.

Well, he would never ever be cleared of all charges because of his personality, as has been discussed, he will never get parole without 'showing remorse', which obviously he doesn't when he claims he didn't do it. Nice Catch-22, American legal system. But I do think it's a weakness in the show, that one the one side they are very cognizant at how his personality doesn't really matter to the case, and how we can never really know it anyway, but on the other hand she keeps on saying stuff like the crux of the matter is whether he was the type who could have done it or not. Which, no, it's not. The crux of the matter is that there is not evidence that he did it, other than a witness statement which doesn't match any other statement or the call log or anything. Like, I actually liked getting that expert to talk about killers and psychopaths, and whatnot, but it is besides the point.

I disagree completely. Abnan's personality is a huge percentage of the reason this story is so compelling. If you didn't find him sympathetic and want for innocence the whole thing falls down no matter how flimsy the evidence is. Irony is though that Jay also seems kinda likeable (with the enormous caveat that this is a dude who by his own admission participated in the murder girl who he barely knew for no reason he's able to articulate).

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B4m0NiXCMAAgXK6.png

adnan's personality is def a big part of it, but it's also the hidden depths of every major person involved. and i don't think SK is at all saying the crux of the matter is whether he is the type capable of this sort of murder, at least, not in an evidential or prosecutorial way: the crux of what makes this story compelling is the questioning of how we think we can judge someone's past or future behaviors and somehow make a story out of it - every time SK has talked to experts about how to tell if adnan is lying or playing her, they've all basically said "there's no scientifically reliable way to tell", every "tell" could go either way. the only exception to that was the innocence project lawyer, who pretty much insisted that if the client doesn't have a story than they're innocent.

xposts

sure, that's the hook. they mostly seem like nice, relatively normal 17 year old american kids. how could they be involved in a girl, strangled to death and buried under six inches of dirt in a park?

but that's enough of a hook that the whole story doesn't need to be obsessed with that point. I felt like it was overkill with the cutesy Adnan shit today. He was nice if you weren't good at sports! He kissed a guy on the cheek to stop a fight! When he stole from the mosque it was take the fellas out for snacks at the mall! He's the best prisoner ever!

I get it - this is all relevant but I've heard literally hours of nice guy Adnan shit now. I feel like he did when he blew up at her - doesn't matter how nice he is. I know he's nice. Give me some information that makes me believe he didn't strangle a girl and bury her under six inches of dirt. And if the show never directly addresses why Jay would say he did, it kind of fails.

"but that's enough of a hook that the whole story doesn't need to be obsessed with that point"

But I think one of the hooks is how obsessed Koenig is with that point because she's actually talking to these folks and it's clearly getting to her!

yeah - i wish she had moved on from that point. maybe he changed, maybe he's gaming everybody - doesn't even matter. ultimately it's of no relevance to whether he killed hae or not.

the whole model prisoner/golden child thing she's stuck on is definitely interesting - there's a ton of tension around that if he might have killed a girl, and I can see how her This American Life instincts push her to keep looking at that angle but there's nothing to uncover there any more.

Well there's nothing much left to uncover anywhere barring amazing last minute revelations.

Next week on Serial: Cats in trees, How many did Adnan rescue?

From today: 'To me this question is the hard center of Adnans case: Can you tell, really? Can you tell if someone has a crime like this in him'. That was what prompted what I wrote upthread.

The hard center of Adnan's case is obviously the two hours where he supposedly killed Hae, and how Jay's story of that doesn't match the phone records.

xpost
I guess... like I said, what's missing is a good hard look at what they've been implying since day one: that Jay is lying. Maybe impossible if he won't co-operate, but ultimately unfair if they never pick apart their own implications about Jay with the same rigour they applied to picking apart the state's narrative. I`ll shut up now, I`m repeating myself.

agree completely with that, frederik

There's a limit to how far you can interrogate Jay's story without his cooperation. I mean they have picked apart his story. But destroying that doesn't get you closer to figuring out what happened let alone exonerating Adnan.

Well, it should. Jay's story is the main evidence against Adnan. Take that away, and all else is just speculation.

It should legally or logically? I think legally sure (except of course Adnan's already been convicted so his legal remedies are limited by that). Logically I think most people still can't get over what was Jay's motivation to pin it Adnan if Adnan didn't do it. Jay appears to be the only one who can answer that question (or at least the only one the show's found who can) and so far he seems pretty set that even if he lied or was inconsistent in various tellings that Adnan was the one who did it.

right - and beyond that: if not Adnan, then who?

and if the strong implication is that Adnan is innocent

it follows that either Jay did it alone, or with a mystery person.

is it fair to put that implication out into the world without even asking the same basic questions they asked about the case against adnan?

Jay's last name and current home town are 2 seconds away on google. He has a kid. Is it fair to put out hours of storytelling into 5 million people's ears strongly implying the man might be a murderer without taking responsibility for doing so, or even really admitting that that is exactly what you're doing?

my vote for season 2 is SK tracks down Connie Converse

the story about Jay wanting to stab his friend so that his friend knows what it feels like was pretty o_O

I don't get the logic of that, AlexinSF. Either Jay told the truth, or he lied. So we take a look at evidence, they show that he didn't tell the truth. Ergo, he lied. The fact that it's weird he lied does not then turn it back into the truth again.

But the question is the wrong way around. The whole case should be based on physical evidence, first and foremost. What story does the phonerecords imply by themselves? How does that story fit with Adnans and Jays stories? And when I look at that, on the link I posted upthread, it def seem to fit more with Jay having done it by himself. It does not fit with the prosecutions story at all, and I have a hard time fitting Adnan into the murder-part of it at all.

the phone records are a mess - so i don't see how they clear anybody any more than they nail anybody... but in any case, Adnan's phone pings multiple times from Leakin park at the time Jay says they were burying Hae there, and at a time when Adnan says he was in possession of his own phone. but I think we went over this stuff last week.