Serial - the podcast *spoilers*

our new podcast is called cereal

this having a dramatic conclusion in which innocence is revealed & justice is done gets a lot of play
but
finding out that adnan was lying would be so incredibly jarring & difficult i think

ha ha
just some internet user friends chewing over the new episode over breakfast every thursday
the internet's slurpiest podcast

I finished ep 8 last night, and I'm still not buying that Jay went along with it bc Stephanie was his weakness. But Jay's reaction to being approached by sk and the strength of his response makes him just as believable as Adnan.

Without third party involvement like horseshoe suggests, Adnan as an actual psycho is the only conceivable theory to me.

I am troubled by Jay and his pathological lying - I've known at least 2 ppl like this, who would lie about the weather just for the sake of it.

I am more troubled by the position Jay has been put into IF Adnan really did do it. Like, wtf

I wonder why SK has held off so long on talking about Adnan's trials/lawyer. It would make sense if she'd been building a convincing case for Adnan's innocence all along and then showed us how his corrupt lawyer dropped the ball/took a dive, but really she's just given us a bunch of evidence that doesn't seem like cause for a new trial. idk if dropping the "btw his lawyer sucked" bomb in episode 10 or whenever is going to be all that mind-changing.

http://www.theawl.com/2014/11/serial-and-white-reporter-privilege

some discussion of this piece of the Race Thread. Writer has a bizarre misreading of SK's comment on Hae's diary.

As long as the show has the blessing of the girl's family, I'm ok with it.

Does it have their blessing? I assumed since they haven't been interviewed that they wanted nothing to do with the show.

i thought that in episode 1 or 2 they discussed his lawyer

There was a mention, with SK saying that some think she intentionally threw the case, which is a statement kind of asking for follow up

pretty sure they said his lawyer died a few years ago

She did, but I think he meant the topic needs to be revisited.

does it seem to anyone else like hae is missing in this? as far as i know, there hasn't been anything about her family, her friends (outside of those known to jay/adnan), etc.

that did strike me too, idk, there was stuff from her diary. i also feel like her family may not have wanted to be involved

Hae's family moved back to Korea after her murder. Don't know if SK was unable to contact them or they didn't wish to be interviewed.

Well, that complicates things. I guess that I'm wanting to know more about the person – about Hae. This isn't to say that I think pathos-wallowing is a good journalistic angle, but I'm hoping SK spends more time establishing the human behind the victim. Nearly all I know about her:

* On-again/off-again/on-again/definitely-off-again relationship w/ Adnan (unremarkable, except maybe not)
* At time of death dating 'Don' from Lenscrafters
* Good student @ WHS magnet program, w/ lots of friends
* Korean
* ???

yeah, everyone I know who's hooked on the show has talked about starting to feel uncomfortable about Hae being kind of lost in the shuffle of the story... I imagine they'll make an effort to address it soon.

a couple of things from chaudry's blog

I send a copy to the his lawyer and the court, thinking the case can get reopened based on it. I’m a law student with no experience in criminal procedure. I learn that no “new evidence” can be submitted until a post-conviction appeal. A post-conviction appeal cannot be filed until 10 years have passed since the conviction.

this is NUTS. what's the reasoning behind this type of restriction?

Adnan loses every technical appeal. Ten years pass and we’re ready to file post-conviction through an excellent attorney who is really committed to the case.
His lawyer has Asia’s letters and affidavit and sets out to find her. His private investigator locates her but returns with terrible news. She won’t testify. The PI never spoke to her but her fiance made it very clear, in a very nasty way that suggested an anti-Muslim prejudice, that Asia would not be involved and to leave them alone. It was devastating to Adnan and his loved ones. All of these years had been passed in the hope that when post-conviction came around Asia would corroborate her letters and affidavit and he would be given a new trial.

if this testimony from asia was so crucial, why had they not contacted her during that 10 years, to say 'hey at this certain date we're gonna need you to testify, are you willing?' - why did they wait till the 10 years were up?

people are speculating that if the story told on this week's episode is true (that Hae was killed in the library parking lot, not at the Best Buy) then Asia's testimony might actually prove that Adnan did it and the inconsistencies are the fault of the cops pushing Jay to tell their favored theory.

that was my thought after listening - that the library was prob the scene of the crime

a couple of things from chaudry's blog

I send a copy to the his lawyer and the court, thinking the case can get reopened based on it. I’m a law student with no experience in criminal procedure. I learn that no “new evidence” can be submitted until a post-conviction appeal. A post-conviction appeal cannot be filed until 10 years have passed since the conviction.

afaik this is wrong but i can't really tell what she's talking about. post-conviction and appeal mean two different things. you can appeal from a denial of a post-conviction petition, but i think she's talking about a post-conviction. those have to be filed within ten years generally. (and i can see from maryland's court records site that one was filed and the petition was denied).

yeah - she seemed to blow by the library as the scene of the crime thing really fast last week - that's potentially huge for the case against Adnan, solves all kinds of timing problems and blows away Asia as an alibi.

i even heard that the park that jay originally testified they had gone to smoke a joint is actually reachable in the time frame allowed if the murder happened at the library

xpost
Also Adnan's threats against Stephanie as a motive for Jay to be complicit seems huge too - but it seems really bizarre Jay wouldn't have made that part of the story he told the cops, it makes him way more sympathetic. Kind of feels like it must be bullshit.

http://www.businessinsider.com/brother-of-hae-min-lee-responds-to-serial-podcast-2014-11

wow, kind of shocking that "we don't know if this is really Hae's brother" doesn't crop up until paragraph 6 of that article. though the Koenig email does look legit fwiw

I think that may not be legit. The reddit user says he heard about the podcast from his cousin - but he also says he was approached by Sarah Koenig before it aired. Also he claims his family doesn't know about the podcast - but I seem to remember SK saying they declined to comment in Ep 1. Am I imagining that? Has Koenig ever been specific about being in touch with Hae's family?

The e-mail SK sent says just that she works for TAL and wants to do an extensive radio documentary about his sister's murder. If I received that I would assume she meant that maybe an entire episode of TAl was going to be devoted to the story, not a 12 part podcast.

I don't remember SK saying that Hae's family declined to cooperate. I relistened to the old episodes after reading that Jay Caspian Kang piece about how Serial is GETTING IT WRONG about immigrant families! and was surprised at how little she actually says about Hae's family. It's maybe a coupe of sentences.

there's a SK interview - somewhere, I forget - where she talks about having sent all initial enquiries relating to serial with prefixes namedropping TAL, just because serial didn't exist yet & it represented all the clout she had. just fwiw.

I totally get why she did that--just saying it explains how the guy can be saying both "I was contacted by SK" and "I heard about this podcast called Serial from my cousin"

yeah, ok that makes sense. if Hae's family really does not know about the podcast at all, it's kind of horrible.

ive always been under the impression that SK started with the intent of covering this story in a single episode of TAL and then later decided on the Serial format/project

From what SK says in the new episode, it sounds like that guy on reddit really is Hae's brother

no new episode until dec! gonna be a long lonely walk to work next thurs

weird episode, kind a grab bag of loose ends strung together with adnan in prison tales

successfully swung things back toward reasonable doubt for Adnan

but still - if you accept A's innocence, what the fuck is Jay's motive for making all this up?

https://twitter.com/cheerios/status/535503401736359936

my cheerios consumption is often multi-episodic

deleted, wot did it say?

it was a really dumb pun/spoof on the Serial logo that said CEREAL, and something about "its easy to solve crime when you're not hungry" or something

All three of these people think Adnan did it:

http://www.avclub.com/article/introducing-serial-serial-v-clubs-new-podcast-abou-211881

Ugh these people are so dumb.

Finally listened to the first ep, and a thing that slightly irks me about the setup is that it's pretty much down to two possibilities right away: he did it, or Jay for some reason made up a very elaborate lie. And the second option in turn doesn't present a lot of possibilities either: Jay did it himself, he's covering up for someone else who did it, he's a psycopath who wanted to get Adnan for some reason, he's just a psycopath period. I thought starting with tracking down the library alibi was sort of a weird thing to start with, I'd start with "WHY THE FUCK WOULD JAY SAY THAT IF IT'S NOT TRUE?" Whereas the library alibi is almost certain not to be a slam dunk no matter what she finds out.

So I hope the show gets to that before this Ep 8 "The Deal With Jay" or else I'm just gonna have to skip ahead.

Ep 8 (or 9) don't answer that either fwiw

before ep 8 there's an episode where they drive around town to try to recreate jay's narrative of the events that kinda directly deals w/ the veracity of his account and that's def a trend throughout, but jay himself doesn't speak until ep 8.

Like I will probably listen to it anyway because the characters are interesting, but it's hard for me to pretend there's this big complicated multi-dimensional mystery going on when there is really ONE BIG QUESTION that needs to be answered.

Woodlawn is kinda straddling the city/county line.

The trippiest thing for me about this story is that I grew up in Baltimore County and knew people in Woodlawn, plus a lot of the landmarks are familiar. Some of the referenced businesses are places where I shopped, so I'm like "was I served by characters in this story at some point?"

― RAP GAME SHANI DAVIS (Raymond Cummings), Thursday, November 20, 2014 9:05 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't remember if there was a phone booth at Best Buy. BUT...

(Bmore people help me here) Was there a phone booth on the main road leading to Best Buy, near the bus stop, near McDonald's? In my memory there was.

― RAP GAME SHANI DAVIS (Raymond Cummings), Thursday, November 20, 2014 9:21 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

whoa there detective hurting, maybe let a few episodes pass meanwhile, appreciate the journey

"characters"

Yeah, it's totally about the journey here, and frankly it makes you ask yourself some pretty heavy questions about perspective, memory, what "the truth" really is.

seems like basically a story about how the police pushed a guy to testify to a false sequence of events but nonetheless got the right person convicted

the thing is, i just don't feel like either jay or adnan have any kind of motive for Hae's murder, unless one of them is a psychopath.

the phone booth thing is really fuckin weird - like, if it never existed, jay took an awfully big gamble by stating adnan called him from it, how could he possibly know it wouldn't be checked out? is it possible that adnan had a second phone that he called jay from, and that bc jay didn't know about it he just assumed adnan must have called him from a phone booth, since adnan specified he was right there?