Serial - the podcast *spoilers*

I guess the bombshells, if they are to be believed, are:

Jay was telling a dude that he helped a middle eastern guy hide Hae's body before the cops got to him--which either means that Jay is a fabulist who got caught up in his own lies, or (more likely) there was no serial killer.

&

The prosecutor yelled at Don for not demonizing Adnan. Which means they knew their case was kind of weak

The case is filled with circumstantial evidence and Jay. It doesn't surprise me that the prosecutor would be looking for every advantage.

Also whatever her flaws in this trial Adnan's lawyer would have appeared very strong and first trial was apparently headed for an acquittal before mistrial.

good ep, good podcast, fuck the haters & free adnan

the rest of those teaser quotes from the end of ep 1 are from some p peripheral ppl, I think right? idk I feel like the threat quote prob isn't very revelatory

maybe it's jen? questioned aggressively by a detective

yeah - it was great episode and a great podcast. I have stuff I think is interesting to talk about - and questions about certain things - but I thought it was pretty amazing. Totally going to miss it and can't wait for season two. Adnan's guilty as sin though.

Best line in final ep is definitely Adnan's politely saying "uh you don't mind me asking, but uh don't you have an ending?"

that was almost straight out of that Funny or Die video from a few days ago

yeah i trust them not to have dropped something hugely revelatory without bothering to explain it - but it is sloppy

this is a little harsh:

VANITY FAIR ‏@VanityFair 2m2 minutes ago
Disappointed in the ending of @serial? Here's a chilling crime story from VF's archives that actually has an ending: http://vnty.fr/1w2JPhL

So it's a contest now? OUR TRUE CRIME STORY IS MORE AWESOMER!

tbf it has always been a contest

I was never as heavily invested in this as (many) other people were. It was just something to listen to at work on Thursday mornings. I didn't feel cheated by the ending, because I think I knew all along that no important mysteries would be solved or nagging questions would get answered. It was just a bit of storytelling.

would be curious to read some sort of smart analysis (sociology?) of these seemingly new internet-driven hype cycles around shows like this and True Detective.

It ended the way most people thought it would, so I can't complain too much, but it's a little frustrating how early in the episode she says "of course I have an ending!" and then ends it with the same wishy-washiness that everybody was afraid of.

My big quibble is that she ended it with the big reveal of her own personal verdict, when A) there are other people closer to the story whose perspectives/experiences/verdicts/takeaways she could have closed with and B) she's made it clear the whole series what her verdict is. She doesn't know for sure.

The first episode ends with that hard-earned, tragic, too-late discovery. Now that's an ending. None of the other 11 episodes were able to close with a moment like that.

jesus, just been reading reddit and a lot of people there are really really dumb. like absurdly. really makes me appreciate the baseline of intelligence and goodwill here.

Don't read reddit.

it's actually making me crazy. it's so cynical and weird and crazy! have to stop.

Don't read reddit.

― One bad call from barely losing to (Alex in SF), Thursday, December 18, 2014 6:49 PM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

#lifehack

this was a much better finale than i was expecting - it got back to the more investigative stuff that was the most enthralling in those first few episodes.

i think the point the IP lawyer was making about serial killer theory/"big picture" is that they don't necessarily believe that Hae was killed by that ronald dude, but that they needed a reason to justify further DNA testing. i think adnan is innocent, but i'd believe his guilt over a random serial killer, bc of jay's involvement.

series would have been all killer no filler if they'd stuck to 10 shows (maybe slightly longer episodes) and jettisoned some of the stuck in the weeds stuff of 8-11

yeah i think "big picture" just meant let's see what the DNA yields and start all over again
but it did come off badly in the show

I find the possible serial killer angle v interesting

And there are surely ways that killer could be connected to Jay - at least if you're regularly going to the strips to buy weed you're encountering criminals and a percentage of those are going to be violent

Yes true lot of serial killer rapists buying weed.

Not what I said

Sorry serial killer rapists just happen to be hanging around near people buying weed. Percentages.

Irritated we never found out anything about Patrick and Phil.

Just saying it's plausible for one criminal - yeah, in this case a serial killing rapist like the cat the innocence project dug up – to be around other criminals, due to things like prison connections, having experience and looking for work, etc, etc.

If Jay and Adnaan then go to the strip to pick up weed - something that was implied when they tracked the cellphone's location towards the end of this last episode - that provides a possible point of contact

I dunno, is that such a crazy picture of how things work in Baltimore, I mean am I missing the fixed, impermeable barrier that exists between people who deal weed and people who kill people

slippery slopes

Now that this is over, I'd kind of like to see what stuff was left out for whatever reasons. Like, I had no idea that Adnan got married and divorced while in jail until today. Not that it has any bearing on the case, but was it left out of that Adnan-in-prison segment because it made him look bad (seduction and manipulation of women from within the walls of a prison,) or because it was too difficult to deal with for no lucrative reason?

i think the prospect of another person having done this and employed jay to help him is ridiculous but what cardamon is saying is not that dumb. the guy wasn't just a rapist, he was a serial burglar. burglars are everywhere and almost all burglars are drug users first. it wouldn't be so laughable to think he would come across someone like that somewhere. i mean he started work at a *porn store* just after this. i just don't believe he did cross paths with that person and then agree to bury a body for him.

i missed adnan married and divorced, where did that come from?

100% of all itinerant murderers buy porn on DVD

murderburglarers

lol

Not what I said

― cardamon, Thursday, December 18, 2014 7:26 PM (1 hour ago)

i missed adnan married and divorced, where did that come from?

Adnan's best friend did an AMA

Yeah I don't actually know what the chain of events would be w/Jay and the third party, just there's a possible connection as opposed to no possible connection

the scenario would basically be a serial killer/burglar asking Jay to find him a girl to kill (but not rape, even though that's his MO) and then to make sure to ask the girl's ex-boyfriend for use of his car and phone so that incriminating evidence could be manufactured for the future framing.

I was thinking more along the lines of Jay ending up knowing something about the murderer, and being so afraid of telling cops what he knows, that he comes up with a way to frame adnaan or something?

even in that case it's weird that Jay would just happen to have Adnan's phone and car at around the time this other dude was killing Adnan's ex

Yeah

The extra difficulty for me, and I don't know if any other uk ilxors found this too, is working out what people's relationships are - like what specifically does 'high school friends' or 'dating' or 'hanging out' mean in Baltimore in 1999

Is Adnaan a close friend of Jay's or more like a contact etc

dating means frenching, hot tubs

+get really lucky that adnan is completely unable to muster any type of alibi. xpost

Adnan is a very smart dude and his claim of not remembering or mentally 'bookmarking' the events of that day is hugely contradictory to his character. SK does well to highlight this, and it bears a lot of repeating imo.

Anyway it's a travesty that Adnan was convicted, most of us seem to agree.

dating means frenching, hot tubs

was about to make adnaan/ariane joke remembered that ariane is a real person out there in the world

xpost I would agree that if a were a juror and the defense presented a year's worth of research dedicated to knocking holes into a case the prosecution seemingly spent a couple of weeks on, then, yeah, I probably would have ad reasonable doubt.

However, even without the benefit of a 12 part prosecution-biased investigative podcast I still believe that Adnan is guilty and am glad he was convicted.