Serial

I like the way Koenig comes into it with an open mind. She questions herself a lot while narrarting the story and sharing her findings. "Well, he doesn't SOUND like someone who could kill someone." Things like that. But also acknowledging at times that some things make Adnan look very bad. It's like we're all sorting it out together. And how about the guy who finds the body? Good lord.

Ask me what I did two Fridays ago, and I'd have a hard time remembering, especially in the kind of detail Koenig went in search for here. Ask me about a day 15 years ago? Yeesh.

The whole thing is just fascinating. Unfortunately, no podcast next week because of the holiday, so we have to wait two weeks for the next episode.

 

The years I spent covering courts and crime were my favorite as a journalist.

I'm downloading episodes today for a long flight I have end of next week.

 

I downloaded first four episodes, but probably won't listen to them until I'm heading back to California.

I also dig the Cracked podcast and You Made It Werid, which is Pete Holmes' podcast. I know a lot of people don't dig Holmes and he's accused of ripping off Maron with the podcast, but I like him. The format works for him.

I also used to listen to Brian Posehn's Nerd Poker.

I recently changed jobs and have taken on a long commute. I need to get into some more podcasts.

 

I have the same thoughts. I worry a bit about how the show will end, and I've also been staunchly avoiding looking up details about the case, because I don't want future episodes to possibly be spoiled for me. I do like that, unless I've missed this, they haven't announced how many episodes there will be, so I haven't ever thought, "Oh just X more." Her approach is so thorough and compelling to me, and it's also good to hear that the show has been wildly popular.

 

In general I think this is absolutely true.

In the case of Adnan, though, I struggle with this. He says he has no memory at all of what he did on that one day, other than he probably would have been at track practice. The thing is, he knew by 6pm (I think) that his ex-girlfriend had disappeared that afternoon. I suspect at that point I would mentally take note of every single thing I had done that day, and would remember it weeks or months later.

 

A couple friends and I have a Facebook chat going on this pod, and we thought the same thing. He also makes no attempt to call her after she's reported missing, and while he explains that away in one of the calls, I didn't find him all that convincing. (I mean, there is a lot about him that isn't all that convincing to me, but that's one of the bigger things.) I had three main theories, which I'll white out in case people are trying to catch up:

1) Adnan is guilty, and he’s not coming clean with the timeline because he realizes him being ambiguous is his only chance to secure a new trial. For example, he might know that he actually strangled Hae Lin in another big box store parking lot at a later time, but he obviously can’t reveal that because he is guilty.

2) Adnan is guilty, and Jay is more guilty than he’s letting on, which accounts for many of his discrepancies. For example, maybe Jay was a much more active participant than simply driving Adnan around and helping him dispose of the body. Maybe he drove Adnan to the scene and waited while the murder was committed. However, if that’s the case, obviously Adnan can’t tell police this, and Jay has no incentive to tell police this either. But it would account for a much different timeline and series of events than they provided.

3) Adnan is innocent, but he came across the body in a way that he feels there is no way he can honestly discuss it. Adnan clearly has a good feeling about how to be perceived as popular; by most accounts, he was a popular kid and didn’t have any problems attracting women, for example. What if he had just happened to find Hae Lin’s body, already dead, at a place they were planning to meet up at? He realizes if he reports it, and even if he comes clean about this now, X years after the fact, it makes him look very guilty. Him revealing this information would be more dubious and makes him look more guilty than his current “defense,” which is mostly “I don’t know” and other ambiguity.

 

I think he does remember everything from 6 p.m. on. It's just the stuff that happened prior to that because, as he says, it was just a normal day. Nothing out of the ordinary. But yeah, it's like once he found out, he didn't go back and retrace his steps for the entire day, down to the last detail. Seems like a savvy thing to do. But that's very easy to say in retrospect. If I found out at 6 p.m. that my ex was murdered, would it even cross my mind to think about logging the details of my entire day? Or would I be too wrapped up on what was going on at the moment? I don't know.....

 

He definitely didn't find out she was murdered at 6. He found out she was missing. He found out she was murdered six weeks later. If you buy his claim he thought maybe she'd run to California — which I think she even talked about in her diary — then her going missing might not have seemed so scary and important until weeks later.

 

I've listened since week one. I don't think we are getting any 'aha" moments when it ends.

As for $, they have had one sponsor, an email site called "mail chimp". Hard to believe that is going to pay the bills.

 

Shit. You're right. My bad. But yeah, there's still not much reason to look back and say, "I can't believe he didn't immediately go back and write down everything he did that day.....just in case."

 

I don't know. As I said, he learned his ex went missing later the same day. That doesn't make it like any other day -- I have to think you take a mental inventory at some point.

 

In case ... he was one day falsely accused of murder? If you believe Adnan that he didn't do it and he couldn't wrap his head around the idea that she was dead until she showed up dead, then that day would not have become particularly significant until six weeks later. I don't know that I buy Adnan is innocent, but I don't blame him at all for not being able to offer an exact accounting of a day that wasn't important until months later. Koenig's very first discussion point in this series was how unreliable memory is, and how hard it is to recall specific details of a day even a week later.