Serial, This American Life’s teen drama murder mystery for NPR people, ended its first season today. The podcast has been the Most Popular Thing Ever for the past thirteen weeks, and has gotten a population of Morning Edition fans who would never in their lives pick up an embossed cover true crime book deeply interested in the genre. It’s sparked speculation, criticism, and at least one pretty good Funny or Die sketch, and now it’s over, at least until season two, which will have a different topic.
My review of the Serial finale, and spoilers after the jump.
I expected to be a bit disappointed by the final episode of Serial. The central draw of a murder mystery is that it’s a puzzle box. At the end of Agatha Christie books or Sherlock Holmes stories there’s always the scene were the sleuth speechifies about how they’ve gathered all the clues, interviewed all the subjected, and suddenly the entire elaborate contraption of the mystery is in full view. The audience gets to see how it all worked.
Serial, though, can’t have the luxury of having a pat murder mystery ending because it involves actual, real humans who have lives that could be ruined if they were accused of murder. In the last episode, Koenig, though, went right up to the line of a classic murder mystery parlor scene, but didn’t cross it, when she introduced Ronald Lee Moore, a serial killer released from prison only days before Hae Min Lee was killed. Moore is dead now, and a convicted murder, so it’s unlikely that Koenig and her team are going to be hearing from his team of lawyers as they speculate about whether or not he killed someone fifteen years ago.
Whipping out a serial killer and then leaving everything nice and unambiguous, though, would have been out of character for Serial. This is a series that has thrived on ambiguity and uncertainty since its first episode. Ambiguity is what’s kept me and every other podcast junky in the English-speaking world coming back to this thing, and Koenig was sure to end on an ambiguous note. She made clear that she would not vote to convict Adnan on a jury, but stopped short of saying anything definitive. Anything else would have been jarringly out of character for her.
What’s made Serial interesting, though, isn’t necessarily the puzzle. Testimony about cell phone towers, telecom billing, whether or not a call was a butt dial, all of that is deeply boring. What’s made Serial interesting to listen to is that it’s a very well-constructed look into the criminal justice system. The case itself is complicated, tawdry, and unclear, and against that backdrop we’ve been able to get a glimpse into Baltimore’s police force and legal system, and also into its Muslim community.
I’ve heard more than one person quip that the podcast that’s all about murder in Baltimore is basically season six of The Wire, and that comparison is apt. The Wire was all about painting a detailed portrait of Baltimore’s more unpleasant side. Serial lacks The Wire’s sweep and scope, but it shares that show’s attention to minutiae and vivid characters. With that in mind, I was far less disappointed with the finale of Serial than I thought I would be. I still feel like I got something out of that podcast, even though I still don’t really know what happened. I hardly wasted my time with the podcast. Not knowing what happened is a little bit of a downer, but it’s not a Lost level downer.
The story of Serial’s first seasonis hardly over. Adnan’s case has been taken up by the Innocence Project, and in all likelihood we’re probably get an update episode or two in another year about how his case his going, and whether or not he’s been exonerated. Serial is also funded for another season, so in another few months we can all get good and obsessed with something entirely different.
In the meantime, here’s that Mail Kimp remix you’ve always wanted.
YAY VENTING TIME: This pretty much convinced me that most liberals would never convict a murderer unless he was being video recorded by three independent witnesses while committing the murder and simultaneously holding up that day’s newspaper and his current passport while yelling his ATM PIN.
The prosecution presented a faulty timeline and made a simple motive more baroque/bigoted than it should have been. I’m no fan of prosecutors, but that’s all they can be faulted for. Koenig herself showed Adnan’s lawyer did a pretty decent job at trial (bizarre personal style notwithstanding). There is maybe reasonable doubt that should have resulted in an acquittal *of the case the state tried* but that is a very, very far cry from “Adnan is probably factually innocent.” It was a complete cop out for Koenig to conclude only that Adnan should have been acquitted – we are all here (I presume) to determine who killed who and who’s lying, not “was a legal standard reached or not?”
I want to scream while throwing my phone in the toilet when Koenig is entertaining 2.5 minute butt dials and serial killer scenarios and otherwise treats Jay and Jen’s testimony like it completely doesn’t exist. All-caps time:
JAY TOLD THE COPS HOW AND WHERE THE MURDER AND BURIAL HAPPENED AND THEN LED THE COPS TO THE CAR. IT THUS CANNOT BE REASONABLY DISPUTED JAY WAS THUS INVOLVED IN THE MURDER IN SOME WAY. THE ONLY POSSIBLE EXPLANATIONS ARE A) JAY IS MOSTLY TELLING THE TRUTH, B) JAY IS TELLING THE TRUTH BUT WAS FAR DEEPER INVOLVED THAN HE ADMITS, C) JAY BRILLIANTLY FRAMED ADNAN ON HIS OWN AND D) JAY FRAMED ADNAN WITH THE ACTIVE HELP OF THE POLICE.
There is no plausible fifth theory that explains Jay and Jen. At no time did any discernible motive float up for anyone besides Adnan. Adnan’s entire case reduces to, “but he sounds like such a consistent and nice guy, so let’s suspend any disbelief in his favor about a dozen crucial times on the same day.” It reduces even further to “missing the forest for two or three scrawny trees.”
I AM WORKED UP ABOUT THIS.
Counterpoint: wrapping mysteries up with a clear final conclusion/answer and a pretty bow often doesn’t end well, and in this case, being ambiguous and admitting there are open questions and no pretty bows is more honest.
COUNTER COUNTER POINTS:
1) There are no open questions that actually matter. Koenig never raised a shred of evidence that supports a viable theory that explains away Jay’s basic story. Just some inconsequential details about exact locations and phone call times, the kind of things no witness ever remembers perfectly. Jay tells the cops Adnan’s plan was to scheme his way into her car and kill her. Three witnesses (including Adnan initially) remember he asked Lee for a ride that day. She was never seen or heard from again. Jay took the cops to the car, after describing the plan, aftermath, and burial in detail. He messes up some minor details, because everyone does. He lies a few times about comparatively minor things, since he’s justifiably worried about being in extremely deep shit. That’s really all one needs to know to conclude Adnan was involved in the murder and thus lying from day one. There are still legit questions about the depth of Jay’s involvement in the murder’s planning and execution, but he’s already copped to quite a bit.
2) I don’t consider that a very pretty bow. I think it’s a pretty damn disturbing conclusion that we can all safely conclude that over the past few months, Koenig and the rest of us have been at various times charmed by and sympathetic to Lee’s true killer.
Counter counter counter point: pretty much every investigator, prosecutor, lawyer, legal scholar, etc., interviewed for the series (i.e., people who actually did research and looked at piles of case files for days/weeks, and not just thought listening to a few hours of radio entertainment qualified them to be the next Thomas Magnum) said it’s a very messed up case, not typical at all, with no clear answers, and still a thousand open questions.