Serial Podcast

Yeah, the parts from Adnan’s letter were a real gut-punch for me too. I do find myself thinking sometimes that I hope he’s guilty because I hate the idea of injustice so much. It’s like this huge trigger for me, and the idea gets me so upset.

At this point I wonder what’s left to say that hasn’t been covered already? Honestly, I think those excerpts from Adnan’s letter would have been a great way to end a series with so much ambivalence. But at this point I trust Koenig as a story teller. Whatever she has planned for next week is probably an even better note to end on.

Well, it’s over. And, unsurprisingly, there was no definitive answer forthcoming. But I agree with the conclusion, namely that there’s nothing like enough evidence to justify convicting Adnan and I’m fairly convinced he’s innocent, albeit with some doubt. I still have no idea what the fuck was going on with Jay, although I don’t get the sense that he did it either. That stuff about him being afraid and paranoid about the killer’s “people” being out to get him makes me think maybe Hae got killed by someone that was more of a serious criminal type and Jay just got mixed up in it somehow? I dunno. It makes fairly little sense that he’d be that terrified of Adnan (although I suppose if Adnan had really killed Hae that would be grounds for fright) and no sense at all that Adnan would have any sort of gang or henchmen, or know a “hitman” or any of that, based on the information presented.

I hope the DNA testing and other legal activity go well, but I don’t really expect this Ronald Moore guy to get tied to it. Not only is it a big long shot that the DNA will be useful, much less match, but a) it sounds like he raped his victims, and as far as I can recall Hae was not raped, and b) that doesn’t explain Jay at all. Like, not even a tiny bit.

I’m glad to hear them get off the Niesha call thing, at least to some extent. If her number was in speed dial, there’s plenty of viable explanations for it and it just is not as damning as they portrayed it. Especially being as short a call as it was.

Yeah if he was so terrified of Adnan coming after him if he talks… why is he running around talking to everyone about how Adnan murdered Hae?

It actually does make a weird kind of sense if Jay is afraid of a third party. He doesn’t want to go down for a murder he maybe was only involved as an accessory, he’s too afraid of whoever did it to call them, so he has to start talking up someone he’s not actually afraid of.

I can imagine a scenario where Jay has Adnan’s car and is meeting some criminal element (he was a drug dealer after all…), Hae sees Adnan’s car (at the Best Buy?) and walks over to say hi, sees something she shouldn’t. The other people kill her and make Jay take care of it.

I can’t remember if it was mentioned, but did the cops even test for signs of rape?

No, because that would have made sense for them to do that.

Pretty sure it was brought up in one of the early episodes, they did, and it was negative. But I may be misremembering.

That’s how I remember it as well.

I can’t remember either, but I feel like there was some outrage over it. Like they did it, but they waited too long, so it wasn’t as valid. Maybe a more recent listener remembers.

Serial was parodied on SNL this weekend, as well as mentioned on Weekend Update. Cicily Strong’s Sarah Koenig impression was pretty spot on.

In extremely poor taste, it was also one of the stories on the last Competitive Erotic Fan Fiction podcast

The SNL thing was pretty funny and spot-on. Not sure why it’s in poor taste, not to mention extremely poor taste.

I think Ginger Yellow is talking about something other than SNL.

But as for the SNL thing, I thought it was funny at the start, but it bothered me that Kris Kringle was an Adnan Syed impression. Poking fun at the popularity of the podcast, at the production, at Koenig or her style, all good stuff. But I just felt uncomfortable that they were doing an Adnan impression. Enough so that I stopped at that point, so I don’t know where they went with it.

Having him talk like Adnan was probably a bit much, agreed. It was used to set up a good Sarah Koenig joke about her and Producer Dana trying to duplicate “Kris’s” attempt to deliver all packages within a day. Probably could’ve been used much more sparingly before that.

It likely makes me a horrible person that the biggest laugh I got from it was at the end when it made the most specific reference to the case itself. “Sarah Koenig” is talking about all the outlandish claims of Kris Kringle and how they might or might not be possible, and then out of the blue drops a “and then there’s the Nisha call.” I mean, come on. That’s funny.

Yeah, that made me uncomfortable too. I’m not sure if they meant to directly relate his possible innocence with the plausibility of Santa being able to deliver all those toys in one night, but it sure seemed like they were because Chris Cringle sounded so much like Adnan.

I think they were more trying to come up with a fairly inocuous way to parody a pop culture phenomenon that also happens to be a real news story involving real people and victims, and using seasonal tropes made it an easy mark. Going much past that is probably reading intent that wasn’t part of the process.

[Koenig Voice]I get that.[/Koenig Voice]
But yeah, for me, assuming the best intentions about the actual jokes they were making (and from your summary, it really sounds fine), I just got creeped out that it involved an Adnan impression. I don’t think anyone else is a monster for laughing, but I got uncomfortable enough to not watch the whole skit.

I think Ginger Yellow is talking about something other than SNL.

Yeah, I meant the podcast I mentioned.

IMO, the strongest piece of evidence against Adnan is that his phone called one of his friends at 6:59, and then pinged locations in the park where the body was buried 10 to 20 minutes after.

Unbelievably Jay just gave an interview, today, 2014, where he said the body was buried at midnight.

Jay is giving criminal lawyers across the country a prime example to present to their future clients about shutting the hell up. His story has changed again all over the place, especially from what he originally testified.

Dude is seeming like a serial (pardon the pun) liar, and it was on his testimony essentially that someone was sent to jail for life.

I still kind of think Adnan is guilty, but man. How the hell did a prosecutor get a conviction off of this?

The only thing that makes sense is the cops had some other reason they thought Adnan was the murderer, and so doing whatever they could to get any witness testimony was a ‘ends justify the means’ thing because they caught the right guy in their mind. I can’t see how Jay convinced them based on his recorded interviews, that’s for sure, and he flat out said he was lying to them in this interview.