Serial

keane2097 · 02-12-2014 4:14pm

Giruilla wrote: »

Considering it's based on real life, with recorded testimonies and evidence available on line, yes I'd think you can make solid assumptions based on facts - not conjecture - that are not part of a "yarn".

Good luck with it.

Giruilla · 02-12-2014 4:26pm

keane2097 wrote: »

Good luck with it.

Thanks. We'll see if Adnan finally admits he's guilty with a slip of the tongue in the final episode.

keane2097 · 02-12-2014 4:41pm

Giruilla wrote: »

Thanks. We'll see if Adnan finally admits he's guilty with a slip of the tongue in the final episode.

Ship already sailed IMO

Sarah Koenig
But you know what Adnan? The people who have told me that they think either they sort of after a long time came to the conclusion that you were guilty or that-- or kinda like, “I don’t know, maybe, I never really--” they all at some point in the conversation almost everybody has said, “well the Adnan I knew didn’t do it. Like the guy I knew, couldn’t have do it.” But maybe--

Adnan Syed
What the hell does that even mean? I’m not like a different-- I wasn’t--

Turtyturd · 02-12-2014 5:11pm

Were you on the original jury?

Rabo Karabekian · 02-12-2014 6:59pm

keane2097 wrote: »

Ship already sailed IMO

That's still in the conjecture category. A slip of the tongue would be a definite confirmation of the fact.

As for whether Adnan needed Jay's help, I think the theory is that he needed him for an alibi (as in to bury the body and get back in time) but this doesn't really fit, as, according to Jay, they seemed to spend a lot of that time taking detours to buy (and smoke) weed. It's also very strange to include someone that you're not all that close to in order to get an alibi but forget that you may have implicated yourself in the murder by providing a witness.

Jay was, of course, definitely involved (he gave the info re Hae's car to the police) but the only firm 'evidence' re Adnan's guilt is Jay's testimony. That's a bizarre situation for anyone to be spending half their life in prison.

keane2097 · 02-12-2014 7:07pm

Adnan's lack of finger-pointing at Jay seems bizarre to me regardless of who did what.

Mr E · 04-12-2014 10:57am

Episode 10 today?

podgemonster · 04-12-2014 11:50am

It's Out!

The Best Defense is A Good Defense!

steve_r · 04-12-2014 6:36pm

So the story continues......

Reading a few of the comments on reddit, they feel that Sarah's comment at the end regarding the next episode is a bit of a dig at some of the theories coming out of that site.

I binged the show, started Monday and caught up today so I read this thread start to finish. Not wanting to spoil the fun, but I do think this article poses a lot of questions about the show itself:
http://thinkprogress.org/culture/2014/11/20/3595208/the-ethics-of-serial/

I'll still listen to the show, and I think it's great storytelling but I do feel uncomfortable about it.

Rosy Posy · 05-12-2014 12:49am

steve_r wrote: »

Reading a few of the comments on reddit, they feel that Sarah's comment at the end regarding the next episode is a bit of a dig at some of the theories coming out of that .

I enjoy dipping into the discussion on reddit but I find the tone of some of the posters to be self-entitled or maybe grandiose is a better word? While there is a lot of discussion on there about the possibility of Adnan being psychopathic or sociopathic I do think that that's one of the only reasonable alternatives to his innocence, and one that Sarah has explored previously- not much to do with the site.

I do hope she gets to the bottom of the sh!tstorm that went down there a few weeks ago with someone known to the family accusing Adnan of being a theiving, 'strumpet' frequenting psycho.

I felt that the way she explored the way that islamophobia may have impacted the outcome was really well done and definitely refutes the claims of 'white reporter privilege' that have been made against her.

steve_r · 05-12-2014 10:06am

I think the fanatics on Reddit certain push the conversation off the rails. I haven't delved too deeply into it.

A good point was made on the Slate podcast about how new information that comes out of the show impacts the overall case. I'd be worried that people want to get themselves involved for the wrong reasons.

I'd agree as well that it would be great if they got to the bottom of that theory. As it stands, it's either a troll or true.

Birneybau · 05-12-2014 5:45pm

Thought it was a bit of a 'filler' episode myself. (ep. 10)

Dots1982 · 06-12-2014 6:40pm

Birneybau wrote: »

Thought it was a bit of a 'filler' episode myself. (ep. 10)

No. The lawyers performance was alluded to as early as ep 1 so it was an over due examination of this.

brick tamland · 06-12-2014 9:18pm

Has it been mentioned how many episodes there are will be in the series?

Rosy Posy · 06-12-2014 9:20pm

Dots1982 wrote: »

No. The lawyers performance was alluded to as early as ep 1 so it was an over due examination of this.

This. I've been waiting to hear about the trial for ages. I also thought the stuff on islamophobia was really interesting. I did feel that in Sarah's quest to remain impartial/preserve the did he/didn't he tension, that she held back a bit on both counts. If you look at Rabia's commentary on her blog it seems that there was a clear case of negligence and that the lawyer was taking them for a ride financially at least. I also feel that, given that she opened her investigation into the place that race played in the legal proceedings with 'not buying it', that she could have concluded that portion with a clarifying 'so it seems that racism was a factor, not the only factor but a contributing one'.

bearhugs · 07-12-2014 3:05am

brick tamland wrote: »

Has it been mentioned how many episodes there are will be in the series?

I think I read somewhere that there would be 13.

Rosy Posy · 07-12-2014 6:46am

bearhugs wrote: »

I think I read somewhere that there would be 13.

They said around 12 initially- as long as it takes to get to the bottom of it, apparently. I imagine they'll finish up before Christmas but maybe do a follow up if more information comes to light- on the appeals and the innocence project.

Mr E · 07-12-2014 3:06pm

I'm still not sure what to make of Christina. On one hand, she is portrayed as a bulldog and thorough. On the other hand, why did she not subpoena Asia? And what did she do with the money (for "jury experts")?

steve_r · 08-12-2014 10:29am

Well we know Sarah K did a lot of reporting on Christina before she started looking at this trial, so I'd say there's a lot more that she knows that wouldn't necessarily be publicly available.

Re: the Asia thing - there was a theory that she was just lying to provide Adnan with an alibi. Plus when they looked at that it was fairly weird in terms of her being un-contactable. It probably still should have been looked at in the trial though.

Christina's health and money issues almost certainly didn't help matters, but considering the first jury were heading for acquittal, I'm starting to think those things got the better of her as time went by, as opposed to her botching or throwing the case.

steve_r · 08-12-2014 10:31am

Also, unrelated, I'm re-watching the wire atm, and last night it showed them going to Leakin park to look for a body.

Pretty unnerving when you are following a different story about a real person found there.

Sheela · 08-12-2014 9:43pm

Article with Syed's mother & brother -

http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/dec/07/serial-adnan-syed-family-podcast-interview

Montefiore · 09-12-2014 12:48am

Started listening to this about a week ago. Really love it. It's the type of thing you'd pay a few quid for.

Rabo Karabekian · 09-12-2014 8:49pm

Montefiore wrote: »

Started listening to this about a week ago. Really love it. It's the type of thing you'd pay a few quid for.

Was listening to episode 9 when they were requesting donations, and thought I should definitely give a few quid. By the time I had got back and logged online, they had already received enough for another season. Not hard to see why.

podgemonster · 11-12-2014 12:40pm

Episode 11 is out!

Rumours!

brick tamland · 11-12-2014 2:36pm

Bit of a filler episode. Next week is the last one though

keane2097 · 11-12-2014 3:11pm

Yeah not a worthwhile episode IMO.

rednoggin · 11-12-2014 3:26pm

Didn't think much of episode 11 at all, nothing new or relevant to the case.

Real Psycrow · 11-12-2014 3:31pm

Just finished listening to it. It was a nothing episode.

After being told by the cop she brought in to ignore the opinions of everyone she talked to about Adnan's personality, this was basically an episode on everyone's opinion on his personality.

Mr E · 11-12-2014 5:23pm

Putting on the brakes with one episode to go was an odd decision.
Hopefully next week doesn't suffer because of it.

bren2001 · 11-12-2014 6:34pm

It was such a pointless episode. Surly they could have come up with something better than that. At the very least, summed up everything we have learned so far and set it up for the final episode. This was my first week waiting for the episode (started last Thursday), I am bitterly disappointed.

volchitsa · 11-12-2014 6:45pm

Mr E wrote: »

Putting on the brakes with one episode to go was an odd decision.

It really was, wasn't it? Especially after telling us not to pay attention to what people said about murder suspects - at the very least this episode should have come before that, IMO. It actually could have been good to have heard this earlier on. But not now

Maybe it might have seemed like a good idea way back before they began broadcasting, and before it became such a success - maybe related to the Thanksgiving hiatus or something, I don't know (Oh dear, am I even beginning to sound like Sarah Koenig here, with lots of speculation and no answers?

)

kev1.3s · 11-12-2014 7:05pm

Seems to me that Sarah has little or no idea how to finish this, I've been listening to this not from the start but near enough and to me the last two episodes have been very poor.
Can't really see next weeks finally being a revelation at this stage but I suppose what did we really expect.

_Bella_ · 11-12-2014 7:09pm

I'm a little disappointed by the episode. I think there were definitely some aspects that were interesting but I thought her interviewing of the expert was very poor and the stuff about

him stealing

didn't really matter to much and didn't really warrant taking up as much time as it did.

I definitely got the impression that Koenig is feeling a little guilty about the podcast and how many real people it is affecting when at the end of the day it is very unlikely that anything will come of it. I think it was especially interesting hearing about Adnan's feeling on the podcast and his caution with his wording.

I think the most frustrating thing for me is that it felt like a filler episode, when I would have thought they would be setting up to something for next week. I'm not expecting the story to be wrapped up in a bow or anything but I would have thought there would be some new things left to reveal or it would at least be clear what direction the ending would take.

keane2097 · 11-12-2014 7:12pm

There's definitely not going to be a final revelation of any sort, that was never on the cards

cuculainn · 11-12-2014 8:38pm

steve_r wrote: »

Also, unrelated, I'm re-watching the wire atm, and last night it showed them going to Leakin park to look for a body.

Pretty unnerving when you are following a different story about a real person found there.

What episode?? I have just started watching series one

kev1.3s · 11-12-2014 11:23pm

keane2097 wrote: »

There's definitely not going to be a final revelation of any sort, that was never on the cards

No but I did think that we would be given enough information to form an educated opinion but it seems that any real relevant information was given out relatively early and for the past couple of weeks we have been getting spoon fed a load of information that doesn't to me seem to have much relevance.
Having said that I just can't get past the fact that after the police called he never once tried to contact her to see where she was, in my opinion he was involved in the in the murder at some point, whether he or J were the main offender I don't know but he knew that night that there was no point in trying to contact Hay.

FouxDaFaFa · 11-12-2014 11:45pm

I'm interested to see if the little snippets of soundbytes heard in the first episode featuring a woman's voice talking about someone who had threatened her will be addressed with only one episode left.

keane2097 · 12-12-2014 2:51am

kev1.3s wrote: »

No but I did think that we would be given enough information to form an educated opinion but it seems that any real relevant information was given out relatively early and for the past couple of weeks we have been getting spoon fed a load of information that doesn't to me seem to have much relevance.
Having said that I just can't get past the fact that after the police called he never once tried to contact her to see where she was, in my opinion he was involved in the in the murder at some point, whether he or J were the main offender I don't know but he knew that night that there was no point in trying to contact Hay.

As someone said to me the other day we knew after five minutes of ep 1 that either jay did it or adnan did it. We're unsurprisingly in the same spot after 11 episodes and most definitely will still be in that spot after 12.

Rosy Posy · 13-12-2014 9:30pm

I'm going to be the lone voice of dissent here and say that I thought it was a good episode. Maybe it's because I have a background in psychology and am a long term TAL listener and am coming to it from that pov. IME the stories in TAL are more about crafting the narrative and creating an intimate connection to the underpinning emotions and universal truths than pot-boiling plot revelations. I think she's doing her best to walk the line between journalistic integrity and giving people what they want (what is that rumour??) and in doing so is going to leave some people disappointed. I don't think that this thing is going to be wrapped up in a neat little package by next week but hopefully there will be some progression with the case and a follow up at some point. I think that the episode answered a lot of questions that people had- is he playing her and actually a psycho (no...but he isn't being fully open either, understandably); why he isn't flinging blame around, and getting angry with Jay. I also thought it gave a good impression of the impact of his arrest on the wider community. I got the sense that Sarah feels like she's opened a Pandora's box of sorts and her story is causing bigger ripples through peoples lives than she had anticipated.

Compu Global Hyper Meganet · 13-12-2014 10:21pm

Sorry if I'm derailing the thread, but I'm a bit technologically challenged and I was wondering if it might be possible to download episodes onto a USB key. I have gone onto the website, and I know I can play the episodes off that or get an app but it does not mention USB.

I'm hoping to start listening over Christmas, but there is a very poor internet connection back home so ideally I could just save the episodes rather than have a poor stream.

Hope this makes sense!

Rosy Posy · 13-12-2014 10:26pm

Compu Global Hyper Meganet wrote: »

Sorry if I'm derailing the thread, but I'm a bit technologically challenged and I was wondering if it might be possible to download episodes onto a USB key. I have gone onto the website, and I know I can play the episodes off that or get an app but it does not mention USB.

I'm hoping to start listening over Christmas, but there is a very poor internet connection back home so ideally I could just save the episodes rather than have a poor stream.

Hope this makes sense!

If you get the podcast app you can save it to 'on the go' for offline listening.

Rosy Posy · 13-12-2014 10:33pm

kev1.3s wrote: »

Having said that I just can't get past the fact that after the police called he never once tried to contact her to see where she was, in my opinion he was involved in the in the murder at some point, whether he or J were the main offender I don't know but he knew that night that there was no point in trying to contact Hay.

He never said he didn't page her, he didn't remember. He didn't page her from his cellphone, in fact he never did. It was a new phone so she wouldn't have automatically recognised the number. It's far more likely that if he did page her he would have done so from his home phone. Afair from those days pagers either just flashed a number of who called, or had codes that meant a limited range of messages.

Compu Global Hyper Meganet · 13-12-2014 10:36pm

Rosy Posy wrote: »

If you get the podcast app you can save it to 'on the go' for offline listening.

Thanks!

Mr E · 13-12-2014 10:36pm

Compu Global Hyper Meganet wrote: »

Sorry if I'm derailing the thread, but I'm a bit technologically challenged and I was wondering if it might be possible to download episodes onto a USB key. I have gone onto the website, and I know I can play the episodes off that or get an app but it does not mention USB.

I'm hoping to start listening over Christmas, but there is a very poor internet connection back home so ideally I could just save the episodes rather than have a poor stream.

Hope this makes sense!

If you view the source of the page and search for "mp3", you can get the source files. For example:

Episode 1: http://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/files.serialpodcast.org/sites/default/files/podcast/serial-s01-e01_0.mp3
Episode 2: http://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/files.serialpodcast.org/sites/default/files/podcast/serial-s01-e02.mp3

... and so on. Enjoy!

Roar · 16-12-2014 12:40pm

I thought the first few episodes were great, but it hasn't captured my attention as much for the last couple.

It's going to end with more of a whimper than a bang tomorrow I would think.

podgemonster · 18-12-2014 12:09pm

Whoo-hoo it's here!

Ep. 12 What We Know

nc6000 · 18-12-2014 3:38pm

That was a good final episode.

volchitsa · 18-12-2014 8:23pm

I thought it was stunning.

The serial killer hypothesis just blew me away.

Also when Adnan got emotional about

the DNA testing not being done before

(not sure if this needs to be hidden but better safe than sorry I guess.)

FouxDaFaFa · 18-12-2014 9:02pm

Initially I was disappointed by the final episode but after thinking about it for a while, it's growing on me more and more. My initial disappointment was that it felt a little rushed, especially towards the end. I think Koenig had a big ask to give it any kind of ending and she did it well.

Some scattered thoughts:

That little teaser from the very first episode in which a female voice details how she was threatened was not addressed, even to discount it. I think this is odd and possibly for legal/murky reasons.

"Basically threatened me, like, you know what happened to Hae. This is what’s going to happen to you. That’s how I felt that day".

I rolled my eyes when
the woman from the Innocence Project was talking about the idea of a serial killer to get the dna tested (he was a burglar killer, Hae wasn't sexually assaulted that we know, how would Jay know about the car if a complete stranger did it, etc) until she said "Big Picture, big picture" and I understood that she was using the serial killer idea as a way in, a way to get the dna tested in the first place.

volchitsa · 18-12-2014 9:17pm

FouxDaFaFa wrote: »

Initially I was disappointed by the final episode but after thinking about it for a while, it's growing on me more and more. My initial disappointment was that it felt a little rushed, especially towards the end. I think Koenig had a big ask to give it any kind of ending and she did it well.

Some scattered thoughts:
That little teaser from the very first episode in which a female voice details how she was threatened was not addressed, even to discount it. I think this is odd and possibly for legal/murky reasons.

I rolled my eyes when
the woman from the Innocence Project was talking about the idea of a serial killer to get the dna tested (he was a burglar killer, Hae wasn't sexually assaulted that we know, how would Jay know about the car if a complete stranger did it, etc) until she said "Big Picture, big picture" and I understood that she was using the serial killer idea as a way in, a way to get the dna tested in the first place.

I'd forgot that early bit. You're right, it's strange.

On the second issue, agreed, and I took it also to be because there are a couple of ways

Jay could have known about the car - one being that someone else could have already called the cops about an abandoned car.

But obviously Sarah couldn't make that sort of speculation over the radio.

Serial

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