I finished Serial s1 just in time!

[scm1011]

...because Season 2 dropped today, yay! I need to wait until tonight to give it my full attention, but the story looks intriguing!

But back to Season 1, I finish last night and I still don't know what to think. I went back and forth so many times between "there's no way he did it!" and "he's so guilty!". In the end, I'm still not sure.  

One thing I am sure of is that he should never have been convicted. It brought me back to when I served jury duty a few years ago. My gut told me the defendant was guilty, but the way the prosecution presented the case left room for doubt (we acquitted). I just can't believe Adnan was found guilty when the evidence basically amounted to the confession of a guy who changed his story a zillion times and unreliable cell records. There was so much reasonable doubt!

Looking forward to Season 2; hopefully it won't be as maddening (not holding my breath )

[scm1011]

Dec 10, 2015 11:10:10 GMT -5 RockNVoll said:

I actually thought of you today because of the thread on CE&P.  I meant to tag you but see you've found it already

Ha, my facebook feed exploded about season 2 this morning; there was no way I could miss the news! Thanks for thinking of me, though

And yes, maddening is the perfect way to describe the situation. I almost wish I could be confident Adnan did it like 5kcandlesinthewind just so I'd have some closure. I certainly wouldn't be surprised if he was guilty, but I'm just not entirely convinced. I may or may not listen to the other spinoffs after season 2.  

[5kcandlesinthewind]

I wondered if you'd finished in time when I saw the second season today. (Well, after I tracked it down. I thought I was on the fence about this season, and then I FREAKED OUT when I couldn't find it listed in the podcast app. My husband had to find it for me, ha.)

And I can totally understand the ambivalence. For me, it's a whole lot of little things that mostly don't add up and kind of boil down to what one of the producers (?) said during the last episode: there would have had to have been a whole lot of bad luck for him to be innocent. (which doesn't mean I think the prosecution proved their case enough to get a conviction.) I kind of got the sense that there was more to his attitude towards Hae and how possessive he could be about her.  Her diary mentioned it, and if I remember correctly, at least one of her friends mentioned it.  Sarah kind of brushed it off by saying he told everyone he was over Hae, and that he'd been dating other people or whatever, so clearly he'd moved on.  I think this article did a good job of pointing out what a disservice that was, though (as well as the overall disservice done to Hae and her family). 

[scm1011]

5kcandlesinthewind, that part in the last episode laying out the series of bad luck Adnan would have had to endure was powerful, I totally agree. But Sarah's counter also struck a chord with me; if Adnan was guilty, why in the world would he agree to do this story? Is it because he really has nothing left to lose? Or is he is sociopath? Who knows. 

That article was spot on, and its easy to forget that this is Hae's story, not Adnan's. I agree that Sarah was a bit dismissive of things that could have painted Adnan as possessive. I can't imagine how awful it was for Hae's family to go through this all over again.

  

[5kcandlesinthewind]

I lean towards charming sociopath with a victim complex, personally. But he really doesn't have anything to lose. His trial was BS, even people who think he's guilty agree on that. So if he can get some publicity to get his case reopened, maybe he ends up free and maybe he ends up back in jail for life. Either way, he's not in any worse of a spot than he was at the start.

And I just remembered him being adamantly against them trying to get the DNA evidence checked when the Innocence Project looped in the serial killer, and I couldn't understand why he would care at all if he was innocent. The details are fuzzy, since it's been a year since I heard it, but that stood out as completely suspicious to me. I think he may have changed his mind after a while, but was that because he thought it would clear him, or because he knew it was way too late and the evidence had been so mishandled that he figured he'd be in the clear?