Story Slow

Serial tackles one story over the course of many installments–roughly as many as encompass a season of an HBO drama such as True Detective, the show to which Serial is often compared because the first serial Koenig has tackled is the story of Adnan Syed, a high school student convicted of murdering his ex-girlfriend. Did he do it? Or has he been wrongly jailed for a crime he didn’t commit? Each episode is an installment in an ongoing attempt to figure that out.

The producers themselves don’t know how their story ends: They approach the subject as intensely curious storytellers, not crusaders for the accused or the deceased.

The new episode of Serial is out this morning, and it’s not too late to catch up. It is, I agree, “So Good You Want to Binge-Listen.” But don’t hold off until it’s over to do that: The waiting, week-to-week, is enriching in a way that’s totally obvious and yet still somehow surprising, and really sort of damning for all the new season-release binge TV, much of which has been great but none of which I can remember in any episodic way at all — time amplifies everything on Serial, including the show’s flaws. Talking about Transparent with friends has been depressing: Everyone watched it all at once and nobody remembers anything specific, so it’s all “the acting was good” and “what great ideas for characters.” We are addled and dazed by the things we do to relax! We are weak. We demand structure.