Karen: yes, I too wish Koenig had been reflexive in a different way – not just about her perspectives on the case and investigation, but commenting overtly on the cultural life of SERIAL itself. There were some covert allusions, but mostly she tried to maintain an illusion that the podcast existed independently of its circulation, which is ridiculous & goes against the tenets of seriality. (But I hope it’s clear that I’m not trying to attack Koenig et. al. for not delivering a perfect ending – there is no such thing, and I think their inability to figure out what they were doing serially was quite interesting and even enjoyable.)

Cynthia: I actually wonder if they thought that raising uncertainty would be more interesting than finding definitive closure, as that’s a more THIS AMERICAN LIFE move. But in aiming toward that, they underestimated how people (and how many people) would become invested in the case as the thrust of the podcast.

Myles: I like this idea, but we need to remember that the majority of listeners are not forensic fans, and won’t even follow the press reporting. They got hooked into the podcast, and if it’s not on that platform, the case will recede into fuzzy memories.

It was, ultimately: she is its protagonist, and it is the document of her investigation more than the case itself. However, in the finale she consciously emphasized the role of her producers and their respective perspectives on the case, refusing to offer a definitive “answer” herself but emphasizing the fact that various independent contributors have each come out of this with their own feelings, not unlike the audience.

In this way, I feel that Serial exists as a starting point: it is not actually one story told week by week, but rather the “passing on” of a story to a broader audience, who can choose to follow that story in ways that could change its income or simply become one of the numerous things they follow. In this way, it becomes similar to documentary films in which we as audience members watch the film and discover its subject, and then follow along independent of the documentary filmmaker who made the introduction. The media will still follow Adnan’s case, and the Reddit forum will still live on, albeit all in more muted forms than the podcast itself. Its seriality was less about telling a more expansive or detailed story, and more about integrated “following” the story into our weekly routines, making it easier to imagine checking in on the story in the future.

This wasn’t how it was sold, and I don’t know if Koenig ever articulated it clearly in the end, but it’s how I felt during the episode and in the days after.

I wonder if some of these issues stem from the producers’ decision to continue reporting as they went. Some episodes seemed more reflexive as more participants emerged with more reminiscences in response to the program’s popularity–I wondered if it would become a program about itself. Besides, having established how bad our memories are, why continue raking through more 15-year-old memories?

I still think they thought they were going to pull a Thin Blue Line: find enough evidence to completely recast the narrative. Instead, they succeeded in creating doubt–an accomplishment in itself–but little certainty about anything. And deciding to stop, when new questions beg to be investigated (that PERK kit?), definitely felt strange.

The best thing about Serial is that the producers found a story that functioned like an earworm. The episodes may be over, but the story is not.

I don’t know who used the phrase “concern trolling” (a pretty radical overuse of the word “troll” IMHO), but I was relieved to see you make the case for genuine pleasure from the experience despite disappointment at some elements. Experiments with the new are messy, and they should be if they are genuine efforts to try something different.

My main quibble with Serial is Koenig’s public persona in interviews. Once this thing was a phenomenon, I wanted her to be as “gosh gee” in the interviews as she appears on her podcast. Instead, she seemed to project a sort of willful denial that she had entered into something without fully realizing its tremendous potential and pitfalls. Seems the achievement of Serial could have been examined more closely by Koenig herself, even if that meant she had to show a bit of weakness.

The anxiety that seems to be lurking here, and this includes references to the Lost finale that have been tied to Serial, is that authors enjoy duping their audience. I don’t know why an ending can’t disappoint without the complete character assassination of the author. Since when did we start to expect perfection at all times? As a television scholar–someone who embraces looooong form–failure is inevitable: of a storyline, an individual episode, casting, etc. Serial ended up being just a few episodes, but its production history seems more akin to the hectic pace of the soap opera. I’m not sure I have patience for anyone who wants to discount the whole because of the inevitable flaws.