#serial review

Stuffed Ballot Boxes? Have You Tried Extra Strength Democracy Flavored Tums? So we enter crooked politics this time out. Surely the DA won’t take a stand here… He kinda does. And I think I know why. Trapped in the Drive-Thru… I mean Closet by Not Weird Al, Britt summons Kato with the Kato Whistle. Who whisk away the Hornet guise. He is then found by Axeford and says he tried to capture the…

Another February is rolling in eventually. That means another Anniversary celebrating when I first became a online reviewer back in February 2002. It’s also Valentine’s Day and President’s Day. Soon to be renamed Glorious Leader Trump Day… Because ugh. Look. If I don’t pick something now I’m going to end up reviewing the Trump equivalent of President Evil from Antarctic Press (which mocked Obama…

પ્રેમચંદ મુન્શી ની વાર્તા નિર્મલા ની સમીક્ષા – #Gujarati & English Review of Premchand Munshi’s Nirmala

પ્રેમચંદ મુન્શી ની વાર્તા “નિર્મલા” ધારાવાહી ની સમીક્ષા પ્રેમચંદ મુન્શી હિન્દી સાહિત્યના ખુબ મોટા અને જાણીતા સાહિત્યકાર રહ્યા છે. તેઓ એક નિષ્ણાત અને વિશેષજ્ઞ વાર્તાકાર છે અને તેમની વાર્તાઓ ધારાવાહી સ્વરૂપે યૂટ્યૂબ માં જોઈ શકાય છે. વાર્તામાં બોધ હોય તે બાળકોને ગમે પણ મોટાઓને તેવી વાર્તાઓ પસંદ ન પડે. પરંતુ મુન્શીજી એ પ્રકાર ના વાર્તાકાર છે કે તેમની વાર્તામાં બોધ હોય પરંતુ તેઓ ક્યારેય તે બોધ ને…

DUSTWUN

I was a big fan of the first season of Serial, and found its bewitching blend of fascinating narrative, incredible production values, near-tangible sense of place and deft, atmospheric music to be one of the most compelling productions that I encountered throughout the whole of 2015. 

It felt like a heck of a long wait for season 2, and whilst my expectations had been mildly dampened by the news that it would be based around a military story (I’m really just not that into military news, stories etc), it still felt like Christmas had come early when I received the email saying that the first episode was available for download. 

***!!!SPOILER ALERT!!!*** - I  WILL BE DISCUSSING DETAILS OF THE EPISODE FROM THIS POINT ON 

So, to the episode itself. We are introduced to this new season by presenter Sarah Koenig narrating a video of US soldier Bowe Bergdahl being released from his 5 year imprisonment at the hands of the Taliban, and into the waiting arms of his fellow soldiers and their helicopters. We’re then treated to a reimagined version of the awesome theme song from the first season, which is now given a militaristic twist by some additional trumpet. The intro is interspersed with soundbites of people giving their opinion on Bowe and his situation. 

Koenig then reveals that although the mood back home was initially jubilant upon Bergdahl’s release, everything soured within a matter of hours. This seems to have been prompted chiefly by the other guys from his platoon saying “wait a minute guys, this ain’t what you think it is...”, or something to that effect. It turns out that whilst there’s no doubt that Bergdahl did indeed spend the last 5 years with the Taliban, the reason they were able to capture him in the first place is far more contentious. 

No matter how you slice it, the guy walked off of the US Army outpost on which is was stationed in the middle of Afghanistan, voluntarily and of his own free will, and straight into the hands of the Taliban. We hear that eventually we had senators getting involved, and the whole thing culminates in the present situation where Bergdahl is facing criminal prosecution for 2 charges in a military court, one of which carries a potential life sentence. 

We find out that a filmmaker named Mark Boal has actually been interviewing Bergdahl for some time, and has recorded all of their phone conversations. Bowe has consented to those conversations being used for the podcast, though he will be having no direct contact with Sarah or the team directly. 

Through these recordings we discover that Bowe had decided that his superiors in the military were dangerously incompetent, and he felt that it was his responsibility to do something to fix the situation. His proposed solution was to leave his base, run for a day or two to another American base in the area (about 20 miles away) and cause such a level of chaos that no-one would be able to disregard his story. Quite why he felt that completely pissing of the entire American military before calling out his superiors for being morons was a good idea is never really addressed. 

The rest of the episode paints a picture of the situation in Afghanistan, what the soldiers though of conditions there (they hated it), and then walks us through the night/morning of Bergdahl’s disappearance, and the sequence of events according to Bergdahl himself. It draws to a close at his capture by the Taliban. 

Now, in terms of a review I’m really kind of conflicted on this one. I’ll start with the positives: 

Amazing production, narrative and theming. The music in the background of a lot of the reporting really sets an excellent tone and can be incredibly atmospheric. Serial still really sets the bar for production values in podcasts.

Sarah Koenig is still the best in the business at telling a compelling story whilst simultaneously conveying a large amount of complex information.

The research these guys do is incredible. You really get the feeling that they are sat on a vast amount of material.

Now for the negatives. I apologise that these are pretty darn hefty, and I really don’t want to seem over critical. However, I really do want to explain my thoughts on these properly so they don’t just seem like pettiness, I really want to convey my thoughts on these issues. 

First and foremost, my biggest issue with this initial episode - the subject matter. I appreciate that this case will probably fascinate a lot of people, and I’m sure that there are a lot of American listeners who will have very strong views on this story, as presumably it has been in the national press. However, as I said at the start of this review, I’m really just not into present day military stuff. A huge part of my attraction to the first season of Serial was the sense of place, and how the podcast created a vision in my mind of the all of the locations that were discussed. Even though I’d never heard of any of the places or ever seen them, I felt like I knew just through the excellent descriptions and atmospheric music. However, in this episode they spend a lot of time establishing that Afghanistan is a hell-hole, and the soldiers stationed there despised it. I don’t want a sense of that place!

The interviews with Bergdahl - Unfortunately it looks like Koenig won’t be interacting with the subject of the podcast directly. Instead we’re going to have to listen to interviews conducted by a guy that is more interested in typing out emails instead of really engaging with or challenging Bergdahl. I appreciate that these interviews were never recorded to be used in a slick podcast production, but at the same time that doesn’t make them any better to listen to. 

Weird Koenig bias - This may be controversial, but this was something I noticed creeping into season 1 and I was curious to see if it was specific to her relationship with Adnan or whether Bergdahl would receive the same treatment. And it seems that it has indeed reappeared. The issue that I’m referring to here is where Koenig seems to give the testimony of third parties a much harder time than anything that comes from the subject of the podcast. For example, in this episode she is describing the testimony of the soldier that was on duty before Bergdahl’s shift on the day that he disappeared. She says ‘ So he gets down from the truck, which he’s not technically supposed to do until he’s relived, but whatever’. It’s kind of snarky, which is fair enough, but in the context that it was preceded by Bergdahl just walking off of the base completely, it’s really kind of inconsequential. 

On the other hand, when describing how Bergdahl must be feeling having just put his bizarre plan into action she is much more sympathetic. She says that he must have been “profoundly scared. He’s a world away from anything he knows, in a country whose culture is alien to him, where people want to kill him. And he’s outside the wire in the dark”. Indeed, but he was only out there because HE WILLINGLY RAN OFF OF THE BASE. It’s kind of baffling that he gets such an easy ride. I know that it must be difficult to present these early episodes in which they are introducing the subject matter in very basic terms whilst probably knowing much more of the story (and having a lot more evidence) than we’ve seen, but even taking that into account, I still think it would be reasonable to challenge some of the rationale behind Bergdahl’s story. Or if not that then to at least anticipate some of the questions that must be running through your audience’s head when hearing such a crazy story, which in essence was to draw attention to the incompetence of his superiors (whilst also proving that he is Jason Bourne) by running out into a dessert occupied by the Taliban and suddenly mysteriously forget how to use a compass. 

Ok so that really does sound like a lot of negative comments on the episode. But in truth, the negatives aren’t massive, it just takes a lot of time to clearly articulate my thoughts on them and give examples. Even then, I’m not convinced that I managed to convey them clearly at all! Alas, oh well. 

All in all, it’s another excellently produced episode of Serial, and in reality it’s early days. There is plenty of time ahead for the narrative to sink its teeth into me and draw me into it’s world. I have faith, but we’ll see! At this point I just haven’t ‘clicked’ with the story in the way that I did with that of the first season.