The Problem of Distance with Serial’s New Storytelling
[vc_row][vc_column][title type="subtitle-h6"]August Glomski[/title][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width="11/12"][vc_column_text]Podcasts are a criminally underappreciated art form, but there is one series that transcended radio-squabble and has worked its tantalizing story of (in)justice into the minds of crime-junkies across the globe. I’m talking about Serial, the 2014 series affiliated with This American Life and narrated by the queen of podcasts, Sarah Koenig.Serial’s first season unearthed a 15-year-old case of questionable jurisprudence where a teenager, Adnan Syed, earned a life-sentence for the murder of his ex-girlfriend. Over the season’s course, Koenig conducted a stunning piece of investigative journalism that indulgently dove into the case’s minutia to raise chilling questions about the legal system’s ability to carry out its most basic function: adjudicating between innocence and guilt.[soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/172501697" params="color=ff5500" width="100%" height="166" iframe="true" /][spacer height="20"]After more than a year of radio silence, Serial is back with both a new season and a completely new type of case. And what we are coming to realize as each new episode airs is that the magic of Serial, unfortunately, is not easily reproduced.This time around, Koenig and her production crew are ambitiously dealing with a story that’s still in motion, that of soldier Bowe Bergdahl who was captured and imprisoned by the Taliban after supposedly deserting in 2009. I knew something had changed after listening to the season two debut back in December. As fans of the original season well know, the most distinctive aspect of the podcast comes in its force of captivation. The show is binge-worthy by nature and instills an insatiable desire to know what happens next. But, after finishing a few episodes of the new season, I realized my rapacity had been replaced by ambivalence, though I didn’t know exactly why.As I continued working through the new season, my lack of interest continued to gnaw at me until I was finally able to map it. In the end, my wilted investment came down to a stylistic difference in the relationship between the story’s teller and the story’s character of interest.The connection between Adnan Syed and Koenig in Season One is artistically maintained. It is a relationship that was forged through hours of phone calls and one that continually evolves as the season progresses. As a result, Koenig creates an interiority between herself and her character that lets listeners feel like they actually understand the man behind the bars. Through these moments of personal interview, Syed comes off as charming, intelligent, and innocuous. He evokes sympathy within Koenig that she then transfers to her listeners, and the result is the creation of a character who is knowable and compelling.In Season Two the relationship between the storyteller and her subject is one of distance. Koenig wasn’t able to personally interview Bergdahl, so instead she must rely on a series of interviews conducted by Mark Boal (writer and producer of Zero Dark Thirty) to glean information regarding Bergdahl’s disappearance and imprisonment. This is not an uninteresting way to retell a story, but it does erase a chord of intimacy that proved to be so juicy for listeners in the first season. Koenig’s role has always been that of the meticulous interpreter, but now she is interpreting a story in which she does not play a central role. The stakes are lesser because another layer has wedged its way into the truth-seeking process, and the tantalizing bond between interviewee and interviewer is weakened.
The relationship between narrator and story is not unique to podcasts. In any work of fiction an author makes a deliberate decision how to reveal their tale to readers. The problem with this new season of Serial is that the show has altered an essential characteristic of the narrator, an aspect of proximity that made the inaugural season fiendishly compelling. Koenig’s relationship with Adnan was the grounding element that focused the entire case into a cohesive story. What more, theirs was a relationship predicated upon the devastating possibility that everything could suddenly come crashing down with a single piece of indefensible evidence that would point towards Adnan’s guilt. The stakes were real, the passion authentic, and the proximity between narrator and character gave the story a momentum that carried it from start to finish.But between Koenig and Bergdahl there is no emotional investment. There is no lodestone holding the narrative together. Instead, Koenig is left to interpret the work of another interviewee, and listeners are pulled out of a storytelling style that once felt so intimate in the first season. When Adnan was curt with Koenig, it felt like he was being curt with me. When he avoided her questions, he was avoiding mine as well. And when he explained away a suspicious element of his case with calm confidence, I felt like he was speaking directly into my heart and assuring me that he wasn’t guilty. Not only do I feel like I could get a beer with the guy, but I’d know exactly which bottle of micro-brew he’d pick off the shelf. Put me in the same situation with Bowe, on the other hand, and he could be a whiskey man for all I know.I don’t mean to challenge the inherent interest of Bowe Bergdahl’s story. On paper, it’s a riveting tale of desertion, torture, escape, and war. It’s complicated and nuanced and ultimately questions how to apply justice to a political mess that refuses to be smoothed over. It’s a fascinating tale by any account, but that doesn’t mean it’s suitable for the distinctive method in which Serial engages with story.My moment of clarity regarding Season Two finally solidified after Koenig’s recent announcement that episodes would be released every other week instead of weekly. Had I received this news while listening to the first season, I would have screamed into my iPhone with fanatic rage at the extended wait-time between episodes. Instead, I shrugged it off and started listening to something else.