#SERIAL PODCAST EPISODE 9 SUMMARY TV#

Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.Serial is an investigative journalism podcast hosted by Sarah Koenig, narrating a nonfiction story over multiple episodes. READ MORE: Attention, “Serial” Fans, You Must Watch This Short Documentary So let’s hope there’s some resolution - though, at this point, it seems safe to say there will be no neat conclusion, only more questions. Next time, final episode of Serial.” Yes, next week is the final episode of this first season. “‘At this point,’ he wrote, ‘It doesn’t matter to me how your story portrays me - guilty or innocent - I just want it to be over.'”Īnd, as Koenig said, “It will be. Koenig acknowledged that “my story had messed with his equilibrium.”Īt the end of the episode, Koenig reads a letter Syed wrote to her. For the first time, we get a sense of what the podcast has done to Adnan’s life, dredging up old feelings of hurt and even more painfully, perhaps, giving him a glimmer of hope. When she asked Adnan about this, he said there’s nothing he can do to change other people’s minds about him. “Either you think I did it or you don’t,” he said. I think he has empathy, real feelings.”īut, she acknowledges that one thing that makes Adnan look guilty is that he doesn’t sound angry. In the end, Koenig decides, “I don’t think Adnan is a psychopath. To some degree, the issue is irrelevant, said Ewing. “The fact is that most psychopaths aren’t killers and most killers aren’t psychopaths,” he said. Is he so calculating that their whole relationship has been a con? He’s functioning really well in prison and “doesn’t appear to have any sort of anti-social behavior,” according to Koenig - so he can’t be a psychopath. “The term psychopath gets thrown around so easily,” she said. Ewing said that in about 50 percent of cases, there’s some degree of amnesia.īut the larger question that Koenig keeps circling is: Is Adnan a sociopath? She seems to genuinely like him and worries that she’s being duped. There’s also a tossed-off suggestion that maybe Adnan killed Hae, but doesn’t even realize it. “They’re not evil…they kill because something happens that pushes them over the edge,” he said. Though we’d rather believe that murderers are a different breed than the rest of us, Ewing said that most of the time, murderers are pretty ordinary. Ewing, a forensic psychologist and a lawyer who has evaluated several thousand criminal defendants. This week, Koenig also interviewed Charles P. For instance, one person cites Adnan’s ability to smooth over rough situations as proof that he’s a good guy, while another points to that same quality as a sign that he’s sneaky. The same example of any behavior can be used as evidence of good character or questionable character - it’s all subjective.

It’s only human to feel like we can sense a murderer, but do humans have that capacity? “Can you tell - really - can you tell if someone has a crime like this in him?” asked Koenig. Amateur sleuths will be disappointed that rather than evidence, we get debate about how we can tell if someone is capable of murder.

This week’s episode might be the weakest yet, because there is no new evidence presented. READ MORE: Obsessed with “Serial?” You’ll Love These Documentaries The Newest Evidence Does that make him a killer? We finally get a sense of Adnan’s frustration about how he’s been portrayed in the podcast - one moment, he feels like Koenig is his savior, the next, his executioner.Īnd really, how would any of us fare if a journalist began to dig into our teenage behavior, and interview former middle school and high school classmates about our personality and recount the times where we broke the law by shoplifting, drinking underage or smoking pot? Does any of that have any relevance to this specific crime? Is someone who steals money from a mosque more likely to be a killer? Is it evidence of bad character? But even then, rumors abound, with one person asserting that he stole as much as hundreds of thousands of dollars, which Koenig finds not to be the case.īut as Adnan himself points out, he has always admitted that he stole money from the mosque. Though Koenig says callers have informed her that Adnan has done bad things in his past, the only wrongdoing she can confirm is that he stole donation money from his mosque during the summer before 8th grade. Koenig speaks to people within the Muslim community in Baltimore, who generally all agree that Adnan is a “good guy” even though some accuse him of being duplicitous or even a psychopath (but still a “good guy!”).

Serial podcast episode 9 summary