You know what's big these days? Cereal. No wait, I mean, Serial, that 12-episode podcast that acts like Dateline for the MP3 player. Everyone's making a big deal out of it -- spoilers, funny pics, and even a parody on SNL. How weird is that? A piece of new media that's so popular a forty-year-old sketch comedy show deems it universal enough to feature.
The whole purpose of this blog is to tell you I don't care.
I'm sure that's exactly what you wanted, my opinion on menial shit. Don't get me wrong, I did try to listen to the first episode. I got midway through and finally realized I simply don't give fuck one about anything happening.
For one thing, I knew exactly how it would end. And that's to say, it wouldn't. You spend twelve hours on a murder mystery only to have no resolution at the end? Fuck you, don't waste my time. I knew from episode one it wouldn't be finished, because otherwise I would have heard the ending by now, like "The Blair Witch Project". There would be spoilers posted on Reddit or something on Wikipedia.
For another, it's hard for me to sympathize with anyone when they're all guilty. They're all doing something wrong. Call me racist or privileged, but you got a Middle Eastern guy going out with a Korean girl, there are going to be problems.
And it's not like our heroes are absent of culpability. They were sneaking around, defying their parents, lying to people, associating with drug dealers, hiring shifty lawyers. The surrounding community did nothing to help, feeding the animal with one hand and whipping it with the other. When that happens, there's going to be consequences. Now granted, these are extreme and disproportionate consequences... but from my point of view, if you do bad things, bad things will happen.
Props to Sarah Koenig for creating such a phenomenom (although I've heard people say they like the podcast because of the sound of her voice). I might listen to a second season if they fix these problems. But I'm not sure how much I should invest in a podcast that can't even spot check its commercials -- the ADVERTISERS -- arguably the most important part of your audience, especially for a starting show. Seriously, how do you screw up "chimp".
Labels: podcasts, Serial
