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Serial (podcast)

HailToTheDeacons said:
I calibrated my expectations after the second episode. It's not Serial.

The payoff is in the painstaking reporting and beautiful story-telling about an interesting human, in a set of worlds not many of us directly inhabit (back-country Alabama, horology circles, for example) but can digest with wonder.
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well said
 
Well said, HTTD. I really enjoyed the evolution of the story. Murder suspense tales are a dime-a-dozen, but the struggle for John B was a real heart breaker. There are a million metaphors and allegories seamlessly sewn in throughout John B's story. Part of me really didn't want him to have mad-hatters disease, because having come from a backwoods town in NC, I thought that would be enough to drive anyone crazy. But in a way, it was more poetic like this. The town he so vehemently hated was just as toxic as the mercury and ultimately the cyanide killed him. It's just such a shame to watch someone collapse under the restrictive social confines, whether it be intellectually or emotionally, of such ignorance. I do wish John B could have given an answer, or at least his interpretation for why people like him are incapable of leaving S-Towns across America. My personal theory is that it is a debilitating combination of fear and insecurity that few are willing to admit, and even fewer are willing to challenge. Some people do like the simple life of those towns, but for people like John B, I think his ambition was encased in the fear that is bred by the culture of places like S-Town.
 
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HailToTheDeacons said:
If you're looking for more content after you finish Shit-town, try APM's In the Dark podcast.

It's good public radio investigative reporting on an old murder. Very similar to Serial season one.

I'm two episodes in and I give it a thumbs up.
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I have just started this as well and am enjoying it. I enjoy these type of podcasts so if anyone else has listened to anything similar feel free to share it here.

Thanks
 
HailToTheDeacons said:
If you're looking for more content after you finish Shit-town, try APM's In the Dark podcast.

It's good public radio investigative reporting on an old murder. Very similar to Serial season one.

I'm two episodes in and I give it a thumbs up.
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I have to spread rep, but was feeling like I needed something more after S-town and there you were...
 
Finished S-Town last night. I enjoyed listening to it, and agree that it was more of being engrossed in the tale than finding a payoff or resolution at the end. And I've had the "Rose for Emily" song stuck in my head for a while now.
 
Still wrapping my head around the cousin's order to the coroner to cut off the dude's nipples. Yowzah. Although, Townie, I do think when you die you should donate your nipples to science so that they may be studied for generations to come.
 
RollTheQuad06 said:
Finished S-Town last night. I enjoyed listening to it, and agree that it was more of being engrossed in the tale than finding a payoff or resolution at the end. And I've had the "Rose for Emily" song stuck in my head for a while now.
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Yes! Same!
 
RollTheQuad06 said:
Finished S-Town last night. I enjoyed listening to it, and agree that it was more of being engrossed in the tale than finding a payoff or resolution at the end. And I've had the "Rose for Emily" song stuck in my head for a while now.
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If you like A Rose for Emily, do yourself a favor and check out the Zombies' Odessey and Oracle album. It also has This Will Be Our Year, which Mad Men used so well for a scene with Sally and Don Draper a couple of years ago. And Care of Cell 44 is an amazing song.
 
Tried Serial too late and had prolly already read too much before I started, so I never made it past the first Ep. Made it all the way through STown.

Good storytelling but not much of a story, really. Promising but critically flawed rube can't escape cultural trappings. Prolly catnip for the bleeding heart yankeeface snowflakes that listen to NPR but didn't do much for me. The real (sad) story is that minus the science acumen, this is likely the story of most gays that grew up in the small town south before the internet (or really before mobile internet).
 
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TheTwinAndreBen said:
Prolly catnip for the bleeding heart yankeeface snowflakes that listen to NPR but didn't do much for me. The real (sad) story is that minus the science acumen, this is likely the story of most gays that grew up in the small town south before the internet (or really before mobile internet).
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You don't think that other people are capable of the same - fairly generic and popular - interpretation of the series?
 
I'm pretty sure my favorite part of the series was hearing the foghorn leghorn cousin with a bullet still in his brain going on in the background.
 
Strickland33 said:
You don't think that other people are capable of the same - fairly generic and popular - interpretation of the series?
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Nnnnnn NOOOO NoooPE NNNNN NOOOO

BDL said:
I'm pretty sure my favorite part of the series was hearing the foghorn leghorn cousin with a bullet still in his brain going on in the background.
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YEEEEEEP YAAAAAAAS YAAAAAAAS SUUUUUHHHHHH!!!!!!
 
Listened to it on a road trip last weekend. The wife and I loved it. We listened to the 1st 3 episodes again after we finished it- it was amazing how different the context was.

And the "fuck-it" mentality is a real thing. I have relatives who suffer from it.
 
Same, listened to 6/7 eps while traveling and finished the seventh this morning.
 
Wife and I listened to S-Town this weekend on a trip back to good ole W-S. The comparison in my mind is this is the podcast version of Lost - introduces a story with the promise of mystery and intrigue, seems to start to go down that road, abruptly changes, introduces new additional mystery, ultimately not really paying any of it off and ending up as a character examination. I liked it and thought it was worth listening to, but it certainly was not what I expected and felt a little bit that it wasn't terribly satisfying, only in the sense of not tying everything up. I probably shouldn't have expected everything to end cleanly from a podcast coming from the creators of Serial, but just introducing a number of topics and then not really resolving them was unfulfilling.
 
CDeacMan said:
Wife and I listened to S-Town this weekend on a trip back to good ole W-S. The comparison in my mind is this is the podcast version of Lost - introduces a story with the promise of mystery and intrigue, seems to start to go down that road, abruptly changes, introduces new additional mystery, ultimately not really paying any of it off and ending up as a character examination. I liked it and thought it was worth listening to, but it certainly was not what I expected and felt a little bit that it wasn't terribly satisfying, only in the sense of not tying everything up. I probably shouldn't have expected everything to end cleanly from a podcast coming from the creators of Serial, but just introducing a number of topics and then not really resolving them was unfulfilling.
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What do you feel was left unresolved?
 
well, he sort of invents narrative arcs that don't pay off.

1: the murder thing (which wasn't necessarily his fault)
2: he's gay and in closet...sooooo what?
3: was he poisoned?!? we can never find out
4: clock culture! i'm glad we talked about that for an episode
5: Rural people are ridiculous and racist! isn't that just fascinating?!

It also suffers from TAL's "liberal intellectuals go to the zoo of every day americans" syndrome
 
What happened with Tyler and his pending charges, this supposed mystery gold, who took what from the house the day after John killed himself, whether cops in Woodstock were actually forcing women into sexual favors (obviously not the main point of the story, but it was one of the hooks into the first episode that doesn't get explored)
 
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