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Adnan

This Sunday night, we'll see the fourth and final episode of "The Case Against Adnan Syed." I'm not really impressed so far. The show seems so interested in proving Adnan is not guilty, it sacrifices some credibility. There's a sense of bias. If the show were more serious about the anti-Adnan arguments, then, oddly enough, I might be more willing to adopt a pro-Adnan stance. Some thoughts after the third episode:

-There is still a cell-phone tower discrepancy. Why doesn't the show address the prosecution's on-going argument that, in fact, the cell-phone info *was* reliable? This is maddening, because it's not as if we're talking about a deep philosophical issue here. One side must clearly be right, and one side must be wrong.

-The "Jay" phone call irritated me. At one point, we see Jay's ex calling him to try to get the inside scoop on what happened with Adnan. (There's a strong effort to discredit Jay throughout. He's a liar! He can be violent! He is a shady character!) The ex reaches Jay, and we're thrilled, and then the call is dropped. Has Jay intuited that his ex is actually doing sneaky in cognito work? If so, is he lying in turn? ("Oops, dropped call!") Then, our Gothic rumination is punctured. Jay calls right back. The phone really had malfunctioned. Jay's ranting, murmuring voice is heard, and then the ex tries to tell the camera that what Jay had said had suggested that maybe Adnan wasn't guilty? But the interlude is deeply unsatisfying. It's not really clear what the ex is saying. It's definitely not clear what Jay is saying. The director seems to shrug and move on. (But, also, he or she seems to want us to say: Sketchy Jay! Sketchy Jay!)

-I did love the material about anti-Muslim bias. This show makes the point that 9/11 wasn't the birth of anti-Muslim prejudice. We see clips from films in the nineties where Islam seems equated with terrorism. An argument happened in court: Adnan should be released on bail, because he is a minor, but if this happens, he may flee to relatives overseas. (There was a murky belief that Adnan, because of his background, was inherently untrustworthy: a belief that he had participated in an "honor killing," whatever that is, and that he might just escape from America.) This is fascinating stuff: It could yield its own mini-series. We are all strangers to one another, and strangers to ourselves. Stories are spun from thin air (sometimes). Lives hang in the balance.
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