12/3/2023 0 Comments Serial season 3![]() ![]() With Season 3, the show doesn’t have to speak to that larger system in such abstract terms. Factors of time, circumstance, and the system itself complicated an already complicated pursuit. Part of the message, whether it’s spoken or implicit, in that first season was an underlying question of how a case so monumental in the course of one person’s life could be given less than the maximum amount of effort toward making sure a reasonable decision was reached with a full accounting of all the facts involved. By pointing out existing and potential inefficiencies in the existing legal process, it’s challenging the perception of capital-J “Justice” that can so often be used as shorthand. But “Serial” does have its distinct way of highlighting a disconnect between perception and the concrete, tangible consequences those assumptions can create. The journalistic removal from the reporting process itself isn’t put forward as some kind of objective truth that everyone in the system is blind to. Read More: The 50 Best Podcast Episodes of 2018 (So Far) ![]() It’s what makes the second episode, filled with the zealotry and willful ignorance of one particular judge, an effective entry point into the broader themes the show promises to continue investigating for the rest of the season. It’s subject to the deeply held convictions of individuals with the power to use their position to guide the system to their worldview. As they outline, for many people within this hierarchy, justice is already a personal narrative. Dzotsi, Koenig, and fellow producers Julie Snyder and Ben Calhoun don’t have to graft their own pursuit for a story onto what’s already happening. Perhaps the strongest message from the earliest two episodes is that the show and this approach to the justice system are a perfect match, especially for a show that draws so much of its power from reconstructing and unraveling existing narratives. This early balance between the two points to a richer, nuanced approach to digesting all the examples this courthouse has to offer. Even though the courthouse represents the umbrella under which all of these Season 3 stories fall, the idea that not all of these experiences can be approached with one overriding approach necessitates that introduction of literal new voices. ![]() Host Sarah Koenig still represents a strong authorial voice at the center of the show, but the contributions from reporter Emmanuel Dzotsi offer a valuable perspective to the goings-on within various legal chambers. Emmanuel Dzotsi and Sarah Koenig Sandy Honig Judges and prosecutors and defense attorneys all contributed to this giant amorphous whole, to the point where men and women sent through the judicial process are made to relinquish themselves to the system. It’s impossible to remove one from the other. Much like how the actions and testimony of officers feed into a perception of how branches of the military function work and vice versa, the same is true in the “Serial” portrait of this courthouse. Some of the cases in the first two episodes (now available to listen) range from bar fights to weapons possession to drug charges.Īnd just as it did for the military, Season 3 has already demonstrated a meticulous ability to separate out individuals within an organizational structure while still considering the institution as a whole. Embedding in that Cleveland courthouse, the aim of this season is to present a representative sample of how our current American judicial system functions. Instead of following a single crime or unexplained decision as they did in their inaugural two collections of episodes, this next batch of stories from “Serial” is focused more on an institution. That the intro is concerned with spatial architecture just as much as the people involved in what goes on inside them is at once a signal that Season 3 is a bit of a departure for the show, but one that still maintains the podcast’s impeccable attention to detail. Only, instead of a riveting crime yarn introducing the audience to hardscrabble detectives and unsolved murders, it starts with a bunch of buildings. The beginning of “ Serial” Season 3, which focuses on daily life within a Cleveland courthouse, opens like the beginning of a novel. ![]()
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