Serial: S02 Episode 11: Present for Duty
March 31, 2016 9:23 AM - Subscribe
What's Bowe's fault, and what isn't?
The final episode of Season 2 delves into the question of whether or not soldiers died specifically as a result of searching for Bowe.
The final episode of Season 2 delves into the question of whether or not soldiers died specifically as a result of searching for Bowe.
It's interesting that both seasons have more or less reached the conclusion "This guy might or might not be responsible, but should not be/have been convicted."
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 10:30 AM on April 1, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 10:30 AM on April 1, 2016 [1 favorite]
This was an interesting episode after several episodes I couldn't be bothered to finish, so nice that they ended on a... well, not a strong note, but at least it wasn't a total bust. Still, it seems like this just wasn't a topic to base a whole season around. I think it could have been a very strong three- or four-part series, though.
posted by the return of the thin white sock at 12:03 PM on April 1, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by the return of the thin white sock at 12:03 PM on April 1, 2016 [2 favorites]
It wasn't at all "one story, told week by week" -- it just wasn't a serial. It was long form reporting on a topic i just wasn't interested in, and I'm not sure why Koenig was. It also suffered from the interview with Bergdahl not being done by her.
I'd say the two very interesting moments of the entire season was when they revealed that Bergdahl was homeschooled and that he didn't make it through Coast Guard boot camp.
posted by palegirl at 9:49 PM on April 1, 2016 [2 favorites]
I'd say the two very interesting moments of the entire season was when they revealed that Bergdahl was homeschooled and that he didn't make it through Coast Guard boot camp.
posted by palegirl at 9:49 PM on April 1, 2016 [2 favorites]
Agreed that this wasn't a serial in the same way that last season's was, with a story arc. I also feel that Bergdahl's personality, while interesting, was not made to seem as immediately like able in the same way that Adnan's was. I felt that distance throughout the story.
posted by samthemander at 11:27 PM on April 1, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by samthemander at 11:27 PM on April 1, 2016 [2 favorites]
It's hard for me to tell whether this season seemed subpar because I'm comparing it to last season's thrillride, or because it actually was a snooze all on its lonesome. I'm leaning toward the latter. I don't think it would have even made for a very memorable This American Life two-parter.
posted by painquale at 2:36 PM on April 2, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by painquale at 2:36 PM on April 2, 2016 [1 favorite]
I feel that Serial set up a bad expectation if the audience is intended to like the person who's the object of each season's series. I didn't like Adnan and don't particularly care about Bergdahl one way or another, at least not based on what I learned from Serial. It'll be interesting to see what happens with the third season and whether it'll be apparent that Sarah Koenig wants the audience to share her attitude toward the subject.
posted by fuse theorem at 3:04 PM on April 2, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by fuse theorem at 3:04 PM on April 2, 2016 [2 favorites]
I thought this last episode was maybe the strongest of the season, but this just didn't seem to be a story that needed 11-hours of analysis. I hope they find something that lets them tell a real story like season 1 without the pitfalls that they were pretty obviously trying to avoid. But if the solution is just to take well-covered stories of the recent past and pour over them in 10-20x detail that you'd get from a 60-minutes piece, then it's just going to be a very different show than I think most of its listeners are expecting.
posted by skewed at 8:15 PM on April 2, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by skewed at 8:15 PM on April 2, 2016 [2 favorites]
I'm very curious as to why they decided to end it here, when they made that decision, why they didn't announce it ahead of time, etc.
I thought the inside info about Coast Guard boot camp was interesting. The rest of the episode was really hard to follow...it was less of a narrative than just a bunch of facts strung together. We listened in the car and I fell asleep for part of it.
posted by radioamy at 6:33 PM on April 3, 2016 [1 favorite]
I thought the inside info about Coast Guard boot camp was interesting. The rest of the episode was really hard to follow...it was less of a narrative than just a bunch of facts strung together. We listened in the car and I fell asleep for part of it.
posted by radioamy at 6:33 PM on April 3, 2016 [1 favorite]
It took me awhile to get around to listening to it and drag through it. Again. Sigh.
I think they just ended it here because 12 episodes seems to be what's in the budget. Last year they did 12 episodes and this time they also did 12 episodes except one of them was a two parter.
"It was long form reporting on a topic i just wasn't interested in, and I'm not sure why Koenig was. It also suffered from the interview with Bergdahl not being done by her."
"I also feel that Bergdahl's personality, while interesting, was not made to seem as immediately like able in the same way that Adnan's was. I felt that distance throughout the story."
Yup. Bowe comes off as rather flat and dull to me, which of course could be his mental issues. But I just don't find him fascinating. It could also be because I have zero fascination with anything involving the military, which is about as opposite from me as anything can get, but it sounds like others have this problem too. And SK not doing the interviewing also made me not really care--Mark B wasn't exactly interesting to listen to either.
"I hope they find something that lets them tell a real story like season 1 without the pitfalls that they were pretty obviously trying to avoid. But if the solution is just to take well-covered stories of the recent past and pour over them in 10-20x detail that you'd get from a 60-minutes piece, then it's just going to be a very different show than I think most of its listeners are expecting."
Hear, hear.
I don't have high hopes for season 3 at this point--I kinda feel like they were so burned with season 1 that they have to make it less interesting for the audience so that Reddit drama doesn't happen, they have to pick a situation where a bunch of private citizens aren't being stalked for information....and doing that while still keeping the audience didn't work so well this time.
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:41 AM on April 4, 2016
I think they just ended it here because 12 episodes seems to be what's in the budget. Last year they did 12 episodes and this time they also did 12 episodes except one of them was a two parter.
"It was long form reporting on a topic i just wasn't interested in, and I'm not sure why Koenig was. It also suffered from the interview with Bergdahl not being done by her."
"I also feel that Bergdahl's personality, while interesting, was not made to seem as immediately like able in the same way that Adnan's was. I felt that distance throughout the story."
Yup. Bowe comes off as rather flat and dull to me, which of course could be his mental issues. But I just don't find him fascinating. It could also be because I have zero fascination with anything involving the military, which is about as opposite from me as anything can get, but it sounds like others have this problem too. And SK not doing the interviewing also made me not really care--Mark B wasn't exactly interesting to listen to either.
"I hope they find something that lets them tell a real story like season 1 without the pitfalls that they were pretty obviously trying to avoid. But if the solution is just to take well-covered stories of the recent past and pour over them in 10-20x detail that you'd get from a 60-minutes piece, then it's just going to be a very different show than I think most of its listeners are expecting."
Hear, hear.
I don't have high hopes for season 3 at this point--I kinda feel like they were so burned with season 1 that they have to make it less interesting for the audience so that Reddit drama doesn't happen, they have to pick a situation where a bunch of private citizens aren't being stalked for information....and doing that while still keeping the audience didn't work so well this time.
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:41 AM on April 4, 2016
...astronauts taking off their helmets in space.
No, I liked it much more than not and there was a lot of this that I didn't know the first thing about so much (the two women drumming up interest for the search for Bowe (for example) or the rigors of Coast Guard boot camp.)
I look forward to whatever they decide to do next - there was a suggestion that it should be about Paul LeRoux .
posted by From Bklyn at 5:19 AM on April 5, 2016 [1 favorite]
No, I liked it much more than not and there was a lot of this that I didn't know the first thing about so much (the two women drumming up interest for the search for Bowe (for example) or the rigors of Coast Guard boot camp.)
I look forward to whatever they decide to do next - there was a suggestion that it should be about Paul LeRoux .
posted by From Bklyn at 5:19 AM on April 5, 2016 [1 favorite]
I liked this episode! And the season. It's definitely not the same thing as Serial season 1 and I can see why folks are disappointed. But I really appreciated it for what it is.
Which is that it was long form reporting about what it's like being a soldier in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. What the modern military is like. The dangers and frustrations. All told through the lens of this weird story about Bergdahl, an unsatisfying story at that. But his betrayal and fecklessness created a weird sort of crisis in the military, a perturbation of the brothers-in-arms, and that results in an interesting story about how soldiers work together. To never leave a man behind, to both harshly judge and sympathize with someone who chooses to desert, to try to process the situation with a complex and slow bureaucracy. Serial season 2 uncovers a lot of interesting stuff about military culture in its reporting and I'm thankful for it.
It even sort of works that Bergdahl himself is not interviewed by Koenig. It removes him from the center of the story, lets this season be more about all the people around the Bergdahl case, the military in general.
posted by Nelson at 8:04 AM on April 12, 2016 [2 favorites]
Which is that it was long form reporting about what it's like being a soldier in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. What the modern military is like. The dangers and frustrations. All told through the lens of this weird story about Bergdahl, an unsatisfying story at that. But his betrayal and fecklessness created a weird sort of crisis in the military, a perturbation of the brothers-in-arms, and that results in an interesting story about how soldiers work together. To never leave a man behind, to both harshly judge and sympathize with someone who chooses to desert, to try to process the situation with a complex and slow bureaucracy. Serial season 2 uncovers a lot of interesting stuff about military culture in its reporting and I'm thankful for it.
It even sort of works that Bergdahl himself is not interviewed by Koenig. It removes him from the center of the story, lets this season be more about all the people around the Bergdahl case, the military in general.
posted by Nelson at 8:04 AM on April 12, 2016 [2 favorites]
Catching up two months later, I just want to add one more voice of support in case anyone from the show or involved with this case comes across this thread.I loved this season every bit as much as last season. And if it didn't have that "whodunnit" suspense, I think in some ways that's to its credit. The hyper surrounding the first season seems kind of exploitive to me in retrospect, though I'm sure it wasn't intentionally so. People got so caught up that it started to feel like cult entertainment, like a weird obessive and possessive fandom arose around this case that involved real people. I got caught up in the mystery as much as anyone else I guess, but I feel weird about it. These things did not happen for my entertainment, you know?
This season, without that mystery aspect, seems more respectful of the people whose stories are being told. The message of both seasons seems to be "don't be so quick to judge," and I think Bowe Bergdahl's story was absolutely worthy of this slower-judgement approach. Maybe the moreso because the facts were not really in dispute in this case, which really emphasizes how the same set of facts can lead to such different judgements of what someone can be blamed for and what punishment they deserve depending on your point of view.
I did like and empathize with Bowe throughout (not without a pang at the memory of my own embarrassing Ayn Rand phase and youthful romanticism). And I learned so much about the realities of life in the military, life in Afghanistan, the ways in which a peace process that everyone wants can fail, why this war just won't end. It was a character study rather than a mystery, sure, but a beautiful one, a portrait of a human being who is imperfect like the rest of us, but whose mistakes had geopolitical consequences. It's tragic.
For what it's worth my conclusion was that Bowe has absolutely been punished enough already. He's the butterfly that flapped his wings and caused a hurricane. He had no idea what he was setting in motion, and the hurricane flattened him.
I'll follow his story in the news with a lot more sympathy from now on. I'll appreciate the delicacies of international diplomacy and the realties of war better. And I'll tune in to next season of Serial for sure.
posted by OnceUponATime at 12:23 PM on June 9, 2016
This season, without that mystery aspect, seems more respectful of the people whose stories are being told. The message of both seasons seems to be "don't be so quick to judge," and I think Bowe Bergdahl's story was absolutely worthy of this slower-judgement approach. Maybe the moreso because the facts were not really in dispute in this case, which really emphasizes how the same set of facts can lead to such different judgements of what someone can be blamed for and what punishment they deserve depending on your point of view.
I did like and empathize with Bowe throughout (not without a pang at the memory of my own embarrassing Ayn Rand phase and youthful romanticism). And I learned so much about the realities of life in the military, life in Afghanistan, the ways in which a peace process that everyone wants can fail, why this war just won't end. It was a character study rather than a mystery, sure, but a beautiful one, a portrait of a human being who is imperfect like the rest of us, but whose mistakes had geopolitical consequences. It's tragic.
For what it's worth my conclusion was that Bowe has absolutely been punished enough already. He's the butterfly that flapped his wings and caused a hurricane. He had no idea what he was setting in motion, and the hurricane flattened him.
I'll follow his story in the news with a lot more sympathy from now on. I'll appreciate the delicacies of international diplomacy and the realties of war better. And I'll tune in to next season of Serial for sure.
posted by OnceUponATime at 12:23 PM on June 9, 2016
Being British, Bergdahl's story got very little coverage over here so I recently discovered this and listened with relatively fresh ears and found it an interesting series overall, giving an insight into a world about which I know very little. It dragged a little in places and had no real hooks to keep dragging you back in but I was interested enough to keep listening.
One little topical snippet I picked up on listening to it in December 2017 rather than back in March 2016 is that in the last episode Sarah interviews the man who was General McChrystal's Intelligence Chief back in 2009, none other than Michael Flynn...
posted by jontyjago at 2:57 AM on December 4, 2017
One little topical snippet I picked up on listening to it in December 2017 rather than back in March 2016 is that in the last episode Sarah interviews the man who was General McChrystal's Intelligence Chief back in 2009, none other than Michael Flynn...
posted by jontyjago at 2:57 AM on December 4, 2017
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posted by aureliobuendia at 10:05 AM on March 31, 2016 [3 favorites]