Serial is a podcast about murder mysteries and finding clues and evidence about the murder. The producers of Serial are: Sarah Koenig and Julie Snyder, Sarah is the host and narrator of the podcast. Serial Season 1 was about the murder of Hae Min Lee, The one who killed her was Adnan Syed; a muslim boy who is still in prison to this very day but there were some catches and people who think Adnan did not kill Hae and maybe someone else killed her. 

The start of the very first episode, it had me rather confused because at first you don't know what is going on until you proceed further and this is only Season one. The first episode introduces the people of what happened in january of 1999 where we get stories from different people like Jay (someone Adnan knew) and Asia (Adnan's friend). 

The second episode, Sarah talks about the break up between Hae and Adnan and I thought of their relationship to be rather tough as they both have to keep it a secret from their families. They did have it easy at first when they started passing notes, sneaking off and teased each other. Adnan’s mom finds out about them dating and goes to the prom and drags him out of the relationship. This is where it got confusing, They broke up and Adnan was heart broken and humiliated which is reasonable and believable. The states case they said “Adnan was heartbroken and humiliated when Hae broke up with him so he killed her. First of all i say thats BS thats not very convincing and there was no evidence in there or anything specific in that statement. 

The third episode talks about a man named Mr.S and Leakin park, Mr.S is known for having a record for being a streaker (meaning Decent exposure). He discovered Hae’s body in Leakin park when he went into the woods to urinate. Leakin park was known for its body count of 68 since 1946 and its about an hour drive to the city and Adnan has never been there. He drinks whisky and he works. He did say he never pee’d in the woods which was a bit odd and he also said “I was gonna go back further”. He might be bluffing or switched to rum. The evidence Sarah and a detective found were how far Mr.S went into the woods which was 127ft, There was a sign, a liquor bottle, rope, a condom wrapper, shell casings (bullets, blockbuster videos, cans and bottles and brandy which was another bottle. 

When you go deeper and deeper into the first season it starts to get rather interesting. Episode 5 Route talk had me thinking a lot, would it be possible to drive from woodlawn high to best buy in 11 minutes and 38 seconds? Even if this was a challenge Sarah was determined to accept this challenge from Adnan. Later in the episode in the podcast they said that Jay saw Adnan with red gloves, red gloves huh? That's a little hard to believe but it had me a little confused. This can get bad for Adnan because they said Adnan handed the phone to Jay. Even if they drove all the way to best buy the cell record doesn't match (it didn’t ping any of the towers) which makes it more confusing, at least for me. Where it got disturbing in Serial Episode 5 Jay talks about how Hae was killed like, “She tried to apologize while he strangled her, He wrapped his hands around her and she kicked”, that got me on edge as i could imagine that happening in my head.

Episode 6 The case against Adnan Syed goes to more of how the day went before Hae Lee died. There was evidence against Adnan which included him asking Hae for a ride, writing a frustrated letter, A note Adnan wrote saying “I’m going to kill” and 3 calls. Who could the calls be? I don't know. The neighbor's daughter sees Adnan popping the trunk open revealing the body and she said “my friend Adnan showed me the body” which can be a clear piece of evidence that Adnan killed Hae. There's more to this and it doesn't conclude there. Cathay knows Jay sees Adnan and Jay acting suspiciously which can be enough for her to tell they did something and Jay was acting rather weirdly. It gets a little more intense when Jen called looking for jay but Adnan picks up the phone. There was one main focus through the podcast which is the smoking gun call and that call is…”The Nisha call”. The nisha call was a main piece of evidence that can put Adnan and Jay in the bad as Adnan calls her a lot but they say her phone didn’t have an answering machine but who called her?

Episode 10 was a little bit my cup of tea, it was more of Adnan’s Lawyer messing up. The reason I said this is because she didn’t do what she had to do like argue against the cell records and things like that and it was a bit funny for me. Adnan's Lawyer Ms.Gutierrez messed up with the trials here's why. In the first trial she drew suspicion on other suspects who were involved with the murder but it didn’t really do much. She works non-stop and cares a lot for most of her cases including Adnan's case. The second trial she messed up big where she tried to show the court that someone else killed Hae and she targeted Jay and keep in mind it was funny for me but hearing her voice was just annoying and pretty much why the second trial didn't go well. The judge didn't like her because of how annoying she was and she confused things and didn’t make things clear. She did however do some great things for Adnan. Jay was part of the trial but he took awhile to answer and he lied and yes Jay is a liar. The other reason the trial wasn’t successful was because of her outbursts and she's offensive and again she's annoying which can make her look like the most hated person. She even complained about Jay’s plea to the court. Where she messed up was she didn’t attack the call logs, why? The call logs can be counter argued against and would be able to put Adnan at an advantage for his innocence but no, she didn’t do that. A twist to this was Jay was actually paid to lie and that's what got the trial to his favor. 

There were other things about her that made her not likable like she bullies people for their money and charges unfair amounts for the cases and she had diabetes, i would see this as her trying to scam people of their money to cure herself. She also managed to sneak cigarettes in the bathroom which got her fired i believe.    

Episode 11 rumors which are on Adnan and other things that others may have told about him and it explains what a psychopath is. Sarah did say that the community was judgemental and people were scared when Adnan got arrested and his people felt guilty towards him as they had let him down and failed to defend him. I did feel a little bad for them trying to get him out of the situation. Now before this, let me tell you about what a psychopath is. Psychopaths are smart, Evil, liars, They show no remorse, they gaslight you, and they can snap like they get really angry. I don't see Adnan as a psychopath but they were saying “he seemed hurt and pissed” which would make him look like a psychopath. There were times where he stole thousands of dollars and he was caught red handed by his mom, normally they would yell at their sons but Adnan's mom didn’t do that. She was just disappointed in him and when Sarah brought up the stealing story, he was ashamed and he said “This seemed really unfair to me” 

In the final episode of Serial (what we know), Sarah talks about what we got and know so far from the last 11 episodes and she asks this “Do i have an ending?”. This does mean she would have to figure out how to end the season, Adnan asked her if she had an ending. The episode starts with the question of “who had the phone?”, which was related with the Nisha call, who had the phone? It then goes towards Haes other boyfriend Don who he said “he didn't know what happened to Hae”. When a murder happens whether if its a married couple or normal couple its alwasys aimed at the boyfriend/husband and most people think they did it when, most times it would seem like yes but some times its not that. It cant be Don. There was a part in episode 12 that they found a note with Dons name on it, that still doesn't convince me to say he did it. Back to who had the phone, the one who had the phone was Jay, Jay had Adnan's phone but who called Nisha it couldn’t have been a butt dial or maybe Adnan called or someone accidently called Nisha. Even with the “come get me, Im at best buy” call they did say there was no pay phone at the best buy but on the blueprints for the plans there was a rectangle inside best buy which was a pay phone. Jay was a liar the whole time because he had many inconsistencies and kept changing up his stories and it confuses everyone. Jay said and he actually said “I helped bury the body”, wow. Jay was indeed involved with the murder by assisting Adnan bury Haes body and ditched her car at leakin park. 

The shocking part was Jay knew where Hae’s car was, how does he know where it was? The Nisha call already made Jay and Adnan look super bad. They even said, “It looks terrible for him” and that's towards Adnan. Jay was afraid of being put in jail and he never mentions Adnan threatening him but more of Adnan letting Jay know. He was even scared of the murdere and he was gonna get found out he was involved. The Nisha call and who had the phone puts Adnan and Jay well together but Adnan called a girl in silver spring that afternoon. Was it Nisha? I don't know, but Adnan put Jay on the phone with that girl. Another weird thing was Jay didn’t know Nisha. Adnan said “Nishas phone number was programmed into his phone and he got charged from AT&T. Towards the end the DNA tests that were done on Haes body, there were no matches and no other person would’ve murdered Hae. It can't be Don, It can't be Mr.S. 

Should you listen to Serial? For that i would say Yes, Because it would be good to hear a good story with good narration and a smart narrator, It can make you become interested in it if you go further and know what happened and get a lot of context of what they were saying. I would give this podcast about a 9/10 since it is good and got me well amazed by it and its definitely recommended that you give it a listen.