Oh, Alice.
I love to respect driven, educated women who find a modicum of Podcast Fame, but I am really having trouble respecting Alice. It's seems to me that she had little to do with writing the script for the Adnan coverage, as so much of what she contributes just seems to be a bolster to Brett's starring role. I decided pretty early on that we should listen to the Pros Pod, shot glass in hand, and take a drink every time Alice exclaims, "That's a great point, Brett!" (Also acceptable: "And that's an interesting point, Brett!" or "I'm so glad you mentioned that, Brett!" You'd be hammered in no time.
Alice's backseat to Brett might not be so unappealing if there was actual banter between the two, but since we're running off a pre-written script of Great Gatsby length, we're stuck with no discourse, no differing opinions. Literally the only thing I've heard them semi-debate is Adnan's motivation for making sure Jay bought Stephanie a birthday present.
Maybe Alice just really loves guys named Brett. In addition to "Baby Brett-ney," her bio on The Federalist Society (ick) webpage points out that she served on the confirmation team to elevate Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.
Wow. Thanks for that Alice. Maybe if Jay Wilds had witnessed Kavanaugh being a Sexual Abuser, you would have believed the victims.
Adnan Coverage/ Ep 2
We continue in talking about Hae's (natural) swings of emotions, and hear about all of the many, many stressors in Adnan's life, as a tool to later claim these stressors caused him to snap, I'm sure. We don't hear anything about stressors in Hae's family life - her dad isn't in the US, so there might be some abandonment issues there. She's been shuffled around all over the country during her high school years for reasons that seem to be related to her mother's decisions about men. Hae mentioned her mother in her diary and seemed concerned about her. What else, besides Adnan, caused Hae's moods to swing? We don't know, and aren't given explanations from the Pros Pod.
We can't "know" Hae from her diary. We know what she was willing to write down on paper. We also know that there were thoughts and words typed and saved on a floppy disc, as Hae's brother testified at trial that she used this format to journal because of her snooping, and that she would take the disc with her in her car. The disc was never recovered. One has to wonder just how much more private and delicate those entries were.
The episode continues with Hae's breakup note to Adnan, the mean one, when she sounds pissed. Alice calls this a "mature letter." I disagree. It's more of a temper tantrum, and no judgement here. I'm sure their friends were all gossiping about their breakup, Adnan was pouting, and Hae was fed up.
Brett and Alice give us a bit more timeline for November and December, including the infamous back page of the breakup note with notes passed back and forth between Adnan and Aisha that has caused some to speculate whether or not Hae was pregnant or had gotten an abortion. Near Christmas, Hae gets into a fender bender that Alice refers to as a "traumatic accident" so she can postulate on how much Har trusted Adnan, since she called him to pick her up. Likely, we're being set up to be reminded later that the conclusion of the Pros Pod is that Hae still trusted Adnan and that he took advantage of that trust. I mean, I'm speculating here, because we are a long way off from hearing their theories... so they say.
So, the rest of the timeline moves us into the new year and whether or not Adnan knew Hae was dating Don. The crux of this content is that we really need to pin this down, right, to see if Adnan lied in his later statement to police in which he says he didn't know Hae had a boyfriend. Sarcasm intended.
What really grinds my gears is how much we heard about Jay's excusable lies in episode one. However, no time is spent on questioning the excus-ability of Adnan's potential lie to police after Hae went missing. There are several potential reasons Adnan would lie here: 1) He didn't know if Hae's mom knew she was seeing a college-aged guy and didn't want to rat her out. 2) There's a difference between "dating" and "boyfriend." We'll come back to this by the end of the episode, so Brett and Alice can drive the point home that, according to them, Adnan knew full and well the extent of Hae's mad passion for Don
But first, and this is where the art of persuasion and manipulation from Brett REALLY shines. We get into the timeline of the day of Hae's disappearance and Brett lays out for us a few witnesses who may or may not have seen Hae after school on the 13th. Stay with me. A couple of witnesses didn't remember the day of 1/13/99 accurately, because the date they were thinking of in their police interviews was actually 1/5/99 - the day of Hae's taped interview and the wrestling match she blew off. Part of me wonders: if the police believed the interview had taken place on 1/13, were they asking witnesses, "Do you remember the last time you saw Hae before she disappeared? It would have been the day she got filmed..." After all, according to Brett, two school Administators remembered the filming as happening on the 13th.
(I'll happily admit this is speculation, because if you don't believe the police work was shoddy, to put it kindly, then you wouldn't consider this plausible.)
So, here's Brett's assessment of Who Says They Saw Hae on 1/13 after school:
Debbie - talked to Hae after school, maybe as late as 3pm, near gym, and Hae has to go see Don.
ASIA - "You actually can imagine Asia sees Adnan at the library and then this murder happens later on." - Brett
Same Debbie from above- Is confused. (I don't disagree here.)
Inez Butler - teacher who saw Hae buy hot fries and apple juice which she sold near the gym. Hae tells her she had something to do but not to let the wrestling match bus leave without her. But, there was no match the night of the 13th and Hae was scheduled to work. She wrote the note to Don referencing the filming, but never gave it to him, as she bailed on the wresting match to hang with him instead.
Co-Manager of Wrestling Team- (conveniently) remembers the wrong details about the last day she saw Hae in the same way Inez Butler does...
Grand Scheme Quote from Brett: "...there is basically no one who saw Hae after 2:15 on the day she disappeared that we can believe because their memories... are all... flawed." (My note: Except Jay's.)
See what Brett has done here? In a section about who saw Hae and when they saw her, he's added in Asia's alibi testimony, which is only about Adnan, in order to discredit it later. At that point you, as the listener, already have a bug in your ear that Asia can't be trusted.
To wrap up, let's discuss Brett and Alice's analysis of AOL Instant Messenger or AIM, circa 1999, because apparently it was the best evidence that Adnan knew Hae was dating Don. Giant eyeroll.
Alice calls Hae's AIM Profile Super Public - well, she's wrong. It's only accessible if someone looks at it.
Brett talks about the importance of an AIM profile and claims Adnan and everyone would have seen this. Well, no. Only users of AIM would have seen this. This was not "everything" in 1999.
I graduated high school in 1999 and we had a family computer and a family email address in my house. This is how I got in trouble for communicating with a manager at the movie theater where I worked. He was in his mid-twenties. I knew my parents wouldn't approve, so I hit that shit and hid it well for awhile. In fairness this scandal happened in 1998, but either way. I didn't use AOL Instant Messenger until the fall of 1999 when I was away at college. It's fair to say that the popularity of AIM was in its infancy in early 1999, but no - we have to hear all of this bullshit from Brett so we can come back to Adnan being a big fat liar who lies about Hae and Don's relationship for nefarious reasons. Yet I'm sure before long Brett and will remind us again how easily we can explain away Jay's lies.
Brett - this was like "Facebook Relationship Status." Well, no. It's really apples and oranges if you think about the accessibility of Facebook in my palm everywhere I go vs the dial up internet in our parents' homes in 1999.
Alice - this was meant to be a billboard. Hae was free to proclaim her love online! Praise the Lord!
Leigh, with an eye-roll: HALLELUJAH
Someone tell me Brett made a great point about something so I can take a shot. I have a headache
ALMOST FINISHED, I PROMISE
1/12, night before Hae goes missing -
Brett says, quote, "In one of his many statements, Jay will later say that that night Adnan solicited his help in killing Hae and in fact, that night Adnan called Jay at his home." This is ammo for premeditation - I'm so curious to see where Brett lands on this in their final episodes.
Hae's at Don's at 10:30pm and Hae wants to skip school the next day. Don says no (he basically turns her down) as he has to work the next day, so she reluctantly leaves.
My big question: Why didn't Hae want to go to school the next day? Was something bothering her, or did she just want to spend time with Don.
But this isn't something Brett or Alice would ever address.
*this piece is an opinion piece and all opinions are my own
Comments