The Jinx

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Mister Tee
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Re: The Jinx

Post by Mister Tee »

dws1982 wrote:
I regret, though, no one from here on will be able to experience it in quite the amazed way we viewers did last night.
Which is why I may not watch it now. I had been meaning to get the episodes, but hadn't got around to it. Even considered it when I was down with the flu last week. But I never got around to it, and then suddenly on Sunday night I saw some things on Twitter that spoiled it. With the ending (both real-life and on the show) a part of the news and public consciousness now, I just don't know how it'll play.
I was out last Friday night with some friends (including, it turned out, that person related to Kathie Durst) and recommended the series. One said she planned to binge-watch it shortly -- but by Sunday evening, not having yet got around to it, she was posting to Facebook about what she'd seen all over the web. So you're not alone in this.

But do note that I, and many others, were recommending the series prior to Sunday (after the first two episodes, really). The zeitgeisty element is removed for you, but it's hardly worthless without it -- in fact, it's completely absorbing
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Sonic Youth
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Re: The Jinx

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Big Magilla wrote: The "I did it" revelation may not even be allowed at his trial, assuming there is one, for the simple reason that he had expectations of privacy in going to the bathroom.
Unless he was in his own house, I don't see how that defense would stick.
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dws1982
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Re: The Jinx

Post by dws1982 »

I regret, though, no one from here on will be able to experience it in quite the amazed way we viewers did last night.
Which is why I may not watch it now. I had been meaning to get the episodes, but hadn't got around to it. Even considered it when I was down with the flu last week. But I never got around to it, and then suddenly on Sunday night I saw some things on Twitter that spoiled it. With the ending (both real-life and on the show) a part of the news and public consciousness now, I just don't know how it'll play.
Big Magilla
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Re: The Jinx

Post by Big Magilla »

I didn't watch it but it's hard to miss the news coverage.

Durst was diagnosed as having mental problems in 1953 when he was ten. They've only gotten worse over time. I don't think it's so much as he wants to get caught as he likes to play cat and mouse. The "I did it" revelation may not even be allowed at his trial, assuming there is one, for the simple reason that he had expectations of privacy in going to the bathroom. Even if it does, the defense will be that he was being ironic/sarcastic, not making an admission. I think the handwriting on the envelopes is far more damaging though his sleazy lawyers will provide experts to cast doubt on its authenticity. The L.A. D.A.'s office doesn't exactly have the smartest prosecutors on its payroll. Durst has had incredible luck with botched investigations and prosecutions in the past. His 2001 trial in Texas ended with him found not guilty of murdering his neighbor even though he admitted to having killed and dismembered him, claiming it to have been self defense. He supposedly got away with it because the skull was never found to determine the projection of the bullet.

I hadn't realized that Durst was the character played by Ryan Gosling under a different name in It's All Good. I didn't particularly care for that one despite the excellent acting especially of Kirsten Dunst as the murdered wife. It might be interesting to re-watch now in light of all these new revelations.
Mister Tee
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The Jinx

Post by Mister Tee »

I don’t know how many of you watched the HBO series The Jinx, but, even if not, you’ve likely seen the explosion in media over the past 36 hours, connected to both last night’s finale and the sudden arrest of central focus Robert Durst. If you did watch, maybe you share the utter amazement many of us have had since this time last night, when the series ended with one of the great “Holy shit!” moments in any recent work I can recall.

It’s total happenstance I’m even watching the show. I’m not an HBO subscriber, but Time Warner offered me three free months, so I took the opportunity to gorge on as much Veep/Girls/Looking/John Oliver/Togetherness as I could manage. The Jinx just happened to fall within this window.

I’d seen the Ryan Gosling fictionalized version of the story a few years back, but I don’t remember the local case in real time – surprising, because it actually comes startlingly close to various areas of my life. The station where Durst’s wife supposedly boarded a NY-bound train is where my parents lived for many years, including at the time; the Dursts’ NY apartment is literally around the corner from me (though the disappearance came before I arrived here); and, I found out just last week, a long-time friend is a fairly close relative to the presumed-dead wife. This is all newly-acquired knowledge; going into the series, the facts of the case, as laid out by Andrew Jarecki, were mostly new to me – so much so that my jaw dropped several episodes ago, when I found out that his friend/confidant Susan Berman had been murdered just before she was about to be interviewed by the Westchester County police.

I didn’t realize at the time, but a dropping jaw was about to become my regular reaction to the show. Last week, as I’m sure most of you know by now, Jarecki uncovered what seemed pretty staggering evidence – a letter in Durst’s hand with an address (including a misspelling of “Beverly Hills”) that matched an anonymous note sent to the police telling them about Susan Berman’s dead body. When news of Durst’s arrest broke yesterday morning, most of us spent the day assuming it was occasioned by the revelation of this letter. And last night’s closing episode did show Jarecki confronting Durst on the subject. Durst actually did a respectable job of feigning ignorance, saying they looked similar but he knew he wrote one but not the other. He didn’t have an answer, though, when Jarecki showed him just the two versions of the word “Beverley” (the misspelling) in isolation, and asked him which one he wrote. Durst’s speechless reaction seemed a perfectly neat, strong ending.

But, as most know, it wasn’t the end. Durst, his microphone still on (as it had been in a previous episode, which now seemed almost novelistic foreshadowing), stumbled into the bathroom and grumbled to himself what sounded to most of us like full acknowledgement – starting with “Well, there it is: you’re caught”, and ending with the now infamous “I killed them all…of course”. This closing moment was one of the most startling I’ve ever encountered -- my earlier jaw-drops seemed puny by comparison. I truly shouted out “Holy shit!”, and sat there staggered for several minutes. Presumably many of you have seen it by now, but if you weren’t watching in real time, you just can’t fathom what a jolt it was.

There are going to be a ton of questions, for Jarecki (like, does his manipulation of the time-line make any of this less damning than it appears), but mostly about Durst. Why did he ever agree to these interviews? He’d eluded punishment for 30 years; why stir the hornet’s nest? Why did he even send that anonymous note to the police? The kindliest interpretation is, though he’d had to kill Berman for self-preservation, he retained enough affection for her not to want to have her body decompose for days on end. But maybe there’s another: that old chestnut about the killer wanting to be caught. This is a guy who got picked up (for murder) ten years earlier because he shoplifted a sandwich when he had $500 in his pocket. You get a sense of him playing a double-game – like “I have to try and stay free, but I’m giving you incompetent bastards every opportunity to nail me”. Even his final words last night – the contempt with which he adds “of course” after “I killed them all” – seems to say, Hasn’t it obvious for a long time? What’s kept you people from punishing me?

Anyway…amazing television – as riveting a dramatic experience as I’ve had in some time. It’s of course worth watching if you missed it. I regret, though, no one from here on will be able to experience it in quite the amazed way we viewers did last night.
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