The title of Netflix’s newest documentary show, “Making a Murderer,” takes on various meanings as it progresses. Moira Demos and Laura Ricciardi’s 10-part series, which premieres on December 18, looks at various alleged crimes of a man named Steven Avery. When the story begins, he’s a young troublemaker working at his family’s scrapyard in Manitowoc County, Wisconsin, a few miles outside of Green Bay. He and his family are not well liked in the town for reasons that are at times obvious and at other times completely obscured.What’s clear from the beginning is that Avery is not perfect. He gets in fights, screws around. He once killed a cat for no reason whatsoever, we’re told, and has spent some time in jail for burglary. He was also accused of flashing some people. The police, it could be said, know him well. But he’s also seemingly harmless, a messed up 20 year old, not too bright, hurdling toward adulthood with little prospects beyond the borders of his small town. He’s recently met a woman, a single mom, and they decide to get married. They later have more children and, by all accounts, he was a decent enough father and husband. We see pictures of the family, Avery laughing, trying to keep his kids from squirming out of his arms.That all changed on July 29, 1985. A 36-year-old woman named Penny Beerntsen was jogging on the beach near Lake Michigan when she noticed a man standing in her path. She passed him once and waved, she said. When she came back around, she saw him again. When she got closer, he did not seem to move, and when she tried to go around he followed, grabbed her, and pulled her into the woods.Avery, at the age of 22, was convicted in the rape of Beerntsen, along with other crimes, and served 18 years in prison before being exonerated by new DNA evidence. Back in society, he became a poster child for the failures of the justice system, especially when it became more and more clear that the Manitowoc County Police Department had knowingly convicted the wrong man. Avery makes speeches, poses for photos with the governor, and even gains the support of Beerntsen, the victim. A federal lawsuit was filed against the Manitowoc County Police Department, and state legislators pushed to file the Avery Bill, which would work to prevent wrongful convictions in the future.But then something strange happened. On the day the bill was to pass, a photographer for Auto Trader magazine named Teresa Halbach went missing. The last place she was supposed to be was meeting Steven Avery, to take pictures of a few cars the family had at their scrapyard.At this point, we’re only three episodes into the series (I’ve only seen the first four episodes as of this writing), but the main narrative track is clear. Is Avery guilty of murdering Teresa Halback? And if he is guilty, does that force us to look again on his previous crimes for which he was eventually found innocent and released? Avery’s entire story, involving the two crimes, is essentially background for the court case. Many things come in and out of focus, and I’ll refrain from mentioning them here because the shock of their revelation is important to the experience of viewing this show. No matter the outcome, one thing is immediately clear: Everything involving Avery, through both of his cases, signals a major collapse of due process. The Manitowoc County Police Department is guilty of major crimes against Avery, no matter of his innocence or guilt.Demos and Ricciardi, it seems, have been following this case for many years, and their dedication is evident — especially because, at least so far, Avery himself has not been a direct participant for reasons that are not revealed. He speaks to other journalists, and we hear his voice through prison phone calls with family members and lawyers, which are recorded, and through the lens of news cameras and recollections. Each episode is around one hour and is crammed with information, but so much has happened over four episodes that it’s hard to envision how they can fill six more without repeating information or veering into less interesting side-stories about family members. For the filmmakers living inside this story, there is the desire, I imagine, to want to include everything and recreate the trail of information exactly as they discovered it. But that can feel tedious and unnecessary to the viewer. For a show like this to work, there needs to be some scaling back and a focus on what’s important to the story they’re telling: Is Avery innocent or guilty?“Making a Murderer” is following in the footsteps of other serialized crime entertainment currently in vogue at the moment, including obvious ones like HBO’s “The Jinx” and the “Serial” podcast. But the way it’s released will make watching it a different kind of experience. With “Serial” and “The Jinx,” most people were listening or watching as they were being released, week to week. Each episode produced new bits of information and things to discuss. “Making a Murderer,” which is being dumped on Netflix all at once, can be watched in quick succession. People will not be following along as a group, which takes away from the pleasure derived from the kind of episodic, collectively encountered narrative other serialized shows offer. It will be interesting to see if “Making a Murderer” produces a conversation about the case, and more broadly about wrongful convictions and DNA testing, or if it will be consumed and quickly forgotten, like so many other things.
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