First things first: I thought the audio quality of the second episode of Undisclosed was much improved, and I didn’t notice any of the presenters talking too fast this time, so thumbs up to that.

As the first was about Adnan’s day, this episode was about Hae’s day, and called into question many, many of the things we’d been assuming were true. If it’s about anything so far, Undisclosed is about the unreliability of memory and the ways in which witnesses can’t really be trusted to have remembered the facts.

None of this is terribly surprising, but when the legal system (and this case in particular) is so determined to keep relying on sworn witness statements, it’s good to be reminded of it. In fact, Serial itself might well have spent more time on this – made it more of a theme – because the very first episode began with the notion that Adnan Syed is in prison because he couldn’t remember what he was doing in one twenty minute period six weeks before he was asked about it.

The first episode of Serial began with that question: could you remember what you were doing six weeks ago, if asked? Obviously, it depends on whether you were doing something particularly memorable; or whether your life is pretty regular and has routines.

Say, for example, you remember the day vividly because you happened to be co-coaching the school wrestling team, and you wanted the more experienced coach to be at the match with you, but they didn’t turn up? You’d remember that, especially if it made you anxious, vividly. This was one of the key points in the original trials, and in Serial itself. Why did nobody check, then, whether there really had been a wrestling match on January 13? Turns out, there wasn’t. The match that Hae didn’t turn up to was the week before, on January 5th. That’s your ineffective assistance of counsel, right there.

What does this mean? It means that our ideas about the time-line of Hae’s last day are wrong. It means that a witness was mistaken. It means that there was a pattern to Hae’s behaviour, that this previously reliable and responsible girl suddenly let a friend/colleague down. Why? Maybe because of her intense involvement with her new boyfriend?

One thing that does interest me was that there was apparently a teacher who was the liaison between staff, students, and police. This teacher was close to Hae and was apparently planning a trip to France with her. This, I want to know more about. Was it a school trip? With a group of students who would by then have graduated? Or was it a private holiday? A teacher with a student? I think we need to know.

The famous local news clip, showing Hae posing for indoor hockey footage and being interviewed, was also supposed to have taken place on the 13th. Only nobody mentioned it, talked about it, or remembered it. Turns out, that was almost certainly the week before, too.

We still don’t know what happened. But we do apparently know that a lot of what we thought we knew is wrong. Which throw loads more reasonable doubt into the case, but doesn’t provide Adnan with anything convincingly exculpatory.