re: S-town: New podcast from makers of Serial

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I found myself constantly changing my perception of the cousins and Tyler the more I listened.

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Yea, I probably wouldn't recommend it to too many friends as if they ask me what happens in it or what it's about, there's really not much to say when you look at the entire series as a whole.

However, John B was interesting-enough to me and TAL (per usual) produced it in such an impressive way that I found my interest maintained throughout. As you mentioned, nothing (and really no one) in this series was as they seemed.

I grew up in rural alabama. Pretty much every rural county has a John McLemore. Super smart but shiftless heir to a prominent family's aging landed wealth but lives like poor white trash. Vaguely gay, crazy as a shite house rat, and pisses and moans about everything.

Most of them, like John B, should have sold all their shite decades ago and took their millions and moved to San Francisco or some place where they would be happy. Bibb County is no place for a closeted gay high functioning autist.

You can't believe any of the shite that people in those situations rumor monger about. Recall the very beginning of the podcast. I got the sense John B may have been buying some gold off television commercials or the internet in an effort to convert his remaining cash to something that was "unbanked." But I doubt it was very much money. I pretty much guarantee he blew most of what was left in that family's money. No McLemore had been gainfully or profitably employed in decades.

But to the Goodsons, assuming they found anything, it may have given them enough to blow on a car or down payment on some trailer or Jim Walter home.

I know which school you are talking about.

I really like it. I can understand people who felt like it slowed toward the end when the whole murder investigation petered out, but I found the whole thing strong.

I love character studies, though, and John B (and the rest of the characters) were pretty compelling. The producers did a good job of unfolding new facets of the characters with each episode, making you question previous assumptions and such. I especially liked when the interviews started revealing some of the "softer" sides of John B's personality from past acquaintances (the Woodstock clerk).

I currently work in a fairly burnt out, impoverished town, and also grew up around the same... so a lot of the characters were eerily familiar. I actually have some clients currently who have an eerily similar relationship to John B and Tyler.

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He, like many people today, were obsessed to the point of depression with the fearmongering of certain political parties and the media likes to propagate

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How much of his obsessions/depressions were related to his potential mercury poisoning though? It sounded like the symptoms were fairly consistent with some of his characteristics. Although, he only went to this extreme later in life, so the point may be null.

Should I feel bad for laughing at uncle jimmy?

It's a damn shame we live in a world where Kim Kardashian had her own reality show and John B neever did.

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I can understand people who felt like it slowed toward the end when the whole murder investigation petered out, but I found the whole thing strong

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The most interesting part if it to me, at least aside from John B, was the episode that featured the gay nurse John befriended on the party lineor chat room or whatever it was. Of all the people they talked to, he seemed most credible and most in tune to what made John B click.

In chapter 2. John seems like a fish out of water in Woodstock...yet, oddly enough, he fits right in there.