The Jinx Part Two reaches its conclusion. Did you stick with it?
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When we discussed The Jinx Part Two when HBO and Max released it in April, Sarah had an interesting theory: perhaps the series wasn’t made for the usual reasons of truth to power, investigation, or revelation. Instead, she posited, filmmaker Andrew Jarecki returned to his most famous well not to provide shocking new details or unearth even more bizarre crimes, but to perform an exorcism of sorts. Since the first iteration of The Jinx in 2015, the filmmaker behind Capturing The Friedmans has…not done much. Perhaps the landmark figure of “Baaahb” was holding him back. Perhaps making this show would free him.
There’s a moment in the show’s final two episodes (which were released for critics last week, after being held back from the original round of reviews) where we see a flicker of that. Jarecki is interviewing Lisa DePaulo, a journo who covered (among other illustrious cases) the wrongful death suit filed against Durst by the family of Kathleen McCormack, his first wife. His phone rings, and it’s the DA from Durst’s homicide trial. He makes an odd noise, hangs up, and says “Robert Durst is deceased.” You feel the air leave the room for a second. And then, you start to wonder if even that was a work.
We all knew it was coming, of course. Durst died over two years ago, which places this interview at late January, 2022. By then, we were all well aware that the capstone “confession” from the first show was cobbled together by editing, and that the first “season” of The Jinx arguably made HBO’s name in the true crime space. (Let’s just say the cable channel and streamer’s reputation is not that of, say, ID.)
Is that why I paused and rewound, to see when (and perhaps why) Jarecki left his out-of-camera interviewer seat and stepped into the frame just in time to receive this news? If I sound paranoid, it’s because this show made me that way.
Sarah, our podcast guest Andy Dehnart, and I had also wondered what else the show could bring us, given the ample coverage of Durst’s trial and the fact that he’s — as far as I know — still dead. The truth is that there is a little more insight to be gleaned — but again, I start wondering if that insight is actually there. The fifth episode (which you might have watched last night) deals mainly with the trial, and suggests that Durst put on a show as a failing, doddering mess in an effort to gain sympathy. That argument is seemingly bolstered by audio from jailhouse calls Durst made to his wife, Debrah Lee Charatan.
But we also know that Durst was arrested in 2015; his trial stretched for over a year, delayed by the pandemic. Was his jailhouse audio in which he sounded comparably hale and hearty from the same time period as his shaky and spectral appearance on the stand? Again, I don’t know — and I also don’t know if I would be wondering about this if I didn’t feel burned by the shenanigans of the first season. Add that to the likely pressure to come up with some more surprises this round, and face value doesn’t feel very valuable in Part Two.
After Durst dies, the focus turns to his victims. Just kidding! Even after he’s convicted and dead, his wizened figure still looms over the production, for better or for worse. The last hour or so is kind of a junk drawer of reactions and responses: Robert Durst’s family is still rich! Robert Durst had a lot of friends who seemed to sponge off him! His last wife was widely believed to be in the relationship for the money, and she’s bought a bunch of property and been branded a bad landlord in the years since! California law means that since Durst died prior to his appeal, his conviction has been vacated!
Meanwhile, the family of Kathleen McCormack is still angry with the Durst clan, but other than a civil case seeking money from his estate, they’ve seemingly moved past their now long ago tragedy. If there’s anyone I wanted to sit with for longer, it was them, but — unlike others, ahem — they seemed to realize there wasn’t much left to say.
It’s an interesting parallel, as it’s the fictional take on Kathleen’s death that started Jarecki on his journey: as you recall, Durst’s approval of his dramatic film, All Good Things, is what started him down this Jinx-y path. (It really says something about the ascendant star power of Ryan Gosling that more folks aren’t making Jinx jokes to/about him. What a world, where there’s basically a Durst Ken out there hosting SNL.)
That’s what I keep thinking about, that the McCormacks have — for their family, for their sanity — moved on, but Jarecki is still here. It’s always dicey returning to the ground that brought you a bounty, as everyone from Georges Lucas to Webber can confirm. And in Jarecki’s case, that means he’s doubly burdened by the power of the first series, as well as the editing bay questions that it raised. Eventually, every move he makes feels as suspect as that of his central figure.
By the conclusion of the sixth episode (which will air on HBO next week), you feel how intwined Jarecki and Durst are, even after the latter’s death. Any hopes that Jarecki has been exorcised are dashed, as he sends us a not-so-coded message as the final credits roll. Nina Simone’s “I Put a Spell on You” plays, an ominous, menacing song that doesn’t suggest resolution — it suggests a hex that can’t be lifted. Then you wonder, just for a second, if the show’s title was a prescient one, or a word made manifest. you wonder who here was truly jinxed in the end. And then you turn off the screen, and your life resumes. Lucky you.