Trouble in "Serial" land?

The prodigious podcast is suddenly switching to every other week — apparently so they can absorb all the criticism, do more research, procure more interviews, and tweak the script in the story of Bowe Bergdahl:

“There are more paths we need to go down,” [said executive producer Julie Snyder.] “Since we started broadcasting the show, we have gotten more people willing to talk, and because of that, it has opened up more avenues of reporting.” She declined to comment on whom those interviews were with, or what additional reporting the show needed to pursue. “We have narrative developments,” she said. “I hesitate on calling them news developments.”

There's also the fact that the show is not doing as well as the last season, the one about an imprisoned man and a murder we'd never heard of. Shifting to Bergdahl is telling us about somebody we already knew and had already, perhaps, processed into a kind of oblivion. Did we really want to pull him back into our attention and, week by week, hour by hour, take some differing complicated perspectives on him?

The characters in both seasons are mysterious men. We can wonder who is this guy? But in season 1, there was the solidity of knowing a young woman really was murdered and a young man really was suffering the punishment, and the mystery was whether he's the murderer. In season 2, we know the external reality of what the man did. That part is solid. The mystery lies in why he did it and what it meant to him. He's not been punished yet (though we might decide his suffering in captivity was punishment enough, so let's leave him alone). It lies in the future, what the legal process will give him. His mental state will play some part in that determination. But we'll see that unfold in the news as his trial proceeds.

Why would we want the alternative viewings of the mind of Bergdahl as managed and manipulated by the "Serial" crowd? I think the answer should be: Because there's a fascinating, delicate art to the the "Serial" presentation. But when art is about real-life facts subject to dispute, especially about current events, there's a lot of static between you and the artist. It can make you want to turn the dial to another channel.

ADDED: Saying that about art made me think about this, a quote from David Bowie that I'd read earlier this morning on Facebook. You can see that I commented over there, linking to the comments section of an old post of mine in which my ex-husband quoted Oscar Wilde: "Views are held by those who are not artists." That old post, by the way, links to 2 other posts, one of which quotes me quoting myself in my own comments section — recursive enough for you? — saying something about Bob Dylan that caused an uproar back in 2005: "To be a great artist is inherently right wing...." Lots of my current husband in the comments there, 4 years before I met him, talking about Bob Dylan, saying things like: "I thought Ann's quote was very smart - nearly brilliant" and "Seriously, with her aversion to politics and her ability to tweak the self-satisfaction and dogmatism of diverse groups, don't you agree that AA just might be the '66 Dylan of this new blogging medium, albeit sober? She is clearly an inspired artist hitting her stride."