Hello and welcome back to my blog about Court Junkie. The last post covered the first two episodes of Court Junkie and the narrative features of the podcast. Both episodes focused on the Melissa Calusinski case, which you can learn more about if you read my last post. Each episode focuses on a new case unless an old case that was covered has an update that was not discussed in the original podcast. The two episodes I have listened to since my first post covered two new cases about two different families. Even though the stories for each podcast are different, they all contain very similar narrative choices.
The two new episodes were about different families, one about a young couple going through a divorce where their child goes missing and one about a family who adopts their niece and claims to send her away to her non-existent grandmother. Both families neglect the missing child before their disappearance causing them to be main suspects. Similar to the Melissa Calusinski case both cases reach a conclusion, but these results are questionable. In the case where Gabriel Johnson goes missing during his parents’ divorce, the father blames the mother because of her neglect and threatening comments she made during their relationship. The last phone call between the father and mother ended with the mother saying she was going to hurt Gabriel and he was never seen again. Later, she claims to have given him up for a secret adoption to a family that does not exist, but swears she did not harm the child. This leads to the arrest of the mother, but the father does not feel justice has been served. In the second case about Erica Parsons we hear a story about a young girl who was reported missing two years later by her adoptive brother. The adoptive mother claims she went to live with her grandma, who police say does not exist. Stories of abuse then began to come out and the adoptive parents were arrested, but they tried to fight that no true proof came out to charge them with the sentence they had been given. These cases may be very different and differ from the Melissa Calusinski case, but they all focus on the idea that justice is not always served how it should be.
To show the injustice that comes from the legal system, narrator Jillian continues to use personal interviews, review court documents and transition with sad music. Jillian typically begins by summarizing the case for the viewers then brings in personal interviews and facts about the case to educate and connect wither her listeners. This seems to be a consistent trend in all of her episodes and I enjoy the consistency. When she summarizes in the beginning she always addresses information directly from the case, which makes it more believable and trustworthy. In Erica’s case she directly quoted the judge, which made helped connect me to the story. The only difference between the structure of the narration is that sometimes personal interviews and phone calls are harder to get for some cases than others. In Erica’s case her adoptive sister spoke on the phone with Jillian, but in Gabriel’s case voicemails and recordings were played instead. These elements always remind me that these cases actually happened to people and some of them are still struggling for the answers they deserve. The music is still consistent throughout all episodes because it helps to set the tone and to continue to show the readers that the mood is sad because injustice is involved. I enjoy how the music typically stays the same because now I have a connection to the song and it always reminds me that I am not listening to a story, but something that actually happened to someone. My favorite part of the court junkie podcast is Jillian’s ability to make her audience feel several emotions each episode. I often find myself feeling genuine sadness or confusion about the cases presented and it helps to keep me focused to want to listen more.
Court Junkie inspires me to want to create more emotion in my podcast because I don’t want my audience to feel bored and disconnected. Next podcast I want to make sure to use better music and more emotion like Jillian to connect with my viewers. To do this I want to use less of a script so that I don’t sound like I am directly reading off the page. Thanks to Jillian and Court Junkie I will be using these techniques in the future.
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The podcast “Court Junkie” shares similarities and differences with “Bear Brook.” Similar to “Bear Brook,” “Court Junkie” has one narrator and makes use of outside interviews to enhance the story telling and to give a broader perspective to the listener. A consistent narrator is valuable because it brings unity and cohesion to the different episodes, while having other perspectives, helps remove inherent biases present when only the narrator speaks. Further, music is used to provide consistency and to elicit feelings of confusion, sadness, and sympathy. It’s pretty clear to me why the use of music is so important. Getting a listener to feel real emotions and connect with the story the narrator is conveying on a deeper level, will keep the listener coming back.
“Court Junkie” is broken up into different cases and that is different from “Bear Brook.” In “Court Junkie” it seems that every episode (or every couple) has a regular story arch where events build on top of each other as you learn about the case and then eventually a conclusion is reached (even if that conclusion is questionable). The time it takes to build this suspense up and then conclude the story is much shorter than in “Bear Brook.” I’ve watched four episodes of “Bear Brook” and the questions I have and suspense that follows just keep building. I don’t know what conclusion will be reached or even IF a conclusion will be reached. I think there are reasons to create podcasts both of these ways. In the case of “Court Junkie,” I’m sure it’s satisfying to the listener to have resolution at the end of every episode and in the case of “Bear Brook,” the inconclusive nature of each episode keeps the listener coming back for more.
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