'The Jinx: Part 2' Ended Up Unweaving Its Own Story

The Jinx: Part 2 came to a close last week with the sixth episode, presumably ending the iconic true crime saga that began in 2015 with the original six-part series.

The show made a wave not only because it was fascinating and complex true crime — a filmmaker embedding himself with an aging New York real estate heir, Bob Durst, who had at the time gotten away with at least three murders. It also famously garnered Durst’s hot mic confession: “Killed them all, of course” in its final episode. It also spurred Durst to go on the run once again, in a tangled meta story of telling on yourself in every possible way.

But Jarecki, doesn’t simply sit back and rest on his laurels, although it’s impossible to ignore the overwhelming sense that his project is responsible for the legal consequences Durst faces in court during the second season. It would be both easy and boring for Jarecki to paint himself as the heroic, enterprising storyteller who gave this tale its relatively happy ending. Rather, Jarecki does the more difficult work of unraveling the simple narrative of Bob Durst as a lonely, broken killer whose reign of terror is coming to an end. Season two is ultimately about complicity: Bob Durst got away with what he did because the people around him benefitted from him and his money, more than they would by facing the truth of his crimes. In that way, Part 2 picks apart what Part 1 built in a delicate and productive way: we don’t get to walk away with the easy sense of one less bad guy getting away with it. Instead, we’re left with the lingering unease of knowing how many people helped him get away with it for so long.

There are the very obvious, very direct instances of bribery-buying a witness a new luxury car, for instance, or paying off all their bills for years on end. Then there’s the jury member from Durst’s first trial, who accepted a job from Durst afterward and seemingly basked in the secondhand glow of Durst’s enormous wealth. Those are people who are financially reliant on Bob Durst as a free man, though they clearly aren’t able to admit to themself how cut-and-dried their own behavior is in that regard.

More interesting are figures like Debrah Lee Charatan, Durst’s second wife, who has apparently made herself safe within Durst’s sphere of money and prestige, using that money to prop up her own real estate business as a part-time slumlord. Needless to say, she doesn’t come off in the best light by series’ end. Her connection with Durst seems largely practical, to buoy up her own ambitions and financial security while she effectively lived alongside a different romantic partner. But the facade of a marriage, of a dutiful wife, enabled her to be what she wanted to be-and while she defended and supported Bob through years of legal proceedings, she was really defending herself.

So much of Part 2 echoes that same theme: Durst was literally valuable to so many people, or dangerous to so many people, that enough of them were ready to lie or to remain conveniently silent over the years since Durst’s first wife suddenly vanished, with the immediate and lasting probability that Durst had killed her. Nobody gets to walk away with their hands clean, even after justice has been served — not even Jarecki, who worked with Durst for months on season one, providing a platform for a murderer to spin lies upon lies for six long episodes.

The Jinx: Part 2 retains the same edge of bitter humor and profound tragedy that shaped the first season. Some of this stuff is just so absurd, so transparent, and so horrible you have to be able to laugh. It’s damn good storytelling with a horrific mandate. It treads into difficult territory with frank, flat sincerity, rather than pushing for easy sensationalism.

After having watched Jarecki’s previous HBO documentary, Capturing the Friedmans, it’s clear that The Jinx as a whole involves much less factual ambiguity. However, The Jinx: Part 2 carries the same weight of living with the aftermath, of knowing full well how deeply people were scarred and still trying to move into the future carrying that pain.

Both seasons of The Jinx are streaming on Max.