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Comment by regnull | Hacker News Reader

I was surprised that the journalists didn't drill into "terrible situation in his unit" claims. They just let it slide completely - and this is the key to the whole story. Why the situation was so bad? Also, I found his story full of WTFs - he's afraid to go back to his base after his escape, but then he decides to go and capture some bad guys (armed only with knife), but then he just surrenders to a bunch of taliban who somehow manage to locate him walking in the middle of the desert at night. I was really disappointed in this episode, they just left lots of BS unchallenged.

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I mean, but that's what the rest of the season is for right? This episode was merely a setup in order to describe the event/scenario, and we can only presume that the next episodes will dive more into detail to dissect the situation. The event already happened, we know what happened start to finish. It is precisely the details of 'why' that this season is after.

And correct me if I'm wrong, but I am pretty sure it was daylight the next morning when they spotted him in the desert.

I hope you are right - but to me it sounds like the "why" question is the key to the whole story, so they need to investigate it first. And they mentioned that in the next episode they will talk about the search efforts. As for the time of day he was captured - I might be wrong, but wasn't he walking it the dark looking for flashlights and listening to radio chatter just before that?

You're indeed wrong. Per the reported story, he got lost in the hills (didn't check his compass for two hours, which Koenig points out is a ... fairly rookie mistake), eventually made it out, but was in open desert by sunrise.

This is Serial. They devote a full season to each issue and it's supposed to be something controversial that people can discuss and theorize about between episodes. Season 1 was about a murder in Baltimore, and whether the convicted person actually committed this murder or not (still an open question for listeners (not necessarily the justice system), by the way; there wasn't a big reveal of proof one way or the other at the end of the season).

I would expect that Bergdahl's narrative will be examined more critically in subsequent episodes.

Dude its the first episode. There's something called pacing.

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