The Jinx Part Two Review: The Greatest True Crime Doc In History Continues
For my money, Andrew Jarecki's 2015 documentary series "The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst" is the greatest true crime documentary ever made. It has everything you could ever want in a documentary of that genre: a bizarre compelling subject at its center, class commentary, archival footage of his highly publicized murder trial, tons of access to the man himself, a discovery of new evidence in a separate case against him, a direct confrontation, and, famously, a jaw-dropping ending in which the subject confesses his crimes to himself after an interview because he didn't realize his microphone was still on. The scope of the story is truly incredible, and I remember devouring the news about Durst being arrested the day before the final episode aired.
Nine years later, Jarecki is back with "The Jinx: Part Two," which lays out exactly how Durst was caught and details his new trial for the murder of his best friend, Susan Berman. There are six episodes in this season, but HBO only sent out the first four for review, which feels like an odd decision. To use a Durst-ism, "I can't imagine" trying to write about the first season without seeing that explosive finale, so it seems weird to try to discuss this new season with two episodes still unseen. (This is especially true since — spoilers for real life — Robert Durst died in 2022, so I assume there can't be another season 1-level bombshell at the end of these episodes that has an impact on the real world in the same way.) But there's plenty to talk about from the first four episodes, and I'll do my best not to spoil any major details here.
A new protagonist
Part of the allure of "The Jinx" is that Robert Durst himself was the one who commissioned Andrew Jarecki to interview him. In Durst's view, he would have an opportunity to tell his side of the story, on the record, about the disappearance of his wife Kathie in 1982, the murder of Susan Berman in 2000, and the murder and dismemberment of his neighbor, Morris Black, in 2001. This squirrelly little guy, an ultra-rich New York real estate heir, had used his enormous wealth to ensure that he was a free man, and as the first batch of "The Jinx" episodes came to a close in 2015, the net tightened around him.
With Durst behind bars in "The Jinx Part Two," he's obviously not quite as dynamic a subject to follow. He doesn't disappear from the story entirely — Jarecki shows plenty of prison interview videos of Durst's friends and family coming to visit him and strategizing about his defense — but he does become something of a supporting player in his own story. Instead, a new character comes to the forefront: Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney John Lewin, the lead prosecutor in the case. "The Jinx Part Two" narrows its focus and essentially becomes a beat-by-beat breakdown of Lewin and his team trying to establish a watertight case against Durst. The show is still mesmerizing, but with its primary subject in prison, it's lost a little of the "anything can happen" juice of the original batch of episodes.
An obsession (presumably) comes to an end
That said, "The Jinx Part Two" is absolutely still worth watching, especially if you were as transfixed by the original as I was. (I went back and rewatched the original episodes before checking out these new episodes, and they hold up spectacularly well.) There are plenty of revelations in "Part Two" that I either didn't know or didn't remember from reading the news stories about Durst's arrest nearly a decade ago.
In the first new episode, we see footage of Kathie Durst's family members watching the final episode of "The Jinx," in which Robert Durst mutters "Killed them all, of course," to himself in the bathroom, and being able to feel like a fly on the wall in that room as that family listened to that audio for the first time is one of the most emotional experiences I've had watching anything in 2024 so far.
It's tempting to wonder if it was worth potentially risking the legacy of "The Jinx" to come back for more all these years later, but it's clear this story has (understandably) become something of an obsession for Jarecki, and the way he's framing "Part Two" — as a continuation, not a sequel, since the first episode is titled "Chapter 7" — gives me the feeling he's ready to put a final punctuation mark on this story he's been interested in for nearly 20 years. We'll see what surprises the final two episodes might hold, but in the meantime, "The Jinx Part Two" is a must-watch, revelatory continuation of the greatest true crime documentary ever made.
/Film Review: 7.5 out of 10
"The Jinx: Part Two" premiers Sunday, April 21, 2024, at 10:00-11:00 p.m. ET/PT on HBO and will be available to stream on Max. New episodes will debut subsequent Sundays at the same time.