Over the Christmas break, I fell in love with a law professor from Wisconsin.

I wasn’t expecting this to happen, as you can imagine. But as I binged on Netflix’s Making a Murderer, gorging myself on Terry's entire range of chocolate oranges, I became mesmerised by the two lawyers representing accused murderer Steven Avery: Dean Strang and Jerry Buting.

It seems I wasn’t alone in my admiration.

1. The Eloquence of Dean Strang

Avery’s defence lawyers have become unlikely icons. To understand fully why this happened, I rewatched the show itself and, in the spirit of Strang and Buting, considered the evidence.

Making a Murderer doesn’t have a narrator. The closest it gets is Strang, who while driving his car, or sitting in his office beside a hurling trophy atop a filing cabinet, extemporizes on the failings of the American justice system with quiet eloquence.

“Most of what ails our criminal justice system lie in an unwarranted certitude on the part of police officers, and prosecutors and defence lawyers and judges and jurors that they’re getting it right. That they’re simply right. Just a tragic lack of humility of everyone who participates in our criminal justice system.”

It’s a documentary series which makes you partake in the injustice experienced by Avery and his family. You feel angry, sad, exasperated. But whenever you’re at the edge of absolute despair, Strang is there to refocus your frustration.

2. The Common Sense of Jerry Buting

While Strang functions as Making a Murderer’s graceful orator, his partner – Jerry Buting – is a man who likes to throw down the facts. He doesn’t just apply Occam’s razor; he shaves with it. Daily. He’s the one who connects the dots for the audience or, with a similar degree of precision, dismisses the evidence presented against Steven Avery.

Why wouldn’t Avery use the family’s car crusher to destroy Halbach’s car?

Why wouldn’t Avery use the perfectly-good working smelter to burn her remains than a small pit in his backyard?

He asks why the police’s special investigators didn’t question Haibach's roommate who hadn’t reported her missing after four days.

Why's there no DNA on the Toyota key apart from Steven Avery's?

Why are there no finger prints in the RAV4?

Strang rhapsodises on the plight of the individual snagged in the cogs of America’s vast justice system; Buting wants to know why you didn’t question the shady ex-boyfriend. Dream team.

3. They React Just Like Us

Watching Making a Murderer is an exhausting experience. You feel bewildered on a regular basis, and at times, Strang and Buting seem to be the only ones right there with you.

When the Manitowoc County Sheriff Ken Petersen talks on camera about how it would have been easier to ‘eliminate’ Steve Avery than to frame him, Strang reacts exactly like you do.

To refresh, this is what Peterson says when ask to clarify what he means by ‘eliminate’ Avery:

“If we wanted him out of the picture, like in prison or if we wanted him kill, it would’ve been much easier to just kill him.”

Credit: TrillCosby23 (imgur)

When Pamela Sturm testifies how, when searching the Avery estate, God led her to the RAV4 within 35 minutes, Buting says what we were all thinking.

“Not that I don’t believe that’s not possible. I just don’t believe her. She’s too weird. They went right to that thing.”

Right there with you, Jerry.

Probably the most perfect alignment of viewer and the Strang-Buting avatar is, of course, the moment Jerry finds the blood vial. It’s an incredible moment captured on film. You share in Buting’s euphoria. This tube contains Steven’s blood in liquid form, and the packaging has been opened. Furthermore, there’s a hole in the cap about the size of a hypodermic needle.

“Have you fallen on the floor yet?”

Yes, Jerry.

“Think about it Dean. If Labcore didn’t stick the needle through the top, who did?

“He knows where we’re going. Game on, exactly. Game on.”

4. They Have to Discount Aliens on the Way

Possibly my favourite moment is when Jerry Buting has to explain why alien intervention isn’t an equally credible proposition to police planting evidence, and somehow manages to keep his cool when the police officer giving testimony doesn’t quite get it.

Deputy Daniel Kucharski Calumet County was meant to be supervising Lenk and Coburn on the seventh search. When the prosecution asks if it was possible the key could've been planted, the deputy replies, "It's possible in the sense that aliens put it there." What follows is Buting's cross-examination:

Buting: There weren’t any aliens in the room, right?

Kucharski: Not that I know of.

Buting: So it being possible in the same way as aliens being possible isn’t a fair characterisation of what you meant is it?

Kucharski: I don’t understand.

Buting: Let me try it this way...

5. They Know How to Drop the Mic

In episode 5, Strang questions Sergeant Andrew Colborn.

He plays a tape of Colborn calling dispatch to run the licence plate SWH 582. Dispatch informs Colborn the car belongs to a missing person, one Teresa Halbach. He replies, “A ‘99 Toyota?” Dispatch confirms that to be year and make of Halbach’s car.

Strang asks how Colborn knew it was a ‘99 Toyota, if he wasn’t looking at the vehicle. Colborn replies, “I think she told me that.”

Strang cooly walks back to his desk and press play on the recording. Colborn is the only one to mention a ‘99 Toyota’.

There was no way he should be looking at the vehicle on November 3rd, because the first time the Toyota was reported to be found was two days later.

Play it again, Strang.