Sure, people were homophobic. This meant that they didn't actually suspect people they actually knew of being gay.

Yes, exactly this.

The bullies talk about how they, and one of their fathers, thought Will was "queer," and they are serious about it.

"Douchebag" predated "douche," in my memory at least.

My memory of this time is that "queer" was not an insult boys seriously threw at each other. The idea of being gay was still so strange and scary-seeming that you just wouldn't get a whole town thinking of a pre-adolescent boy as "queer" the way this show wants us to believe the whole town thinks about Will.

Houses tended to come with phones, IIRC.

It was a time when what happened on MTV stayed on MTV.

John McEnroe was famous for his "You cannot be serious" outbursts before 1983. There are a lot of anachronisms on this show — "is he off his meds?" stuck out like a sore thumb, for instance — but "seriously" isn't one of them.

Having no blood at all on him could be plausible. Being covered in blood would be plausible. But having just a bit of blood on him should seem weird. Sure, the cops wouldn't want to pursue it, but you'd think they would comment on it to each other at least once.

Oh, I think he has a lot to hide. I think he will turn out to be either responsible for, or at least aware of, whatever happened in the victim's life to make her the way she was. But if he killed her and was able to sound so ignorant of what had happened on the phone, then wouldn't he have been capable of seeming…

The time frame is actually pretty tight. If he picked the girl up around 11, spent at least an hour with her before going to her apartment, spent what looked like a further hour fooling around with knives before having sex with her, and got interviewed at the police station around 4am after spending what must have…

The timeline is already kind of implausible. I mean, somehow between 11 pm and 3am (at the latest, because it was 4am when Nas finally got booked at the police station), Nas took some mysterious drug, drank alcohol for the first time and took more drugs, fell asleep, and woke up pretty much sober. Among a lot of other…

No. I'm sorry but Box was frustrated to the point of anger at Nas's refusal to talk to him. However things work in real life this is a scripted drama and if it shows a detective intentionally picking out a shirt that says "Harvard" it's because the writers want to tell us something about Box.

No. He sounded genuine on the phone when he assumed the cops were calling because she had done something wrong. If he turns out to the be the killer I'll call bullshit on that.

No one except Nas knows where he found the knife. He had it on him at the station, remember?

So is reading the Miranda rights, which we weren't shown. I think you are taking this show too seriously; you talk about the actors as if they were real people.

I don't think he's the murderer but I'm pretty sure the show isn't done with him yet.

It just meant Box was going ahead and formally charging him.

I get the desire to be supportive of Winona Ryder. I like her just fine. But blaming her acting on the way her role here was written doesn't cut it with me. Ryder could have added nuance to the part, but she didn't. She doesn't come across as a hysterical mother; she comes across as a beautiful actor playing an idea…

Will says, "He's not coming, is he?" It's pretty clear they are divorced and the mom is yelling at the dad on the phone.