> I honestly felt like it did a terrible job of establishing much reasonable doubt and it just sort of... ends?

The goal of Serial wasn't to establish reasonable doubt. She was asked to look into the case, and she's reporting what she found. There was hope that there would be some conclusion, but it wasn't the expectation when she began the story.

As for the ending, what exactly would you want? I thought it was clear from the outset that it would be an open ended investigation, and the early episodes were released before she was done with all the interviews, etc. That it may end without a conclusion was kind of the default expectation. That a reporter would be able to dig deep and either exonerate or damn him is closer to the realm of fantasy. His case was not a slam dunk in either direction.

I'm not mad that Serial didn't provide doubt or prove guilt, though I am somewhat frustrated that the reporter seemed to have so much doubt that (in my opinion) wasn't justified by what she presented in the show, what I am mad about is that it largely amounted to just several hours of someone saying "Maybe he is guilty, but also maybe not?" without any real narrative or arc or progression. I felt like the story ended exactly where it started with no real meaningful change in how the reporter felt, the facts of the case, or even without giving us a particularly compelling biography of Adnan.

Everyone made such a fuss over this podcast and in the end absolutely nothing happens in it on any of the axis that could have been interesting and it felt like such a waste of my time after I finished it

It's been a long time since I've listened to the show so I may be way off here, but it did demonstrate that the prosecutor's timeline was flawed, the cell phone data was unreliable, and that Syed's counsel overlooked a potential alibi witness.

In any case Serial was a landmark in the fields of true crime and podcasting, so it holds some merit as a historical piece if nothing else.

No - it is much worse!