Headscratchers / American Vandal

• So, Mackenzie is a cheater. She has stream footage with a part that exonerates Dylan and a part that proves she is being unfaithful to him. These two parts don't overlap. She is aware she is participating in a documentary that is being watched in-universe by hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people. On top of all this, any Twitch streamer with even a modest amount of popularity would be aware that they can clip/edit footage from their streams. Why does she choose the nuclear option? Even if she wanted to come clean to Dylan, she could have done so in private.
  • Like many people in real life, a lot of the characters in the show believe that not telling your side of the story is an admission of guilt. Mackenzie may have been worried about fans of the documentary accusing her of the crime and harassing her about it. And even if she edited the footage, it would still show her being topless on Twitch, so Dylan would know that she cheated anyway.
• The series makes it a point to show that Surprisingly Realistic Outcome happens when certain things are revealed on the documentary, such as getting a teacher fired, breaking up relationships, ruining reputations, etc. Despite this, several students are shown drinking while underage or smoking pot on camera, but nothing comes of it. We know for a fact that certain authority figures saw the footage, so you'd think there might be some issue there.
  • It's possible that these incidents were too minor to note. The biggest ramifications for these random revelations might have been simply having some kids get yelled at by their parents, and the kids simply didn't make a stink about it to the documentarians.
  • Given that most of those incidents were posted to social media, it's probable that their punishments were already over by the time the documentary started!
• In Dumbass Has a Point on the series page, Dylan's brother Cooper says that he warned Dylan before starting high school not to take Ms Shapiro, as Cooper's previous behavior "already burned all the bridges for him", and Dylan (rightfully) points out that he had to take a foreign language. But Hanover High has 958 students ^note  according to Mr Baxter's testimony at Dylan's school board hearing in episode 1, and enough resources to have it's own tv studio and news show, at least. Wouldn't it offer more than one foreign language? Why didn't Dylan just take French? Or at the very least, go to the school and explain the situation and ask for a different Spanish teacher? If students have to take a foreign language all four years, either as school policy for Hanover or as a college requirement, ^note as of 2012/13 school year, California high school students are only required to take one course in foreign language, performing arts, or career technical education to receive their diploma, but most top schools will prefer or even require you to take four full years. Even at lower levels, most colleges require two or three years. even if Spanish is the only language offered, there's no way Ms Shapiro is the only teacher Hanover has for it. (just with the assumption of 20 students a class x seven classes a day=140 students a day. Even for a small school, that's barely one grade level!)
  • Yeah, this seems like it's just another example of Dylan being stupid. He didn't understand the options available to him and just allowed himself to get enrolled in the class of the teacher he was warned against.
  • Furthermore, why would Ms Shapiro keep him in her class? She knows that he hates her and the feeling is mutual and she clearly has quite a bit of pull with the principal/school board. Why doesn't she use that to get Dylan moved to another teachers class?
• On the main page, it's mentioned that Dylan will go to jail for spray painting a dick on Ms Shapiro's driveway. Um, why? The whole danger of Dylan going to jail for the parking lot vandalism was because it was $100,000 worth of damages and thus a felony crime. Spray painting a driveway is about $100 worth of damages, which makes it a misdemeanor at best. So why was Dylan dragged out of bed and arrested in the middle of the night? It's not like the police looked stupid because of Dylan being cleared - he hadn't even been charged with a crime. The police don't even get mentioned in the documentary. The only ones who look bad are the school board - and even then, Peter admitted right from the start that they had a very strong case against Dylan. Does Ms Shapiro have a friend on the force or something?
  • Dylan was charged with felony vandalism for the car incident. Furthermore given the Wayback Boys videos and general reputation it's not a stretch to imagine he'd been in trouble with police in the past or were at least known to them. Maybe the cops were just excited to be able to pin something on Dylan.
• Why did Mr. Janson's daughter destroy the tape? Sure, her and her father were being harassed about the Kiefer Sutherland tape and wanted to get back at Peter for involving them, but wouldn't giving up the tape free them of any more attention? Since by doing so they would give what they needed to the documentary and would no longer be involved with it. Instead for some reason Janson's daughter destroyed the tape now leaving the Jansons open to more harassment from the fans for destroying the thing that could get Dylan freed from prosecution.
  • She was furious at Peter and wanted to spite him. There doesn't need to be any other reason even if giving him the tape would have the same outcome.
• Maybe I missed it, but in season 2, how was Grayson able to get the box of supplies for the Shit Launcher into the back room where the shirt launcher cannons were?
  • He didn't. If you listen carefully to Jenna Hawthorne's interview, she reveals that The Turd Burglar aka Grayson sent her co-ordinates, leading her to the same alley where Peter had to dig through the poop with chopsticks. There Jenna found a box with typed instructions, zip-locked bags of cat poop dust, and TTB T-shirts ^note which presumably Grayson ordered from a make-your-own-Tshirt store, either in person or online). One of the points in the note was that Coach Devlin always left the locker rooms unlocked during the team's rehearsal/warm-up, which is what gave Jenna access to the shirt cannons.
• But where did Grayson get the maltitol he left in the box for Kevin in the alley to use in causing the Brownout? It's established that Jenna didn't⁸ get it from her family company, and the show gives the impression that to get a bottle full of the powdered maltitol like that would take a pharmaceutical connection. So how did a guy who repairs cellphones for a job get it?
  • In real life, you can order large amounts of maltitol powder from online stores like Alibaba, so presumably that's what Grayson did.
• Grayson tried to catfish virtually the entire school using the same profile. Did no one ever show off the hot chick they were talking to to other classmates, who would recognize her from their own conversations? It seems like it would pretty quickly get around that the same person was hitting on lots of students around the school.
  • Most of the students didn't bite when he slid into their DMs because they figured she was a bot or catfish. If anyone had talked about it it was probably along the lines of "lol who's this creepy old dude trying to hit us up pretending to be a hot college chick."
  • Also - Grayson didnt try to catfish the whole school, he reached out to 41 people as "Brooke". It's probably fair to assume that he knew all of them on some level and chose them as targets because he saw them as ripe for manipulating. Obviously he knew Kevin quite well, and even if he wasn't friends with Demarcus, Jenna or Drew they were in the same year (and in the case of Jenna and Drew this may have been since elementary years).
    • Mr Gesualdi is a slightly different case as a teacher. This troper suspects that St Bernie's computer labs may have been open during breaks/lunch/free periods if Gesualdi was supervising and Grayson definitely seems like someone who would have taken advantage of that. From there it's not a stretch that a teacher who would send dick pics to a teenage girl may have over shared about his personal life to a student he saw a lot outside of a class setting. (This, in turn, could have led to him feeling extra betrayed when Gesualdi reported him and got him expelled for his tweets)
  • As for anybody else who Grayson tried to catfish...Unless he had a second account with a male version of "Brooke", most of his targets would have been boys (Jenna being an exception as an out lesbian). Most high school boys aren't gonna be bragging to their friends about the hot girl who's messaging them if they've never even met or done sex stuff - that's a quick way to get yourself mocked by your friends and be taunted about how you're gonna end up on Catfish. Besides Grayson probably moved very quickly to get nudes/compromising info off anyone who did engage with "Brooke" for blackmail into keeping their little secret.
• Why did Grayson drop out of school entirely after getting expelled from St Bernie? Assuming he's the same age or no more than year or so older than Kevin and he had been expelled a year before the Brownout, he could have just re enrolled elsewhere.