Suicide, the act of taking your own life voluntarily. The destruction of men by his own hands, the almost illogical concept of bringing an end to your own existence, doing harm to yourself (or so Aristoteles though). To say this a controversial topic to address is a bit of an euphemism. Through all of fiction perhaps one of the tabooer subjects to portray, little organizations like World Health Organization advises against the portrayal of this kind of topic, due to passively influencing other people to commit such acts.
This colossal and universally important aspect of life, is what the series 13 reasons why (season 1 only here) tries to incorporate, by focusing on the life and after effects of a teenager suicide. Hearing this premise and being someone with a perhaps unhealthy interest for the topic, I was excited to say the least with the prospect of such a series, especially with it reaching mainstream success, and spreading awareness and debate about the topic. Which only increased the feeling of frustration when I sat down and saw what the show had to say about this. I find it hard to even admit this show actually is about suicide in the first place, since it blatantly avoids making a commentary or perhaps the two most important aspects the act raises. Like if human beings really have the right to choose death, to voluntarily give up on life, which is counterpoised by the views of this act as unnatural, or a manifestation of some sort of disease. It also makes us question our existence itself, is existence really inherently preferable to nonexistence, and if not suicide would be the most logical course of action. Good luck finding any commentary on both in this show though, it disregards completely any sort of questioning around this, not even a one sided propagandistic affirmation of a stance is made (not even the pro-life propaganda I was actually expecting). I understand those are somewhat frightening and controversial topics to present, and I can barely imagine how controversial it would be presenting suicide as the right thing to do in a mainstream show, but is that not what media should do? To dare to show, confront and make us face all this frightening thoughts, so we can have a better understanding and idea of them. Does making them taboo and treating people who think these way as sick are we not only adding guilt and disgust to their lives, for thinking that way? Anyways the mere idea of this as an insightful analysis on suicide is insulting and demeaning. I cannot in good mind recommend this show, even as an introductory work to someone that knows nothing about it in general.
Maybe am I using the wrong perspective to judge here. Perhaps the act itself was not what this series was about but it’s after effects. Losing someone because of suicide is a hard thing, especially for those closer to the person. Everyone that believes their family and loved ones will be better off without them, should read impressions of how hard that is a process for the survivors. Having to reevaluate and judge your entire relation with someone you love, looking everywhere reasons for why she did it. The guilty of not knowing if it was something you did, that made her take such drastic actions is close to unbearable. Such aspects are portrayed even poignantly at times by Hannah Bakker parents. Nothing else in the show really correlates to this theme though. Most of the characters this show decides to focus did not have any strong relation with Hannah, if anything most of them are way more concerned with their own self-preservation in this situation than feeling guilty about how they had influence in her death. Also giving definitive answers of why and whom actually had influence in her death takes the most painful part of the process, the uncertainty. Not knowing what you could had made, which actually hurt the person’s feelings, is usually way more terrifying than the actual answers of what the persons did. Of course Clay was relieved after hearing those tapes, but by making those tapes and its content the focus here, 13 reason why loses the most powerful and meaningful aspect of the grieve and frustration regarding the central death
And perhaps I am still viewing this through the wrong lenses. This could not be about suicide as a topic, but simply Hannah’s situation, a tight and solid personal story. But even so this series does not work. A simple look at our title character can show the reasons why that is such. Our protagonist uses her suicide to practice what can only be called mental torture with her fellow peers, by extensively blaming them, for what happened to her. The only reason people ignore this simple fact is because of the ridiculous portrayal.Yes, those are the terms to accurately describe her actions. There is no way around this our protagonist commits such a hideous act, against a group of teenagers, that in their majority did not do anything worthy of such response. Have you realized the problem here? Because it gets even worse, despite being the perpetrator of such immoral acts with severe consequences, the series will attempt to justify it, portraying her as right every bloody time. Hannah is showed as this pinnacle of righteousness, that could never be wrong. This by itself would make me dislike this series. It is hard to even say the moral disgust and frustration that such acts and their repercussions left on me. It is physically impossible for me, to actually fell sorrow or pity for our title character despite the horrible things that happen to her. Which always occur because of victimization of course, Hannah never does something wrong to deserve any aggression. The whole thing come to a ridiculous point where even though the series shows a gruesome scene of her graphically cutting her wrists, I still ended up feeling nothing but emptiness (did I mentioned how manipulative this series is in regards to its drama?).
Many will defend this bullshit by claiming Hannah had some bigger messages she wanted to show with those tapes. Which there actually are, with each one fighting to be dumber and more aggravating than the last. The importance of empathy is a very prevalent one. Trying to understand how the other feels is important, if not you may never know your own actions may have severe lasting consequences in their lives. And of course the best way to portray such concept, is by having our protagonist to preach it, while lacking any understanding or care, about how an act, such as blaming and judging people for her murder, may have for those people. The hypocrisy is just unbearable. The idea of this being necessary, as means to show what actually happened to her is also laughable. There are hundreds of less cruel and sadistic ways to go about this. No, I did not forget the idea, of the whole thing, and the main point of the series, to extensively tell the reasons why someone would commit such an extreme act. The problem is though; I disagree, what is being shown in those tapes are not reasons to kill yourself. They are just facts, a single repeating kind of fact, the actions committed by the people of Hannah school that she considers prejudicial to her (with one noticeable exception). There is no psychology, no inner motivation or philosophy behind it, just a general blaming of everyone else for what happened to her. This honestly seems less of a study of reasons for suicide, and more like a historian making a list of facts that are deemed of any importance. Such an impersonal and uninsightfull perspective is disappointing to say the least. Maybe I am being a little too harsh in all of this. Of course demanding such degrees of reasoning and logic, behind the acts of a clearly emotionally destroyed teenager is completely unreasonable. I understand that, but it was the author’s idea to put that same damaged teenager ideas on a pedestal. A lot of the work consists of proving why Hannah is the only one who is right, in her version of what happened and everyone else is wrong. She also feels like the voice of the author directly delivering the messages this show is trying to portray. So if the creators themselves put so much importance on Hannah opinion, her reasoning, and to justify why she is right every time, I see no reason why I should not put the same importance on it as well.
(I am probably the only one that still cares about this show)
Let’s talk about this show depiction of teenage life for a change. This giant group of characters is supposed to portray exactly that anyway, the sprawling cast being necessary because all of them are supposed to represent a different aspect and side of teenage life. And to be fair this exploration has a variety of topics ranging from sexual violence, the unfair view that can be easily formed of women, lack of privacy, loneliness, suicide actually is not that much more prevalent than those ideas. Great on paper but there is something crucial missing and that is in the representation of any adult character. Well, the whole thing is very simple, every adult character and every major institution is despised and set out either as completely useless or openly malicious from the get go. The School counselor is completely ineffective in regards to anything regarding the students, the school council does not care for the teenagers well being and is just worried about the fact those kind of events can hurt the school image, and we have our co-protagonist Clay Jensen parents just laughing it up and never confronting their son no matter how stupid and clearly self-damaging his actions are. Never in the show any adult actually manages to portray a compelling counterargument, or perspective to our character’s worldviews. The series is indulging itself fully in these youngster’s ideas, to the point that the mere thought their shallow generalist ideas might not be right, never crosses anyone minds. I do not see what someone in the target audience can learn with something that blatantly panders and confirms their basic ideas, without even attempting to show any discording ones. Examples of this where constant, like the school being at fault for supposedly undermining the student’s problems, by making the most logical suggestion of trying to put the issue into a different perception, or being deemed as accusatory, to even slightly suggest, the bullied itself might be taking actions, that could be worsening his situation. So yeah fuck the adults, we crazy neurotic self-destructive teenagers are the ones that truly know what is right, is what I got out of this.
So do I need to add I also found the structure completely flawed? This story pacing is unbelievably slow like even the simplest plot points and character arcs take ages to actually progress. This is perfectly shown by how stale the drama is in this series, that can best be seen when several of the main characters have the exact same conversation, about what they will do about the possibility of the tapes being released, for the tenth time, with nothing being resolved, or done as a consequence of that. By that time, it is easy to realize to story is pointlessly going in circles because of the protagonist that loves to create false dilemmas to keep the plot going. I would love to be lying, when I say this series could easily be told in 4 episodes by getting rid of some characters and plotlines (the poem side story really added a lot to the overall story right). The exposition is also rather lacking. This is basically a story where most of your main characters already know perfectly well 50% of what is going to be shown in the series (what really happened to Hannah). So for not spoiling the audience of future events and twists, everybody has to deliver some completely artificial and cryptic lines just so the audience will not be spoiled of future events Tony(Jesus) being the worst offender. The fact everyone in the show is pointlessly withholding information annoyed me to no end.
Can you believe I still did not talk about the worst aspect of this series? The characters in this are just unbearable. My problem is not their characterization itself, which is actually mediocre and serviceable. But the fact they are all unpleasant horrible people. Being a terrible flawed person is not an issue in of itself, in fact some of my favorite characters can be described as such. But the unpleasantness of the 13 reasons why cast never leads to a complex struggling personality. It never leads to some complex troubled personality, it never gives great insight into the darkest sides of human psyche. There is no shinji desperately struggling with his insecurities and low self-esteem in this show. They are all just unpleasant annoying, flat characters. This base level characterization works in something like boku no hero academia, where every character is likeable, and their loveable personalities, still make them endearing despite their lack of complexity. In 13 reasons why it makes for a complete mess, where I ended up hating most of the characters. Hannah is now officially my most hated fictional character and I intend to write a future essay talking about her in length. Clay would also make the list of my most hated fictional characters, the way he is constantly blaming others and trying to forces his morals on them is just so obnoxious. I can only describe him as someone with very extreme case of hero complex, since he acts exactly like those obnoxious pacifist’s super-heroes, throwing around morality speeches at everyone around him. Nevermind how hilarious it is the fact he is obviously written to move the plot forward in some ways, his panic attacks only serving to prolong endlessly the act of him listening to the tapes, to the point he actually has some vivid hallucinations, just to give such exposition into what he is feeling.
(my favorite cast of characters)
Tony manages to be even more infuriating, I just can never take seriously, someone that follows Hannah request as some holly word. But when he remains his annoying vagueness, even as those tapes lead Clay to coming close to commit suicide, is just too much. This level of stupidity cannot come from anything resembling a human being. Especially when he is repeatedly shown as the character with the highest moral values in the show. And I am not sure it was bad acting or bad writing, that gave him this monotone personality, with barely any emotional range as a character, but it was awful either way. Unlike what many would lead you to think, Bryce is not the worst thing in this by a long shot. Sure the show may be bent on trying to make the audience hate him, by making him do the most despicable acts with no redeeming qualities. However I do not. In fact he is just so pathetic and, a great representation of a cartoonish villain, that I do not find him even worth of any hate, nevermind interest.
Now I can finally go from hated elements to those I just did not get actually. There is this weird intertext and relation between this and generic romantic comedies. In a lot of ways, the relation between Hannah and Clay is similar to those of the main couple in those stories. The side characters are also kind of close to some twisted version of the genre stereotypes. Now if the romantic comedy formula is only used as a common tool to tell the story which is being conveyed, this is awful storytelling because unlike the usual romantic comedy this formula is not useful to show the story and themes this series is going for, being completely unnecessary. But I think the idea they were going with that is to try to make a metanarrative and commentary about the genre, with said aspects. They are in the end trying to subvert both expectations and some tropey stereotypes. And I still ended up in the same problem thinking that what does the series has to say about the genre? I got nothing no focus in some overall messages or any larger commentary. They simply took out the silly message about love that gives purpose to the genre and elements and replaced it with nothing making this an even emptier work.
(People who say season 2 is worst are delusional) 
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