My Thirteen Takeaways

Author’s Note: As is often the case for posts dealing with specific media, this post does include some spoilers. I’ve tried to avoid or more substantially flag when I reveal specific plot twists—of which the show has many—and stick more to points that are already out in popular media about this show. Nonetheless, if you intend to watch the show and don’t want any spoilers at all, you’ll probably want to hold off on reading.

In the spring of 2017, I got lured into the world of 13 Reasons Why, the teen drama on Netflix established on the premise that high schooler Hannah Baker committed suicide and left behind her a set of audio cassettes fingering thirteen reasons (and, loosely, people) who pushed her toward killing herself. The show’s based on a YA novel by the same name that I have not read, but that I’ve generally heard was well-received.

Why did I, a man in his mid-thirties, watch this show? Some of it’s a predisposition to love brooding, soapy teen shows. I was all in on My So-Called Life as a pre-teen for what I interpreted, and in some ways was, a glimpse at high school life. As a proper teen, who more cleanly fit the target demographic, I got a bit obsessive over Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and turned in weekly, if a bit less fervently, to Felicity and Dawson’s Creek. Later, Freaks and Geeks engendered a similar vibe to MSCL for its less glossy presentation, and eponymous outsider characters I more readily identified with and recognized from my own world. There were other shows, before and since, but I think this sampling makes the point--it’s not a reach to think I’d watch a show like this. Add on the considerable buzz and controversies around the show at that time (we’ll get into more of that soon) and you have a show that the universe all but dared me to give a try while I was sitting on the recumbent bike in my apartment complex’s exercise room.

I had mixed feelings on the show when I watched that original season, and feel a good bit more conflicted after mowing through season two at a clip of one or two episodes a day. In fitting with the schematic of the show, I give to you my thirteen takeaways from watching up to this point.

1. Questions of Artistic Responsibility
One of the key questions about 13 Reasons Why, and indeed one of the ones that first lured me to the show was the questions it evoked about artistic responsibility. Anytime art represents violence, sex, drug use, or foul language, there are questions to consider about what its role modeling or conceptually introducing to its audience.

As a writer, I tend to feel dismissive of these arguments. While I do so with reserve and with purpose, I have written scenes that capture some level of sexual assault, and characters with racists attitudes. These things exist in the world, to take a more puritanical stance against including them in art feels an awful lot like dodging the tough conversation, or marginalizing victims from having their stories told. (There are most certainly other sides to these arguments, and how unsavory dynamics are ultimately rendered on the page matters a lot more than authorial intent, but, well, there’s a lot more to get into than this aside in this single entry of this single blog post is really equipped to do.)

A show about teen suicide, aimed at a teen audience, broadcast on a ubiquitous platform like Netflix--I get that it calls these questions into sharper relief.

In particular, a culminating scene in season one actually shows Hannah slitting her wrists in the bathtub. The moment’s not as shocking as it might be if it weren’t already clear in the show’s mythology that this had happened, but it’s nonetheless a stark visual that doesn’t pull any punches, and that critics of the show has labeled as outright instructive to viewers who might be contemplating suicide.

A willingness to go there all but defines, this show, but it does also raise reasonable questions about whom the target audience for this show really is and if a major media platform like Netflix that’s so accessible to teens—including more vulnerable populations—needs to take more responsibility in what it not only makes available, but actively markets to a younger audiences.

The creative writer in me doesn’t want to see artistic vision compromised. The guy who has spent most of his professional career in one form or another working with a demo aged ten-to-twenty wonders if there is a need to rein things in, particularly when Netflix isn’t governed by the cable TV standards I grew up with, nor does it require a theater ticket taker checking IDs to only let viewers of a certain age through the door.

2. Suicide as Sexy
One of the main points critics of the show brought up after watching the first episode of season one was the degree to which suicide is portrayed as sexy. Indeed, particularly in her early portrayals, we see Katherine Langford’s Hannah Baker as the sexualized crush of Dylan Mennett’s Clay Jensen, and her borderline sultry delivery on her suicide tapes more than reinforces that read. In the end, there is some legitimacy to the claims that the show at least romanticizes the idea of killing oneself in ways that are far from healthy, particularly for at-risk viewers.

3. This Show Hooks You
Maybe it’s my aforementioned predisposition to liking teen dramas, but this show has an addictive quality to it, and as some socially minded critics pointed out, and uncanny ability to embed itself in a viewer’s psyche based on the hypnotic quality of Hannah’s voice and deep dive into her and, later, other characters’ psyches. While I found the second season a bit less binge-worthy, it nonetheless draws viewers into its world with a strong, steady hand.

4. It’s Brutal
While season one wasn’t afraid to get rough and tumble with depictions of sexual assault and other violence, I found season two somehow even more brutal. There are times when the show is utterly unapologetic in its realism, and in the #metoo era, there is merit to not sidestepping uncomfortable truths. Just the same, by the late stages of season two, I found myself feeling as beaten down as the characters. (The spoilers will get most explicit in the next paragraph if you want to jump ahead to number five.)

I, for one, wasn’t surprised when the verdict came in, and Hannah’s parents did not win their case against the school, because to win the case might have afforded them some peace and solace, or might have effected some change in a toxic school environment. In a show, and particularly a season so relentless in its beatdowns and disappointments, it felt less shocking than inevitable that this would be the outcome. And then there was the bathroom scene from the finale--truly one of the most brutal scenes I’ve ever witnessed on television. I can, in a sense, understand the impulse to depict bullying violence at its most raw and graphic, particularly to set up our understanding of Tyler deciding to shoot up a school dance. However, I’m also in the camp that feels this scene went over the edge, past art to a particularly graphic depiction of unnecessarily shocking violence.

5. The Teen-Adult Balance
There’s a consistent quandary in the teen-centric drama genre: where are the grown-ups? Feature them too little, and we start to question what world these kids are living in, or why the parents are so absentee. Feature them too much and they risk overtaking the show and, well, that’s not why we tuned in.

In defense of 13 Reasons Why I’ll argue this show is uncommonly good at striking an appropriate balance in this particular area. The roles of parents and school administrators are mostly understated and mostly believable when they are on screen, and bolstered by the core question/value judgment that no, the adults are not involved enough and they’re leaving these kids to the wolves.

6. The Nexus Point of Technology
13 Reasons Why faces the persistent challenge of trying to translate a story from before the smart phone and social media explosions into modern television or film. To be fair, the original novel was published in 2007, and was thus not totally removed from cell phones or Facebook, but nonetheless predates today’s ubiquity and functionalities. The show feels a bit clumsy in its first episode, with Hannah explaining reasons for using audio cassettes to deliver her message in what is ostensibly 2016.

I’ll credit the show, however, with incorporating new technologies naturally throughout the show, weaving text and picture messaging and social media posting in generally authentic ways that advance plot nicely.

7. Moments of Joy
Make no mistake about it--as referenced earlier in this post, 13 Reasons Why is persistently brutal. However, I do have to cede that out of a combination of writing, soundtrack choices, and acting--and perhaps the very contrast to the shows most brutal moments--when it does arrive at its moments of joy the show shines. These moments include the close of season one, and a portion of the season two finale as the woebegone, hard-won friends the show features cut loose on the dance floor.

Happiness is all too hard to come by on this series, and maybe that’s the point. But when we do glimpse it, it feels organic, true, and earned.

8. Soundtrack
This show’s music—particularly for season one--is awfully well chosen, and sets a killer (no pun intended) mood.

9. No Trivializing Teens
One of the great quandaries in how to present teenagers in a teen-centric drama is to resist the adult urge to look back at this time in life with condescension--i.e., sure everything seemed like a big deal with heightened hormone levels and limited scope of experience, but it was all kind of silly in retrospect.

13 Reasons Why certainly doesn’t trivialize the teenage experience. If anything, the show may go past even the teen perspective to render the most dramatic and at times dark representation of this time in life imaginable.

10. Hitting All Hot Buttons
Particularly in its second season, this show doesn’t shy away from hot-button issues. In fact, there’s a pretty reasonable argument to be made that the show leans into the hottest issues excessively, past the point that they necessarily feel organic to the show, and up to an extent that they feel wedged in and forced. This isn’t to imply that suicide, self-harm, domestic abuse, violent bullying, cyber bullying, sexual assault, drug addiction, and school shooters don’t come up in the real world--they very obviously do. The ubiquity and weight of so many of these pieces in the confines of a school year at one school, however, can feel overwhelming and, at times, as though the show isn’t giving many of these individual issues the full attention they deserve if the show is going to introduce them at all.

11. LGB Representation
Maybe it’s me who’s out of touch with recent teen TV, but I’m accustomed to high school shows with the token gay character or relationship--the Willow Rosenberg, Jack McPhee, Ricky Vasquez (side note: I love Wilson Cruz being cast as an attorney in 13 Reasons Why) character who, regardless of how well written or acted the part is, nonetheless also feels a little token-y.

While one might argue that openly gay, lesbian, and bisexual characters are disproportionately represented in the cast of characters for this show, in a disproportionately barren landscape for such a long time a show could do a lot worse than normalizing a spectrum of sexuality.

12. The Mysteries Generally Meet Aristotle’s Ideal
Each season of 13 Reasons Why has featured at least one mystery--the first what the thirteen reasons are, and particularly how Clay might figure in; the second who is pushing the misfit characters to speak the truth, and who is trying to intimidate them into silence, particularly after it becomes increasingly clear what’s happening and that these two forces are at odds with one another.

Aristotle wrote that the ideal ending should not only feeling satisfying in and of itself, but also simultaneously surprise the audience and feel inevitable. In each of the prominent mysteries of the show, I’d contend that it delivers the goods on the reveal.

13. Should We Watch Season 3?
After I finished season one of 13 Reasons Why I assumed that my time with these characters was done. There was only one book for source material, we’d gotten through the thirteen tapes and their thirteen reasons, and even arrived at a happy ending (if one tinged with the appropriate degree of sorrow, based on the premise of the show).

I watched season two less out of eagerness to follow up on the next step in these characters’ journeys or out of a sense of stories untold, and more a leap of faith based on what I perceived as the quality of season one.

Season two wasn’t as good.

Worse, the brutality of the season, and particularly that bathroom scene from the last episode left me mentally fatigued and almost regretting having watched. The saving grace? (Big spoiler ahead.) That the show opted not to deliver upon the much-foreshadowed school shooting with a braver statement about compassion (if a murky, arguably icky “walk up, not out” vibe).

The end of season two most certainly set up a season three. So will I watch?

There’s a sense in which the experience of watching season two felt like my experience of watching the first two seasons of Orange is the New Black. I don’t think 13 Reasons Why--especially season two--is as good, but it also didn’t leave me as down-trodden to the point that I had no real desire to spend another hour in its world.

At the end of the day, I probably will at least start watching a third season, if only out of curiosity, and if only because I like more of the characters than I don’t. If I’m busy, or if Netflix releases a lot of other shows I’m interested in a similar time frame, I imagine it will go on the back burner.

OK, so that’s a bit of an anticlimactic close to this post. I’ll leave you, then, with Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” the song from one of the show’s finer moments, the final scene of season one.