HIGH- SCHOOL TRAUMA IN 13 CHAPTERS
Netflix’s newest binging sensation
Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why — the rave of Thai and international streaming-service fans i n the past weeks — certainly has the right combination of production values, acting and dialogue to make it a gripping-enough tale to binge on over a particularly lazy weekend. The teen drama-mystery also comes with a message that should be relatable enough to anyone who still remembers what if feels like to be an angst-filled teenager, with all the bad decisions and cruelty (intentional and otherwise) that define the adolescent experience for so many of us.
And yet, much of the plot feels entirely too convenient, with multiple points that are seemingly there to pad out the series, with too many irrational decisions chalked up to teenagers being teenagers. As riveting a tale as Hannah Baker’s descent towards suicide is, the series definitely didn’t need 13 hour-long episodes to answer why.
Opening shortly after the death of Hannah Baker (Katherine Langford), Clay Jensen (Dylan Minnette) receives a package in the mail containing 13 cassette tapes recorded by Hannah, detailing the various traumatic high-school episodes that eventually led to her suicide and naming Clay as one of the reasons she took her own life. Clay finds out he isn’t the first to receive these tapes — a sort-of audio suicide note — and sets out to confront each individual mentioned in the 13 tapes (thus the 13 episodes) while he agonisingly listens to them one at a time.
Mainly cutting back and forth between Clay’s crusade in the present and Hannah’s point of view based on the tapes, much of the series hinges on the fact that Clay — unlike every other teenager who received the tapes — simply refuses to listen to them in one sitting, due to an ambiguous mental disorder he has that seems to flare up every time he listens to the tapes.
As such, for much of the series, Clay — and the audience — seems to be the only person who doesn’t know the whole story, something the characters mention multiple times in pretty much every episode. This means we’re forced to watch Clay make judgements and unleash his outrage upon characters who may or may not receive them, all without knowing his own culpability in the entire matter, something that can often be as frustrating for us as it is for the characters in the show.
Meanwhile, the subplot regarding the internal drama surrounding the supporting cast feels largely tangential, with many of the dynamics between the characters having nothing to do with Hannah or Clay. It’s a good thing that a majority of the actors — many of them unknown faces — do a commendable job of selling their characters. Minnette and Langford, who is actually making her debut as Hannah Baker, both deserve praise for their performances, with Langford in particular quite adeptly displaying the slow change in Hannah’s attitude as her optimism and confidence are slowly withered down. Familiar faces like Kate Walsh (Hannah’s mother) or Brian d’Arcy James (the school counsellor) likewise deliver appropriately convincing performances, even if the subplot surrounding their characters, again, feels tangential to the main story.
To be fair, when it does focus on its main plot, 13 Reasons Why does a respectable job of demonstrating how our actions — big or small, deliberate or accidental — or even our inaction can sometimes make the difference between life or death. Throughout the show’s
first season, Hannah is faced with every imaginable type of terrible ordeal a teenager could possibly go through, slowly escalating from gossiping and bullying to rape. While much of the events in the first half are due mostly to the notion that teenagers make bad decisions, the series slowly raises the stakes, with an ending arc that truly drives home the reasons for Hannah’s death.
While certainly an uneven experience, 13
Reasons Why is a thrilling enough ride thanks to its actors and mysterious premise, with enough teenage drama and intrigue to make its audience want to keep watching till the end. Whether you’ll feel sorry for Hannah in the end, however, largely depends on your ability to sympathise with the irrational teenage mind.
Much of the plot feels entirely too convenient, with multiple points that are seemingly there to pad out the series