“13 Reasons Why”: Strong performances offer reason to watch Netflix drama series.
What is the tipping point for forgiving or overlooking flaws when a television drama has honorable intentions to deliver an important message? The answer, in short, is when the miscues — usually in the show’s script — undermine the message the show hopes to deliver.
“13 Reasons Why,” an insistently intense dramatization of teenage suicide as the partial result of bullying, makes its point in spite of a gimmicky narrative structure and widespread character inconsistencies. The first season of the show is available Friday,
March 31, on Netflix.
“Reasons,” based on the young adult novel by Jay Asher, stars Dylan Minnette and Katherine Langford as Clay Jensen and Hannah Baker, high school friends who also work together at the local movie theater. We hear from Hannah first, despite the fact that she is already dead as the series begins. Before she took her own life, Hannah recorded how she had been bullied, mocked, ignored, mistreated and disrespected by fellow students and one adult at fictional Liberty High School in Marin County, where much of the series was filmed.
A couple of weeks after her death, Clay receives the tapes and begins to listen to them, with each side forming the story line for the series’ 13 episodes. His friend Tony (Christian Navarro) isn’t a subject of any of the tapes, but has been entrusted to make sure the tapes get to those who are subjects, including Clay.
Some of the students on the tapes are types — usual suspects, almost. Justin (Brandon Flynn) is the dreamboat jock, Tyler (Devin Druid) is the geeky loner, Bryce ( Justin Prentice) is a jock with a heightened sense of entitlement, Jessica (Alisha Boe) is the pretty military brat who is more vulnerable than most of her friends realize, Alex (Miles Heiser) aspires to be part of the popular crowd, Ryan (Tommy Dorfman) is the out gay kid who does a poor job hiding his loneliness, and Courtney (Michele Selene Ang) and Marcus Cole (Steven Silver) are student leaders, but with secrets and vices.
The Liberty High principal (Steven Weber) circles the wagons as Hannah’s parents (Kate Walsh and Brian d’Arcy James) file suit against the school, putting guidance counselor Mr. Porter (Derek Luke) in the hot seat. The school has hired Clay’s mother Lainie (Amy Hargreaves) as its lawyer. For much of the way, Lainie doesn’t even know Clay and Hannah were friends.
The script is both dependent on and weakened by unreliable narrators. The actual narrator, of course, is Hannah, whose targets insist that she was delusional and lying on the tapes. But the other unreliable narrator is the script for the series. There are times when we simply don’t believe the characters, when what they do or say isn’t consistent with who we’ve been led to believe they are. To go into too much detail here would spoil the experience of watching the series, but a minor example may suffice: As the school district’s hired legal gun, Lainie can’t discuss the case with Clay, but then again, she does when it’s convenient to move the plot along. In fact, even before she learns that Clay and Hannah were friends, would the school hire the parent of a student to defend it in a lawsuit?
Potentially more significant inconsistencies are found in the constructions of major characters, especially Hannah. At times, she is self-possessed and indifferent at best to the behavior of the popular kids. At other times, though, relatively minor misperceived slights seem to send her into an emotional tailspin. No doubt, teenagers embody a constant whirl of conflicting emotions, but the script pushes the bounds of credibility here and there. Fortunately, Langford is able to spackle over the gaps with a stunning performance.
Minnette has less spackling to do, but he’s equally commanding with this complex, challenging role. Yes, there are moments when Clay wouldn’t do what he’s written to do. For example, if you knew you were the subject of one of the tapes, wouldn’t that be the first tape you’d listen to? Not in this case, because that would mess with series creator Brian Yorkey’s plan. Nonetheless, Minnette makes Clay a compelling and credible character.
For the record, both Minnette and Langford are so good, you almost forget they are too old to be playing high school sophomores.
While the script may be overly contrived at times, it at least aims to make its points about teen suicide through drama and only occasionally resorting to speechifying, as it does when Clay says, “Everybody wants to talk. No one wants to do anything.” Even then, and when he wishes people would start treating each other better, you don’t have a feeling that you’re sitting in a pew or a lecture hall.
The structure is gimmicky and the characters inconsistent, but there are still at least “13 Reasons Why” the series is worthy.