By: James Southworth
Rating: 4/5 Stars
Suicide is not an issue that should be glossed over by any means. However, for some reason in America, it's not paid that much attention. It's the tenth leading cause of death. There are at least 121 suicides per day. That is a really tough number to swallow. Shows often struggle to talk about suicide, and for good reason. It's a delicate issue that has no easy answer. Enter "13 Reasons Why", a Netflix original adapted from the original novel by Jay Asher. This show tells the story of Clay Jensen, who receives tapes that include thirteen reasons why his friend and love interest Hannah Baker decided to kill herself. On each tape is a name of a person who was a reason why she committed suicide, and Clay's name is on one of the tapes.
This show really works for the most part, and even tends to be better than the source material it was based on (I hardly ever say that for an adaptation, so know that this a significant claim). One of the things that this show does best is showing the multiple ways people deal with loss. It's often heartbreaking to see, but it is true to life. Clay constantly questions whether he's actually a decent person, and that maybe he really wasn't as good a friend to Hannah as he originally thought. He even tells his mom at one point "Maybe I'm the bully. Maybe we're all the bullies." It's a powerful statement that makes you think about how your words and actions can affect another person. Other characters go through various states of dealing with this loss, some of them in denial, others angry, and so on. Hannah's parents give some of the most painful and heartbreaking reactions. Addressing grief is never easy to do in a visual medium; it can sometimes come across as forced. But in this show, it's raw and real. People's sadness doesn't feel like a cheap and manipulative move to get a reaction out of the audience. Instead the emotion that comes from watching the show feels legitimate and important.
Another thing this show does so well is have multi-dimensional characters. YA movie adaptations often struggle with this. Movies such as "The Hunger Games", "Divergent", and "Percy Jackson" have all suffered from weak teenage characters who you couldn't connect to. The novel "13 Reasons Why" boasted a lot of fleshed out high school characters, and that transfers perfectly into the TV version. This is also due to the incredible performances by many of the actors. Katherine Langford gives a beautiful turn as Hannah Baker. She does not just make this character someone to pity because she killed herself. Instead, I came to really like this character, and see her as a funny, charismatic, and loving girl. She often seems confident in the show and very sure of herself. But that doesn't mean she's immune to the harsh bullying that happens to her. It's hard to watch this highly likeable girl get slowly but surely warn down by all the things that people do to her, which range from the sad to the downright disgustingly evil. High school bullying is a reality in this show, and the show makes sure to emphasize that even the best of people can be worn down by it if it happens enough. Dylan Minnette gives far and away the best performance of the show as main character Clay Jensen. We see him discovering what happens to Hannah, and we sympathize for him as he gets more and more saddened by realizing all the little things that wore Hannah down. Minnette gives his character a certain stoicism; this character does not just stand by and do nothing about Hannah's suicide. Instead, he stands up to the people who hurt her; he questions them and he questions himself. The chemistry Minnette and Langford have on screen is charming, but also profoundly sad because the friendship is cut way too short. Other performance highlights come from Christian Navarro as Clay's elusive friend Tony, Kate Walsh's powerful and compelling portrayal of Hannah's mother, and Alisha Boe giving an incredibly sympathetic performance as Jessica. This show's ability to give us fully realized characters in high school students and adults gives it an edge over almost every YA adaptation.
Before getting into some of the problems of the show, I wanted to briefly address the controversy this show has started to get across all social media. A lot of people are claiming that this show's portrayal of Hannah's struggles with suicide are not accurate to real life. The component of her struggling with mental illness is not addressed (as people with suicide tend to have mental illness) and having people being blamed as the reason for her suicide is simply wrong. The person who made the choice ultimately to end their life was Hannah, not anyone else. Also, people are annoyed by one of the show's ruminations on what could've been done to save Hannah. Clay claims that if he'd loved Hannah, maybe he could've saved her. The counselor he talks to responds, "You can't love someone back to life". Clay replies, "You can try". Now, don't get me wrong, a part of me gets where people are coming from. The show can give us graphic moments of rape scenes, yet it can't show us Hannah struggling mentally? I would say this was a problem, but I'm not sure that people are getting the point of this show. It's about how horrible bullying can be. It can actually affect an individual, and it can wear them down if it goes on for long enough. That's why Hannah killed herself. She experienced one horrible thing after another, all by other people's words and actions. The people around Hannah did contribute to her feeling like she had no other way out. It's human nature to not want to be held accountable for something. I think that Clay is onto something when he calls out people for the part they played. At the same time, the show does say that blaming other people is too singular an answer. I don't think the show ever has characters arriving at any sort of accurate conclusion as to what they could've done to help Hannah, because there was nothing they could do. As for the "love can save someone" trope, that complaint just feels invalid. It's one way of Clay trying to think through how he could've saved Hannah. It feels like at the end of the show he realized he shouldn't put all the pressure on himself; no one should have to do that. What I'm getting at is that these complaints don't feel entirely warranted. I'm open to discussion about it, because I'm not going to pretend like I know everything about this topic, but I don't think anyone can.
There are some problems with this show. They're not glaring problems, but they're still present. One is that the show sometimes feels too long. On one hand it makes sense to divide this show into 13 episodes, with one tape per episode. But, each episode is one hour long, and that makes it meander on for a little too long sometimes. If the episodes were trimmed down or even if it had less episodes it could've felt more concise. Also, it seems a little farfetched that Clay would be going through Hannah's tapes so slowly. It seems like it would be urgent for him to finish these tapes with how much he cares for her. The reasoning the show gives for him going so slow is flimsy at best. The show also ends on a somewhat forced cliffhanger; I don't know if a season 2 is necessary.
Overall, "13 Reasons Why" might be the best YA adaptation to date. It keeps the source material intact while adding some new elements to it that might actually make the show a little better than the book, which is a rare occurrence these days. This is an important show, one that I think needs to be watched by everyone. It is graphic at times, but this show shouldn't be an easy watch. It isn't by any means, as it shows in heartbreaking detail people grieving and also shows how a charismatic, loving girl was broken down by what other people did to her, whether it was intentional or not. If you watch this show, I hope you don't love it; this isn't a show that should be loved. Instead, watch it mindful of the important messages the show portrays.
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