Why, oh why, should “13 Reasons Why” devote an entire season to humanizing a rapist? That’s a great question, and a good answer is never provided.
So to better examine what makes these kids different than everyone else, “13 Reasons Why” rather clumsily asks an age-old question: Are people capable of change? The ballsy part comes with who’s being asked to change: Bryce Walker (Justin Prentice), a serial rapist and one-dimensional antagonist from past seasons. They’re actually pretty awful, objectively speaking, but the show clearly believes they’re decent kids caught up in lots and lots of bad situations. (If only the viewing public would grant them that wish.) The Bryce Walker Problem The world’s inherent injustice is crushing everything outside their protected little bubble, so the best they can hope for is to be left alone. They think they deserve to live better lives than they’re living, but there’s no expectation that they will. Nothing matters to them outside of each other, and the only reason this group carries significance is because of an indefinable “goodness” within each of them.
For as confounding as some plot points can be, these teens live by a code of selective nihilism.
With it, Season 3 also exposes a nasty ideology.
'Yellowstone' Season 4 Paints a Heroic Portrait of Doomed Men, Reason Be DamnedĮvery IndieWire TV Review from 2021 So Far, Ranked by Best to Worst GradeĢ021 Emmys Winners List: 'Ted Lasso,' 'The Crown,' and 'The Queen's Gambit' Lead the Night 'Saturday Night Live' Review: The Best and Worst of Billie Eilish's Hosting Debut The sheer quantity is preposterous, undercutting any actual impact the season could carry, but the central focus on humanizing a rapist is beyond reason. Brian Yorkey’s still-very-bad Netflix original has nothing substantial to say despite the many controversial topics touched upon, these 13 new episodes are only interested in depicting trauma for the sake of drama, and no one seems to care how far they have to re-e-e-e-ach to justify talking about abuse, rape, murder, immigration, homophobia, “locker room talk,” drug use, and so many more intense, real-world teen experiences. …and yet, the show’s perceived popularity indicates people are watching, so let’s talk about some of the many ways this season fails. But only after watching all 13 hours of the new season do you learn that even the rehab was for naught, which makes the whole season one big confounding waste of time. And while we appreciate that Clay is finally addressing his mental health issues, you can’t deny that he put a lot of people in danger this season, including himself.By focusing on rehabbing the image of a rapist, “13 Reasons Why” Season 3 quickly proves it’s creatively bankrupt. Of the 13 acts on this list, Clay is responsible for at least eight of them, from crashing Zach’s car while driving drunk (that’s two in one!) to staging a fake hold-up at a police station. For a show determined to tackled so many real-life issues, there are moments when it couldn’t be more detached from reality, as evidenced by the sheer number of shenanigans its characters get away with in the span of six months.Īnd when we say “characters,” we mostly mean Clay Jensen. If you’ve completed your binge of the Netflix teen drama (and we hope you have, otherwise you’re about to get spoiled!), then you already know what we’re talking about.
Proceed with caution.ġ3 Reasons Why didn’t just go off the rails in its fourth and final season - it pulled a Magic School Bus, transformed into a space ship and left the damn planet. Spoiler alert: We’re about to break down the WTF-iest moments from the final season of 13 Reasons Why.