13 Reasons Why Review

Before I get onto my main point, I’m going to have to give credit where it is due. (May I also say that this review will contain major spoilers.)

13 reasons why worked really well as a high school drama series. It was very suspenseful and gripping because each tape wanted to make you see what happened to Hannah Baker next. The acting was decent, at least (a little inconsistent if anything but still not too bad.) The characters, while not particularly likeable, were diverse and somewhat interesting. The overall story was passable too. Not too much to say on that though. I’ve seen a lot of criticisms on how the show “romanticises” or “beautifies” suicide, which is extremely untrue. Nothing about the suicide was artful in anyway, it was just an innocent girl slitting her wrists in the bath tub.

Now we go onto the negatives…

Yet again, before we get onto any criticisms on the message or underlying meaning of the show, I want to look at the bad of the show as a drama.

Firstly, the pacing was terrible. Clay, the main character, was obviously stalling on listening to the tapes in order for the episodes to be longer than they should have been. This lead to a lot of the episodes being useless, boring filler which eventually became annoying to watch. Whereas in the book, it took Clay only a day to listen to the tapes.

Secondly, a lot of the characters’ motives were very wishy-washy. I honestly couldn’t understand why some of the characters did what they did. I guess Tony did every f*cked up thing Hannah asked him to because he spoke to her a couple of times, rather than reporting it straight to the police?

Lastly, the ending was, in my opinion, unsatisfying. Yes, we found out why she killed herself and all the cracks in between however a few side-stories were looked over, left to be ended in the confirmed upcoming season 2. Rather than create filler which the show would have been better off without, the producers or scriptwriters could have resolved a few of these side-stories which in all honesty were actually pretty interesting such as Tyler’s suspected school shooting.

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